Memory

Chapter Fourteen

'And now,' Copis said, 'everything should be blindingly obvious.'

Poldarn didn't even look at her. 'You're Chaplain Cleapho,' he said. 'I met you-'

Cleapho smiled, and Poldarn felt a gentle glow of benediction, as if his sins had been forgiven. Presumably just force of habit. 'That's right,' Cleapho said. 'At the Charity and Diligence at Sansory. You had rather a hard time there. I'm sorry. My fault; back then I didn't know about you losing your memory. Someone,' he added, not looking at Copis, not needing to, 'should've warned me in advance, but there was a breakdown in communications. Still, you handled yourself very well, and there was no harm done.' He paused, then smiled again. 'It's good to see you again,' he said, his voice lowering just the right amount to convey sincere concern. 'Though I can't say you're looking at your best. I heard about-well, what happened, from Gain here. It was a very brave thing to do, we're all grateful to you. We've got to stick together, after all. Particularly now,' he added, looking at Copis.

'What's been happening?' she said quickly. 'We're so out of touch-'

'Not so good,' Cleapho said. 'He's getting quite blatant about it, and that fool Tazencius doesn't seem to give a damn; too upset about his grandson, they reckon, though that doesn't sound like him to me. Anyhow, the latest news I heard was that they're coming. Might save us some trouble if they run into Muno along the way, but apart from that, it's looking a bit grim. Do you think those monks of yours can do any good?'

Copis shook her head. 'I wouldn't rely on them to cook dinner,' she said bitterly. 'And that Spenno character's no better, from what I've heard-either crazy or stupid or both.'

'It doesn't matter,' Cleapho replied calmly. 'Remember, we don't need them ourselves, it's just important that he doesn't get hold of them. And the Earwig won't let us down.'

'Yes, but does he understand-?'

'I've written to him, it's all right.' Cleapho shrugged the whole topic aside. 'Well, are you going to make me stand out here in the rain all day, or shall we make a move? I hate this rotten bloody country, it never stops.'

He scrambled up onto the cart, stepping over Gain and settling himself in the back, fussily, like someone's mother. 'Xipho,' he called out, 'your bloody canopy's got a hole in it. There's water all over the floor.'

'Sorry,' Copis replied. 'We'll get it fixed at Dui Chirra.' She stopped short, then looked over her shoulder at him. 'We are going to Dui Chirra, aren't we?'

'Well, of course we are,' Cleapho replied. 'And the sooner we start, the sooner we'll get there.'

'Just a moment,' Gain called out. He stood up, nodded to Poldarn to shift along the bench, and then sat down where he'd been sitting, boxing him in. 'Not that you're going to jump off and make a run for it, why should you?' he explained.

Poldarn looked at him. 'Why, then?'

'Oh, I like looking about me on long cart rides.'

It turned out to be a very long cart ride, at least in perceived time: a ford that Xipho had been planning on using proved to be flooded and impassable; the bridge ten miles further down had been washed away; the road they went back up so as to loop round and join up with another road that led to another bridge had turned into a quagmire they didn't dare set wheel to; then Gain suggested that when all else failed, there was no dishonour in looking at the map; so they fished the map out of the chest under the box, only to find that the rain had got in it and reduced the map to porridge; then Gain said that didn't matter, he was pretty sure he knew how to get to the second bridge… Come nightfall, they were stuck up to the axles in mud, in a high-walled lane so narrow that the wheel hubs had been striking sparks before they eventually ground to a soggy, inglorious halt 'Fuck,' Xipho announced, peering at the circle of pale yellow light thrown by her storm lantern. 'We're stuck in the mud and jammed solid against the wall. We're going to have to knock the wall down, pack the rubble under the wheels, and try and back up the way we came as far as the top of the slope.'

'The hell with that,' Gain snapped. The lane had been his idea, and guilt was making him irascible. 'I'm positive we can squeeze through, if only we can get a bit of pace-'

'In this swamp? Don't be ridiculous.' Xipho was getting shrill. Cleapho, for his part, was mostly staying out of it, limiting his participation to the occasional tongue click and sigh, to remind them both how disappointed he was in them. 'Wall's got to come down, it's the only way.'

'Well, it's not my fault,' Gain shouted. 'Besides, what kind of idiot'd build a walled lane right out in the middle of bloody nowhere?'

'The same sort of idiot who'd drive down a walled lane in the middle of a monsoon,' Xipho inevitably replied. 'Right, we'll need the hammer, the crowbar-'

'What hammer?'

'You didn't bring a hammer? Fucking hell. We'll just have to use the axe.'

'What axe?'

'Oh, for-'

Poldarn lifted his head. It was tones of voice, nothing more, the sheer musical pitch of their shouting and bickering that he recognised; but it was as familiar as if he'd last heard it a week ago. Where, though? He closed his eyes, trying to fit a place to the sound 'And you're no fucking help,' Copis yelled at him. 'Wake up, for crying out loud. This really isn't the time to fall asleep.'

'I'm not asleep, I'm thinking,' he replied.

'Then don't, it always causes trouble. Just get the crowbar, and-'

He grinned, hoping she wouldn't see in the dark. 'What crowbar?' he said.

'Fucking hell! Of all the idiots!'

And then it dropped into place like the wards of a lock: the same words, the same shrill fury; of all the idiots-It had only been a dream, unreliable evidence that he had been justified in disregarding; and he'd put it carefully to one side, where it wouldn't be in the way. Until now.

Cordo; Cordo in the library, when they'd broken in to steal the book. Cordo, not dead 'Shut up a minute, both of you,' he said, so firmly and quietly that they were shocked into compliance. Then he shifted round in his seat, awkward because one of the canopy hoops was in the way and he had to crane his neck round it. 'Cordo,' he said. (Strange to hear himself saying the name out loud; it was as alien as a word endlessly repeated.) 'Didn't I kill you, in seventh grade?'

Absolute silence, except for the inevitable drumming of rain. 'No,' Cleapho replied. Pause. 'You tried,' he went on, 'but you cocked it up. Don't obsess about it, though,' he added. 'Nobody's perfect.'

The bitterness lay in the casual delivery, a matter-of-fact drawl spread thin over twenty years of anger. Which was, of course, only reasonable.

'I can't remember very well,' Poldarn said slowly. 'But I stabbed you-'

'That's right,' Cleapho said. 'My sleeve caught fire, and so did a whole lot of books. Actually, it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked, but you panicked, must've thought the whole library was about to take off like a hayrick. I'm guessing here, but I think you reckoned the only way any of you would get out was if you could stop Xipho and Gain trying to save me, so you stuck me in the guts with that big pig-sticker knife of yours. And then all three of you pissed off and left me there in the smoke.'

Grim silence, practically unbearable. Cleapho was making it sound as though he was describing a game of knuckle-bones, or a barn dance. 'That was so like you in those days, Ciartan, you went to bits at the first sign of trouble. I think it's because of your upbringing, those people you grew up with. As I understand it, they don't make decisions like we do, it's sort of like a nationwide referendum every time one of you can't make up his mind whether to stop for a pee. In your case, once you came over here, it sort of worked the other way; you made decisions at the speed of lightning, never stopping to think. Like that night. Soon as my sleeve caught alight, you'd already raced ahead, you were thinking burning building, trapped inside, falling rafters, collapsing walls, coughing to death in the smoke: so you stabbed me. Religion, Father Tutor would have called it, the impulse to act followed by the completed action without the intervening moment. Only, if you'd stopped to think for just one tiny fraction of a second, you might have remembered the trapdoor down into the stacks…'

'Oh.' Xipho's voice, horrified.

'Yes, I know,' Cleapho went on, 'you were just as bad as he was, almost; and you, Gain, though I wouldn't have expected you to remember. But you, Xipho-anyhow,' Cleapho went on, 'fortunately, I remembered; and I crawled to the trapdoor, pulled it up and dropped through. Then it was just a matter of walking down the corridor-bleeding like a stuck pig, I might add, but it was only a flesh wound, fortunately-and across the yard to the infirmary.'

'But-' Xipho, struggling to understand. 'We thought you'd died. You let us believe-'

'Ah.' Poldarn could practically hear Cleapho's sardonic smile. 'So I did. And that's why I've forgiven you, all three of you. I guess you could say I owe you everything, because of that night. And coincidence, of course, or you could call it serendipity. Is that the word I'm looking for? It'll do. The point is, I staggered into the infirmary, believed dead by all concerned, on the very evening when Father Tutor realised he needed the services of a ghost: someone who didn't exist, someone with no identity. When the nurse called him over to the infirmary-I was yelling blue murder, I wanted to have you three hung, drawn, quartered and then thrown out of Deymeson in disgrace, in that order… But Father Tutor explained to me that it was just fine, couldn't have worked out better if he'd planned it that way, and he wanted to offer me a really splendid job opportunity-which, once he'd told me about it, I was delighted to accept.' He yawned. 'Now I won't bore you with all the in-between stuff, or we'd be here for days. Suffice to say, the end result, after many years of hard graft and brilliant planning, was me becoming Chaplain-in-Ordinary, supreme head of religion in the whole wide world, under the amusing name of Cleapho.' He paused. 'A joke that nobody's ever appreciated,' he added, 'or else they've kept it to themselves. Cleapho in Old High Thurmian means "partly dead". And all,' he went on, accentuating the drawl, 'because I remembered a silly old trapdoor and you three forgot about it. I guess it was one of those moments in religion when everything in the universe suddenly changes, but too fast for anybody to notice: one moment we're all facing south, next moment we're all standing on our heads facing north, but everything looks the same because the scenery's been switched round too, and it doesn't occur to anybody to consult a compass.' He sighed, pure affectation. 'And all this while you-and the Earwig too, I dare say-you've had it in for poor old Ciartan here because you blamed him for killing me, when in fact it's because of him that I got to be the most powerful man in the world. Well, nearly the most powerful, but we're working on that, aren't we?'

Poldarn wanted to laugh; because if this was the most powerful man in the world, how could he be marooned on a cart stuck in the mud in a narrow lane in the middle of the wilderness, in the driving rain? 'Is that what we're doing?' he asked mildly.

'No, of course not,' Cleapho said, as though explaining the blindingly obvious to a small child. 'We're fighting for the survival of the Empire, religion and civilisation; making me Emperor is just a side effect, like tanning salt is a by-product of horseshit.' Suddenly his voice changed; it bristled with sincerity, great big raw lumps of it. 'Have you got any idea of what's happening out there? You must have, if you've got half a brain. You've seen the ruins where great cities used to be, where the savages-no offence-burned them to the ground. I expect you know how that all started, a couple of hundred years ago, when the Empire rounded up the Poldarn-worshippers in Morevich and set them adrift on the ocean to die. Only of course they didn't; they floated across the sea to the islands in the west, and spawned like ants, and then they started to come back-because over there, where you grew up, there're so many things they don't have. No metal ores in the ground, so the only iron and steel your people had was what they brought with them in the ships, a few tools, the nails that held the boards together, the anchor chains and the deadeyes. Amazing what they did with what they had; because a hundred and twenty-odd years later, they were ready to cross the ocean and come here-and they knew what they wanted from us, and they were angry.' He paused; effect again. All those years of preaching sermons in Torcea Cathedral. 'They didn't want gold or silver or pearls or silks; they wanted wrought iron and brass and hardening steel, scrap-and they were prepared, no, they wanted to kill in order to get it. Oh, come on, Ciartan, you were there only recently. Didn't you wonder why every barn in the country is crammed full with rusty helmets and broken spear blades, and why the headman of every settlement is the blacksmith? To them, we're a species of domesticated animal, like cows or pigs: they kill our soldiers for their steel skins, and leave the meat for the crows. And when all's said and done, you can't really blame them for it. We started it, after all.'

Poldarn didn't say anything.

'No,' Cleapho resumed, 'they aren't to blame, for doing what they have to do, in order to get what they need. The evil-not too strong a word, I'm sure-the evil came from us. From one man, the man who thought he could use them, your people, as a means of getting what he wanted, and the hell with the consequences. That was when the evil started. Before that, your people only came here to get steel and iron, and the best and quickest way of getting the finest-quality material was taking it off the dead bodies of soldiers. So they hunted down our coastal garrisons, killed them and went away again. They weren't interested in towns and cities-not till one of us started talking to them, preying on their resentment, persuading them that what they really wanted, more than bits of broken metal, was revenge. Then the massacres began, the cities and towns, whole populations slaughtered with no survivors. Not their fault; our fault. The selfish ambitions of one individual.'

'Tazencius,' Poldarn said. Cleapho laughed.

'Not Tazencius, no,' he said. 'Oh, he was happy to take the idea, thought he'd stolen it, imagined he was being wonderfully clever-and so lucky, finding you like that, so that the plan could be put into effect. But he was simply being used, as you were; and as soon as he'd done what was required of him, he was lucky to escape with his life. Come on, Ciartan, you were a damn sight more perceptive than this when we were students together, or have all those bashes on the head jumbled your brains up? You know who I'm talking about.'

A moment of silence; moments in religion, when two absolutes connect. 'Feron Amathy.'

'Ah.' At any other time, Cleapho's condescending tone would've been unbearably offensive. 'You got there in the end, that's something. Exactly so: Feron Amathy, the worst man who ever lived. It was Feron Amathy who taught the savages to exterminate whole cities, who betrayed everyone who ever trusted him, who treats human beings as expendable tools. As far as he's concerned, the Empire is a forest and he's a charcoal burner, he'll cut us all down and burn us just to make a few baskets of coals. Everything that's wrong with the Empire is his fault. Who do you think tricked General Allectus into starting a hopeless rebellion, just so he could sell him to General Cronan?' Cleapho paused, just for a moment, to catch his breath; Poldarn got the impression that the subject had almost run away with him, like a big dog on a long rope. 'Then who gave the savages-his own allies-to Cronan so he could prise the Emperor loose from the throne and put Tazencius there, simply because Tazencius would be easier to replace directly, once he'd finished him off? Every betrayal, every deception-and what's possibly the worst of all, the miserly parsimony, using the same people over and over again, twisting them backwards and forwards like you do when you're breaking off a green twig. To be the most evil man in the world, it's not enough just to do evil things; plenty of good men, saints, have done evil for the best possible motives, it's the rule rather than the exception when it comes to evildoing. No, it takes someone like Feron Amathy to do the things he's done in the way he's done them. That's what makes him such an abomination.'

Poldarn could hear the passion, the righteous fury in Cleapho's voice: quite a spectacle. A shame it was here, in the wrong context. It was meant for a cathedral, and didn't really fit comfortably in a small cart wedged between two stone walls in the rain. He's no better than the rest of them, Poldarn thought, the only difference is in what they've actually done.

'So that's who you're fighting,' he said. 'Feron Amathy.' He shrugged. 'Well, that's fine, and I hope you nail the bastard. But you obviously don't need me.'

Rather surprisingly, none of them said anything to that. The next words came from Gain Aciava, who clicked his tongue and said, 'Screw it, we're just going to have to dump the cart and walk to Dui Chirra.'

'Don't be stupid, Gain,' Xipho said, automatic as a sword-monk's draw.

'What's stupid about it? The bloody thing's stuck solid-yes, all my fault, I thought I knew the way and I didn't. But there's no way we can get this stupid cart free on our own. We can walk, or two of us can ride the horses.'

'I haven't come all this way just to be fucked over by a muddy road and your stupidity.' This time, Cleapho sounded quite different. 'We haven't got time to walk, we need to get there quickly, before that fool of an Earwig screws it all up.'

'Fine,' Gain snapped back. 'You ride one horse; Xipho, I expect you'll insist on haying the other. Ciartan and I will just have to walk.'

'Don't be ridiculous-' Was that doubt in Xipho's voice, as though quite suddenly she wasn't sure what to do next? 'You can't-not on your own.'

Can't what? Poldarn wondered, though not for long. Can't be trusted not to lose the prisoner. And he'd had to think before figuring that out. Maybe Cleapho had been right about the effects of concussion.

'What's more important?' Gain was saying. 'Which of us has got to get to Dui Chirra first? Cordo, obviously. And-?'

That, apparently, was a very good question, and neither Cleapho nor Xipho knew the answer. They weren't taking it well, either; two people who couldn't keep their balance without certainty. 'This is ridiculous,' Cleapho suddenly exploded. 'You bloody fool, Gain, you and your idiotic short cuts-'

'It wasn't meant to be a short cut,' Gain whined. 'I only tried this way because the proper roads were blocked. You can't blame me for the rain.'

'Fine.' Cleapho had made a decision. 'We'll walk. Just leave the cart, leave everything. Can either of you tell me how far it is, or do we just blunder about in the dark for a bit?'

It was all Poldarn could do not to laugh. And then he thought, now's as good a time as any: in the dark and the mud, they'd never be able to find me, they don't even know where they are. And staying with them-whoever heard of such a ludicrous idea?

Very well, then. Plan of action-nothing difficult there. One jump from the cart box to the top of the wall, one jump down, then run; no direction required, I'm not running to anyplace, just away. Easy as drawing a sword. It would mean he'd never find the moment to ask Copis about the kid, his son, whom he'd never seen. But there were so many things he'd never know about now, if he turned his back on them He jumped; felt the wall under his feet, kicked against it, relaxed his knees for the impact of landing (hoping very much that there weren't nasty sharp rocks on the other side; there weren't. Mud, yes; but a year in Tulice gives you a doctorate in mud studies.) He heard them shouting: Cleapho swearing, Xipho yelling at Gain, Gain yelling back. He grinned as he ran; those three had definitely known each other for a very long time. Too long, probably.

Poldarn ran, and he ran. No idea where he was going, not interested; when you'd got nowhere to go, you could go anywhere. Well, not Dui Chirra, for sure. But since that was where they'd been trying to get to, and it had defeated the combined intellect of three Deymeson graduates, one of them being the world's most powerful man, quite clearly finding Dui Chirra was impossibly difficult, far beyond his concussion-inhibited abilities, and so there was precious little risk that he'd manage to do it. So that was all right.

Free again, he thought, as he paused for breath, leaning his back against a tree. This was your true wisdom: when in doubt or danger, run away. He grinned; an image had popped into his mind of the past as a big, shaggy dog, standing in the middle of this very wood, sniffing the air in bewilderment because the scent had suddenly failed. It nearly got me that time, and here's the bite marks on my leg to prove it; but I escaped. Free again.

Just to be on the safe side, however, Poldarn kept on going till daybreak; not running, because running through a swamp-floored wood in the dark gives the best odds known to man for breaking a leg or spraining an ankle, and suddenly there's all that wonderful new-found freedom gone up in smoke. A sensible brisk walk, avoiding all unnecessary risks, until dawn watered down the darkness like a dishonest barmaid, taking away his best protection and freedom. On the other hand, it had, miraculously, stopped raining.

In the back of his mind, that damned song was spinning slowly round, unbalanced, like a broken wheelTwo crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree-And he couldn't remember what came after that. He tried not to think about it, for fear it would drive him mad. Instead, he thought They can't still be looking for me, they've got more important things to do; and even if they are, it's a moving needle in a soggy haystack. Even so, it'd be wise to stay out of the light for a day or so. In which case: climb a tree.

The nice thing about dense forest was that there were so many trees to choose from, another beguiling variation on the currently fashionable theme of infinite choice, unfettered opportunity. In the end, Poldarn chose a massive forked oak that couldn't have been easier to climb if it had been specially designed by Galand Dev and Spenno. About thirty feet off the ground, above the first layer of canopy, there was a delightful little platform where the main trunk divided four ways. He was able to lie back with his head pillowed on his hands and his feet crossed, and close his eyes for the best-earned snooze of a lifetime 'Comedy,' said a voice next to him.

He opened his eyes. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Comedy,' the crow repeated. 'Both the low comedy of slapstick and farce-people running about and falling in the mud, the humiliation of dignity and pomposity in a situation intrinsically ludicrous, such as getting stuck in a tight place-and the high comedy of inversion, the world turned topsy-turvy; as in the man who sleeps by day instead of night, up in the air rather than down on the ground, who runs away from his friends to seek sanctuary with his enemy-Actually,' the crow admitted, 'that's stretching it a little; you're the deadly enemy of crowkind, but I'm the individual, not the group, and I don't actually own the tree. Nevertheless, comedy. Also, add the god running away from the priests-that's a good one.'

'Very good,' Poldarn said, yawning; it was broad daylight, and he had cramp in his back and neck. 'I think I'll wake up now.'

'Don't be silly.' The crow pecked at a slight tangle in its wing feathers. 'You aren't asleep, this isn't a dream. You never met a talking crow before?'

Poldarn drew up his knee and massaged it. where it was stiff. 'Not that I remember,' he said. 'Except in dreams. Or hallucinations,' he added in fairness, 'caused by injuries and trauma, like getting bashed on the head. Did I fall out of the tree or something?'

The crow turned its beak toward him. 'Obviously not,' it said, 'since we're thirty feet off the ground.'

'In that case,' Poldarn said, yawning again, 'it's a dream. Is there a point to it, or is it just mental indigestion?'

'I don't understand,' said the crow.

'No reason why you should,' Poldarn replied cheerfully. 'Fact is, I get two kinds of dreams. One kind-well, it's like a series of lectures in remedial memory, so I can catch up with the rest of the class.' He paused. 'Actually,' he said, 'that's more comedy; because the only thing I'm afraid of right now is the rest of the class catching up with me. But they won't, because they're stuck in the mud, like you said. Good joke?'

'Laboured,' the crow replied. 'Go on. The second type of dream.'

'Oh, right. Yes, the second kind is where I'm lying in a river bed or some other place where there's running water, and I hear the two parts of me arguing, like an old married couple: there's the new me, who's trying to run away, and the old me, who keeps on tracking me down. That's about it.'

'I see.' The crow was silent for a long while, so long that Poldarn began to wonder if he'd just imagined that it had talked to him at all. Then it laughed.

'Sorry,' it added. 'I was just thinking of the old song. You know: Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree-'

Poldarn shook his head. 'This is a tall thick tree,' he said. 'And there's only one of you.'

'No,' the crow said, 'two. But it's not important. I suppose I'd better get to the point.'

'Ah,' Poldarn said. 'So it is a dream, after all.'

The crow nodded. 'Actually,' it said, 'you were closer when you described it as a lecture. It's important, you see, to help you decide. Too many choices, and you won't know what to do with yourself.'

'I like having too many choices just fine,' Poldarn muttered, but the crow wasn't listening.

'Now then,' it said, 'I want you to pay attention. Look down there, to your left. Can you see?'

'No,' Poldarn said. 'Oh, just a moment, yes. There's people coming, on horses. Is that what you meant?'

'Look closely,' the crow said. 'Now, I'm going to open up your memory just a little bit-not too far, obviously, so don't worry about things getting out and escaping. Just enough so you'll know-'

At which point, the man on the leading horse glanced up, looked Poldarn in the eye and smiled at him. 'You know who that is?' asked the crow.

'Of course I know him,' Poldarn replied. 'That's Feron Amathy.'

'Watch closely.'

The man rode on, out of sight. Behind him came a troop of cavalry, carrying spears and wearing mail shirts.

'All right so far?' the crow asked. Poldarn nodded.

A moment later, Poldarn saw a column of men on foot, also armed. But they weren't regular soldiers or even irregulars like the Amathy house. They wore old farm clothes, and their only weapons were backsabres.

'And they are?' asked the crow.

'Easy,' Poldarn said. 'My lot. I never did find out what we call ourselves, but in these parts they're called raiders. Or savages,' he added, with a slight frown.

One of them looked up, saw Poldarn, and scowled: Eyvind. Sore loser.

'Still happy?' asked the crow.

'I guess so,' Poldarn said. 'Is there any point to this?'

'Be patient. Now, who's this?'

Prince Tazencius rode under the tree. He didn't look up, though clearly he knew Poldarn was there. Embarrassed; doesn't want to be seen with the likes of me. Fine.

'Nearly there,' the crow said. 'Now, while we're waiting, let's see if you can tell me what the connection is. Well?'

'Too easy,' Poldarn said. 'Evil. These are all bad people.'

The crow shifted an inch or so along the branch. 'Yes. And?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'They're all bad people I've been mixed up with over the years.'

'Yes. And?'

Cleapho rode under the tree, lifting one hand off the reins in a gesture of dignified acknowledgement. For some reason, Boarci was walking next to him, holding the horse's bridle. Poldarn frowned. 'They're all people I've betrayed,' he said. 'Or treated badly in some way.'

'Yes. And?'

'And nothing,' Poldarn replied, slightly annoyed. 'They're bad people, and I've treated them badly. Big deal. They had it coming.'

The crow sighed. 'Oh dear,' it said, 'and you were doing so well. Now, then. I want you to look down on your left side.'

Poldarn turned and looked down. 'I know her,' he said. 'That's my wife.'

The crow laughed. 'Which one?'

'First,' Poldarn replied. 'No, second-no, hang on, first. Lysalis. Tazencius's daughter.'

'Very good.' Lysalis smiled up at him and did a little finger-fluttery wave. 'Next.'

Next came Halder, walking, and Elja. 'My second wife,' Poldarn explained. 'Only, I have a bad feeling that she's also my daughter. Who's that boy she's with?'

'Your son,' the crow said, as the ferocious young swordsman Poldarn had killed in the woods strutted past. 'Lysalis's boy, Tazencius's grandson. Theme emerging?'

Poldarn laughed. 'Piece of cake,' he said. 'These are good people I've treated badly; though that boy wasn't so nice, he tried to kill me-'

'Quite,' the crow said. 'He did his best, and that's all you can ask of anybody. Pay attention.'

General Cronan rode by, and General Muno Silsny ('That's not fair, what harm did I do him?') and Carey the fieldhand walking beside them, his hand clamped to his slashed neck; and behind them a long stream of people Poldarn didn't recognise, thousands of them 'A representative sample,' the crow said. 'After all, the object of the exercise isn't just making you feel bad about yourself. Anyway, they're in reverse order, so it's the Falcata delegation at the front, then Choimera, followed by Josequin-You get the idea.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Where's Choimera?' he asked. 'I never heard of it.'

'You're a busy man,' the crow replied. 'You have people to deal with, that sort of thing.'

'Fine.' Poldarn tried to sit up, but the branch was slippery; the rain had started again. 'Point made. Point sledge-hammered into the ground. I haven't just harmed those bad people but all these innocent people too. That's why I don't want to remember any of it.'

'You just want to run away.'

'Exactly. The more I hang around the places I've already been, the more damage I do, on top of everything I've done already. Going back home proved that. Any contact I have with my past leads to more bad things; it's contagious, and I reinfect myself. Which is why I want to run away-really run away this time, get as far away from all of it as I possibly can. I thought I was doing that, coming here; all I wanted to do was get a job and settle down, it's not my fault that they all came chasing after me. But there's got to be some place I can go, somewhere outside the Empire, where nobody will ever find out who I used to be.'

'Fine,' said the crow. 'Look down.'

None of the people passing under the tree were familiar, though some of them looked up, smiled, waved. There were even more of them than before.

'Do you understand?' asked the crow.

'Yes,' Poldarn said. 'So what do you want me to do? Should I jump out of this tree and break my neck?'

'Look down,' said the crow again.

All strangers once more, and none of them acknowledged him; but the line went on out of sight in both directions.

'Really?' Poldarn said quietly. 'Even if I kill myself right now?'

'Of course,' the crow said. 'My, what a big head we have, assuming we can redeem the world by an act of supreme sacrifice. Look, there you go now.'

Sure enough, Poldarn could make out his own face in the crowd, just briefly, before it passed out of sight. 'One more victim wouldn't make things much worse,' the crow said. 'Wouldn't make it any better, either. Really, what was your tutor thinking of? You ought to have covered all this elementary stuff in second grade.'

'Maybe we did,' Poldarn said irritably. 'I really don't remember.' The branch was getting very slippery now; he was in danger of falling off. 'All right,' he said. 'I'm assuming there's a point to all this, so you tell me. What have I got to do?'

Then he fell out of the tree.

Comedy, he thought, as he opened his eyes; then, Where did that come from?

He was lying in deep mud; just as well, since he'd only a moment ago fallen thirty feet. It was broad daylight. A crow got up out of the branches above him and flapped away, shrieking. Poldarn didn't need to translate; he could remember what it had been saying.

The only difference is in what they've actually done.

And that, presumably, was the answer: find out who'd done most, and deal with him. I need someone I can ask, he thought. I need to speak to Cleapho, or Copis, someone who can tell me what's going on. Assuming, of course, that they'd tell me the truth.

Assuming I can find them again, having made such a spectacularly good job of making sure that they can't find me. Assuming, even, that I can ever get out of this horrible bloody wet forest.

Big assumption.

As if he'd woken out of something bigger and more malevolent than mere sleep, he got to his feet, stretched and flexed to make sure that nothing had got broken or bent in the fall, yawned and looked around. Trees. Lots of more or less interchangeable trees. Absolutely not a clue about where the hell he was. So breathtakingly well hidden that nobody on earth knew where he was, not even Poldarn or Ciartan Torstenson.

He remembered what the colliers had said about the Tulice forests: so dense that a man could walk for days and never realise that the main road was only twenty yards away to his left. And wet, too: full of nasty boggy patches that'd swallow you up before you'd figured out you were in trouble, in which case the best you could hope for was that you'd be sucked down over your head and drown or smother immediately, rather than stay mired up to your armpits until you starved to death, or the wolves or the bears or the wild pigs ate you (browsing off your arms and face like cows nibbling at a hedge; at the time he'd assumed that the colliers were just trying to put the wind up him…). Wonderful place to get lost in, the Tulice forest.

Poldarn walked for an hour in one direction, until the closeness of the trees and the depth of the shadows all around him made him feel like he was buried alive; so he turned left, and carried on that way for another hour or so, until that direction became just as unbearable, or more so. Left was obviously a bad idea, so he turned right. Right was worse. The canopy of leaves overhead was as tight as the lid on ajar; he needed light in order to breathe, and the canopy was choking the light, strangling him; and every change in direction led him to taller trees, thicker leaves, darker places. (Allegory, he thought bitterly; I hate fucking allegory.) How long he'd been blundering about he had no idea, but it didn't matter anyway; didn't matter if the sun had gone down, because it couldn't get any darker than this, could it? No trace, needless to say, of human beings here, nothing to suggest that a fellow human had ever been this way before-so much for the idea that all his problems had been caused by other people. Right now, he'd be overjoyed at any hint that there were such things as other people, that he wasn't the only talking biped left in the universe Something whistled in his ear, then went chunk. After a moment's bemused searching, he found it. It was a strange insect, with green and yellow wings and an absurdly long brown body, and it lived by boring into the bark of trees. No, it bloody well wasn't: it was an arrow. Some bastard was shooting at him.

Feeling rather foolish, because at least three seconds had passed since the arrow had hit the tree, Poldarn threw himself to the ground and crawled on his knees and elbows for the cover of a holly bush. Silly, he thought, holly not arrow-proof; but he curled up tight in a ball and waited, and no more arrows came. Even so.

Then he heard something, quite close. Grunting, snuffling; a fat man with a bad cold running uphill with a heavy weight on his back. The absurdity of it made him want to burst out laughing, because unless this neck of the woods was swarming with people and he'd just been walking blithely past them for the last five hours, it stood to reason that the grunting, snuffling fat man had to be the secret archer. Well, fine; if Gain and Copis and the most powerful man in the world were to be believed (which was by no means certain), Poldarn was a graduate of the Deymeson academy of killing people, and more than a match for a runny-nosed pork chop, even one with a bow and arrows. The noise was getting closer, so all he needed to do was stay perfectly still, and then, when Fatso came waddling past him any second now, just stick out a leg, trip him up and bang his head against a tree until he came up with directions to the nearest inn. Piece of It must already have seen him, some time before he saw it; that was what cowering in the bushes would get you, if you were so dumb that you couldn't tell the difference between a human being and a fully grown wild boar. When he lifted his gaze-purely chance that he happened to be looking in that direction at precisely that moment (rather than half a second later, when it'd have been a quarter of a second too late)-he saw a massive grey wedge with two tiny red lights halfway up the taper, growing huger and huger. His legs figured out what the thing was before his brain did, because by the time the words wild boar had congealed in his mind, he was already on his feet and trying to push through a thick screen of holly leaves.

The pig squealed, a silly, high-pitched angry noise like a little girl whose brother was pulling her hair. There was a little blood, black and shiny, on its shoulder. The boar flattened the holly bush about a heartbeat after Poldarn got clear of it.

Then Poldarn hit a tree.

Bloody stupid thing to do, run flat out into a stupid great big oak tree. He scrambled back onto his feet just as the boar thrust its ridiculously thick neck out; one handspan-long tusk gashed the bark an inch below his outspread fingers as he ducked round the tree, hide-and-seek fashion. The pig blundered on, skidded to a halt in a spray of leaf mould, and swung round. (But aren't they supposed to carry on charging? Apparently not.) Superior intelligence, Poldarn thought, and superior biped mobility: I'll just dance round and round this handy tree until the bugger gets bored and goes away. Annoyingly, though, he discovered that when he'd run into the tree he'd bashed his kneecap, and it didn't seem to be working properly. So much for superior mobility; that just left intelligence. In which case (the pig lowered its head and shot itself towards him like a huge squat arrow), forget it He stumbled, tripped over backwards, and sat down, jarring his back painfully against the tree trunk. Good as dead, in that case, and the pig was very close. But right next to him was a fallen branch, and just by way of going through the motions he picked it up, jammed the butt end against the tree and pointed the other end at the pig's chest.

Superior intelligence after all; because the pig charged straight, just like an arrow, and by the time its chest met the branch it had picked up an extraordinary amount of speed. The branch was the nail, the boar's body the hammer and also the wood; the first eighteen inches of the branch crumpled up like dried ferns scrunched in a first, but the next foot burst through first skin, then muscle, until it jarred against bone, broke that, went in a bit further, found more, bone, and stopped. The branch bent like a bow, but the boar kept on coming, its broad wet nose no more than two feet from Poldarn's left hand where it gripped the branch: the bastard thing was coming up the branch at him, like someone climbing a rope, and the hell with the mess it was making of its own guts in the process-And then the pig must've impaled its own heart, because it stopped and squealed in utter frustration at the injustice of the world, and the light in its vicious little eyes went out, and time stopped.

Not dead yet, Poldarn thought; I'm still alive, that's so totally fucking wonderful-Also, he was forced to admit, bitterly unfair on the pig, who had every right to be pissed as hell, because it'd been a wild and unforgivable fluke, sheer luck. He breathed out what he'd been absolutely sure at the time was his last-ever breath, and savoured the taste of its replacement, the sweetest thing he'd had in his mouth at any time.

'Shit,' said a voice from the sky; not from the sky, from the tree above his head. A tree-god, swearing at him. He looked up. 'Shit,' the voice repeated, and he could identify astonishment, admiration and extreme annoyance, all balled up into one repeated word. Then something scrambled down the tree-trunk and landed flump! next to him.

'Bastard,' it said.

Poldarn took a moment to notice that the ground he was sitting on was swamped in pig's blood. Then he looked up. Staring down at him was a round face, a long way off the ground; bright grey eyes, a little snub nose, grey hair and a huge shaggy grey moustache.

'What?' Poldarn said. In his right hand the man was holding a spear, blade as broad as the head of a shovel. But I haven't got a sword right now, and besides, I can't be bothered any more 'Bloody amazing,' the man said. 'Never seen the like in all my born days.' He seemed to remember something, and his huge eyes narrowed into a scowl. 'Who the hell are you, anyhow? Have you got any idea how long I've been after that fucking pig?'

Poldarn looked at him. 'No,' he said.

'All my bloody life,' the man yelled suddenly. 'That's how long, ever since I was a kid. Thirty years it took me, to find a trophy boar good as this one. And you just jump up out of nowhere and down the fucking thing with a bit of old stick-' Quite suddenly, the man seemed to notice the burn scars that covered Poldarn's face. He opened his eyes wide, took a step back, then (with a visible effort; even so, Poldarn was impressed) dismissed them as irrelevant.

Poldarn couldn't help grinning, because it was so delightfully funny. 'You're a hunter,' he said, as if he was accusing the grey-haired man of being a unicorn.

'Well, of course I am,' the man said. 'You think I sit up trees in the middle of the woods in rainy season to cure my piles? What did you think I was, a flower fairy?'

Poldarn burst out laughing. 'So it was you,' he said. 'You shot that arrow.'

'Me? No, definitely not.' Now the hunter was offended, on top of everything else. 'You take me for some kind of bloody hooligan? Besides, I haven't got a bow. I was sitting up waiting-and then you come along, from the southeast…' He made it sound like some particularly pernicious heresy. 'What're you grinning at, anyhow?' he added angrily.

'Sorry,' Poldarn said. 'It's just that I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.'

The man scowled horribly at him, then began to laugh too. 'I do apologise,' he said, sticking out a hand-it took Poldarn a second or so to realise that the hunter was offering to help him up off the ground. He noticed that the man was left-handed. 'It's just, I was all keyed up waiting for the pig, and then you happened. Weirder than a barrelful of ferrets,' he added. 'Never seen anything like it. That was amazing, felling a pig that size practically with your bare hands.'

'Sorry,' Poldarn said. 'I didn't realise it was a private pig.'

The man laughed at that. 'Not your fault,' he said. 'Bugger was going to kill you, you did bloody well. Pig that size, it'd have ripped you open like a letter. No, what fazed me was, I was expecting it to come from the north-west, I was actually facing the other way; first I knew about it was you hitting the tree-and by the time I'd wriggled my bum round on the branch, I was thinking, what the hell was that, a deer maybe, and there you were, and the pig was running up your bit of stick like a fucking squirrel. Talk about nerves of steel, you must piss ice.'

Poldarn wasn't quite sure he followed that, but he reckoned he'd got the general idea. 'Well,' he said, 'I didn't do it on purpose. The fact is, I'm completely lost; and then the arrow-'

'Gare Brasson,' the man growled; Poldarn guessed it was a name rather than abstruse swearing. 'Careless bloody idiot, I'll kick his spine out his ear for that, shooting where he can't see. He might've shot you,' he added, red-faced with rage. 'I'm most terribly sorry about that,' he went on, 'only really, you shouldn't be here. You see, it's not actually very clever, wandering about in the middle of a boar hunt. Well,' he added, with a grin, 'I guess you've figured that out for yourself.'

'Yes,' Poldarn said. 'But I didn't know that that was what I was doing. Like I said, I'm lost.'

The hunter thought for a moment. 'Well,' he said, smiling brilliantly, 'no harm done. And it looks like we're done here for today, so we might as well pack it in and go home. Where was it you said you wanted to go to? My name's Ciana Jetat, by the way.'

'Pleased to meet you,' Poldarn replied. He realised he was shivering, and the knees and seat of his trousers were soaked in blood. 'Would it be all right if-?'

'Wash and a change of clothes? Of course,' Ciana Jetat replied. 'And if you're not in too much of a rush, perhaps you'd care to stay for dinner. We're only a mile or so over the way. Done your ankle?'

'Knee, actually.' Poldarn realised he was leaning against the tree, one foot off the ground. 'I think so,' he said. 'It's not serious, I don't think, but-'

'Amil will be here with the horses directly,' Ciana Jetat said. 'If you don't mind riding on the game cart.' Poldarn assured him that that would be fine. 'Splendid, then,' Ciana said. 'Didn't catch your name, sorry.'

'Poldarn,' Poldarn said.

'Really?' Ciana laughed. 'There's a coincidence.' Then he turned his head away, listened for a moment, stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled so loud that it hurt. 'Amil and the cart,' he explained. 'Can you put your weight on your knee as far as the track?'

'What track?' Poldarn replied. Ciana took that for a joke, and laughed. The track, as it turned out, was no more than forty yards away, and wide enough for two carts to pass each other without scraping wheels. He'd probably been walking parallel to it for hours, and had never realised that it was there.

'We're just camping out in the lodge,' Ciana said apologetically, 'roughing it. We're only stopping there the one night, so there didn't seem to be any point tarting the place up or dragging the household staff out here in the middle of nowhere. Still, if you don't mind basic camp-fire hospitality-'

Poldarn smiled; he knew what that meant, of course. When a rich sportsman talks about roughing it, he means honey-roast peacock in creamed artichoke sauce served on the ancestral silver in the Great Hall, by the light of a thousand scented candles. 'Don't worry about it,' he said. 'Really, it's very kind of you to share with me, especially after I mucked up your hunt.'

'Oh, well.' Ciana shrugged, like a man slipping off a very heavy fur cloak, then picked up his hunting bag, which he'd put down for a moment, and slung it over his right shoulder, using his left hand. Poldarn noticed that he hardly used his right hand for anything; the fingers were bent inwards, like a crow's foot, presumably because of some accident. 'It's not every day you come across a three-hundred-pounder with nine-ounce ivories and all his rights, but what the hell. After all,' he added, rather gloomily, 'it's only sport. Talking of which, I suppose, properly speaking, the tusks belong to you. I'll have Cano cut them out for you.'

'No, really,' Poldarn said quickly. 'You keep them. I think I saw quite enough of them when I was back under that tree.'

'You sure?' Ciana brightened up almost instantaneously. 'Well, that's very generous of you, very kind indeed.' He thought for a moment. 'You're absolutely sure? I mean-'

'Really,' Poldarn said.

Ciana's lodge proved to be a lopsided pole-and-brush lean-to tucked under the lee of a small hill. The fire smoked, the food had been better at the colliers' camp, and the beer was only marginally less disgusting. Ciana and his people (there were about thirty of them, packed into a hut that would just about have housed a dozen dwarves) seemed to think it was all a great treat and tremendous fun.

'I mean,' Ciana explained, as another jug of revolting beer appeared out of nowhere, 'this is what it's all about-I mean, life. Real life. Bugger being cooped up in a poxy little counting house or joggling up and down in a cart till your pee froths or chucking your guts up over the rail of some horrible little ship. The hunt, the campfire, eating what you kill, a few good friends under the open sky. That's what it's supposed to be like, you know? That's what we were put on this earth to do.'

'Absolutely,' Poldarn replied, managing to give the impression that his beer-horn was still mostly full, and therefore not in need of a top-up. 'I feel sorry for those other poor devils,' he added cautiously.

'Damn straight.' Ciana carefully wiped ash off his chunk of burnt ham, and tore half of it off with his teeth, like a dog. 'There's times when I'm stuck in bloody Torcea, at some bloody stupid Guild meeting or whatever, I think I'll go crazy if I don't get out, breathe some fresh air, feel some space around me.' He sighed. 'Got to head back there tomorrow, worse bloody luck. Got fifty thousand jars of salt fish and nineteen thousand gallons of walnut oil due in from Thurm the first of the month, wouldn't do at all if I'm not there to check the bills personally. Not saying the clerks couldn't handle it, actually they're a great bunch of lads, but really, you can't delegate stuff like that, the really important things, you wouldn't last a week. Still, we've had a good break, bloody good time all round, apart from not getting the big pig, of course. But otherwise-' He fell silent and stared into the fire, as if there might be prize boar lying hidden among the clinker.

Poldarn didn't look at him. 'You're heading for Torcea, then,' he said.

'Miserable bloody place,' Ciana said. 'But yes, that's right.'

'Do you think you could give me a lift there?'

If Ciana hesitated for a moment, it was probably only the thought of being responsible for a fellow human being ending up in the unspeakably horrible city. 'Sure,' he said. 'What'd you want to go there for?'

'Oh, just a spot of business,' Poldarn answered, as lightly as he could. 'Thing is,' he went on, 'I'm in rather a hurry; but getting lost in the forest has set me back a day, and I'm pretty sure that by the time I get to the coast, I'll have missed the boat I was supposed to be on.' His hand was in his pocket; he fingered Mino Silsny's valuable ring. 'I'll gladly pay you, of course, whatever it costs-'

Ciana waved the offer away as if it was a moth he was trying to swat. 'Wouldn't hear of it,' he replied, 'don't be daft. We've got our own ship sat there waiting for us at Far Beacon, loads of spare room, no bother at all. Glad of the company,' he added, as someone behind him jostled his arm, making him spill beer all over his own feet.

'Thank you,' Poldarn said, hoping that it was a big boat.