Pattern

Chapter Twenty-Six

The spurt of blood splashed him before he could duck out of the way. It was humiliating, like being laughed at by the rest of the class for getting the exercise wrong. He felt a fool as he wiped the warm, thick stuff out of his eyes.

Now then, he thought, looking down at the dead body (lying on its face half in and half out of the water, which was brown with disturbed silt and red with blood; here we are again, back at the beginning): what did I go and do that for? It was a good thing that the face was mostly submerged, because he'd known Carey, though only for a short while, and now he was gone, his life had broken out of its pen and escaped, and there was no chance of catching up with it and bringing it back. There were things he'd have liked to have asked him, and he couldn't now.

Then he remembered; of course, Eyvind and the stolen horse and the stolen house, the broken settlement, the act of war that he was obliged to take notice of. He hadn't really had any choice in the matter, once he'd been told about it and the sharp facts had embedded themselves in his memory, in over the barbs and up to the socket. You can't ignore stuff like that when you're the head of a house, or what would the world come to?

Pity, though; he'd neither liked nor disliked the man, but now Carey was firmly planted in his memory, a fixture in his mind for ever, or until his own life flew the coop. He wondered which bloody fool it was who'd put such a vulnerable thing as the jugular vein in such an exposed position on the neck, where any vicious bastard with a sharp edge could just reach out and snip through it, easy as picking apples. If it was the work of some god, he wasn't impressed. To him it suggested carelessness or outright malice, and either of those was good grounds for contempt.

Well; it wasn't very smart to stand out here in the open, at midday, a known enemy of the house, with a dead man at his feet and blood all over his face. If he'd done that back at Deymeson, they'd have made him stand in the corner for the rest of the lesson.

First, it'd be a good idea to get rid of the blood. He dropped to his knees and plunged his hands in the water, tearing apart his own reflection (which was fine by him, it wasn't something he wanted to see at that precise moment). It didn't take him long to scrub the blood out of his eye sockets with his balled fists, and that would have to do to be going on with. A quick scout round in case anybody was watching, then a brisk but relaxed walk across the open ground between the pool and the trap-house; brief pause for another look round, then across the yard to the rat-house and the sanctuary of his nest of leaning poles.

Time to think sensibly about the next step. If he was going to do this thing properly, he ought really to go over to the stable and retrieve his stolen horse. That would be the right thing to do, and if he didn't, killing poor old Carey would begin to seem less like a tactical necessity and more like cold-blooded irrational murder. By the same token, stealing the horse was the most effective way he could think of to sign his name to the killing; and then there'd be retribution, and the cycle would gather speed, the pattern repeating, until one side or the other was wiped out. If he were to sneak quietly away without being seen, that might not happen; sure, Eyvind would suspect him and his house, he couldn't help but do so, but he'd have no proof and so wouldn't be obliged, or able, to take the matter further. That was all very well; but he'd come here to deliver a message. He'd done that, but did a message really count as having been delivered if you whispered it in the other man's ear while he was asleep?

Furthermore, he thought, if I show up at Poldarn's Forge with the missing horse, and a day or so later Eyvind's men arrive, my people will know for sure that it was me who killed Carey-and I'm not entirely sure I want them to. They're the ones who stand to suffer most if this turns into a regular killing feud, simply because there's so many more of Eyvind's lot than there are of us.

At times like this, duty to those one leads and to those who are under one's protection must be the overriding consideration. Otherwise, what would become of us all?

He frowned; and then he knew what to do. It came into his mind by intuition, or he remembered having been at this point before; it was like suddenly remembering how to do the forge-weld, or how to use a scythe properly.

But that was some way in the future. Right now, there wasn't really all that much he could usefully do here-and besides, it was his unshirkable duty to keep from getting caught and killed, because who else was there who could run things at the Forge? Better that he should go home, keep his face shut and quietly figure out a defence strategy that'd give his side even a remote chance of surviving if Eyvind saw past his anonymous act and took the next step. After that, of course, he knew exactly what had to be done, so there was no need for detailed planning.

Forget the horse, then, and concentrate on getting out of there in one unobserved piece. That was a tough enough assignment to pose a worthwhile challenge for anybody.

Just strolling along with a bucket had been enough to get him in, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that it couldn't be relied on to get him out again. On the way in, he hadn't done anything wrong yet, and so the worst he could have suffered was embarrassment. If he was stopped and detained now, they'd find the body and that'd be that: worst possible outcome.

A diversion, then, so they'd all be looking the other way. That was the classic approach; unlikely that he'd be able to better it by figuring out something from scratch. Quickest, easiest and best value in terms of effect would be to set fire to one of the buildings-but he knew for a stone-cold certainty that if he tried that, he'd be a quarter of an hour trying to get a spark to catch in the tinder, and even then it'd smoke feebly for a few seconds and then go out. Even with charcoal and a big set of bellows it was still always a pleasant surprise when he managed to get a fire going in the forge. Out here, in these circumstances, with the materials available to him-forget it.

Not a fire, then. He could go over to the stables and turn out all the horses; but that'd leave him exposed, in the middle of all the confusion, and someone would be bound to see him. He could chop through the rafters of the barn roof and collapse it, but that'd take too long, and the roof would probably fall on him. He could yell 'Fire!' and hope someone believed him. He could kill someone else, to divert attention from the first killing…

None of the above. He slumped against the wall, furious at his own lack of ingenuity. It was a bad time to have his mind go blank. If only He looked up sharply. A thump, so loud that it made the ground shiver under his feet, filled the air, and instinctively he looked up towards the mountain. He knew what he was going to see: a red glow under a black cloud near the summit. He might not be much good at causing diversions, but the divine Poldarn had a flair for it.

At once the yard was full of people, running out to stare. As on every previous occasion they stood still, eyes fixed on the skyline, no words. Well, he thought, no point in hanging about; certainly no point in standing there gawping like the rest of them. As he walked quickly away from the yard, he couldn't help reflecting on that. Here was the sight everyone in the district dreaded most, and here was one man, not like the rest of them, who was looking the other way.

Once he was a safe distance from the yard, screened from it by the lie of the land, he stopped and did some gawping of his own. Compared to the previous outbursts it was fairly small-scale, a little cut instead of a gaping wound; but red-hot molten rock was gushing out of the mountainside like blood from a severed vein, spurting and dribbling down the neck of the mountain, and he'd have had to be deaf and blind as well as stupid not to get the gist of what the divine Poldarn was trying to tell him. When the god under the mountain chose to deliver a message, he didn't whisper.

Bloody hell, he thought; I've got to go home past that.

It was, of course, far too soon to hazard a guess as to where the fire-stream was headed. It looked as if it had burst out just above the place where the hot springs had once been but he didn't know the upper reaches of the mountain well enough to be able to visualise the area in detail and extrapolate the stream's likely route. He wondered if Eyvind would feel obliged to try and do something about it, so as to eclipse the memory of his predecessor in title. It would be hilarious, screamingly funny, if Eyvind led a party up there with drills and goatskins and buckets to divert the course of the stream, and inadvertently sent it tumbling down onto Poldarn's Forge, smashing and burning the house, burying the fields. Seeing Eyvind's face under those circumstances would be better than a day at the bear-baiting.

He retrieved his horse, turned his back on Ciartanstead and rode towards the mountain. By now the road was as familiar as an old coat, and he made good time. As far as he could tell at this stage (and it really was too early to judge) the fire-stream was headed down the Ciartanstead side of the mountain, but slightly further west than it had been before, when its threat had prompted him to divert it. He tried to plan out the route in his head. At the moment, the red smudge was working its way down towards a trough and ridge; once it hit that, it would have to follow the line of least resistance, which would lead it further west to a steep drop. That would make it gain pace and momentum, so that when it reached the bottom of the escarpment it could very well have enough impetus behind it to jump over the little lip just below and carry on in a straight line until it hit the long, flat decline directly underneath; and that would carry it, smooth and quick as a paved street in Boc Bohec, directly onto the roof of Haldersness.

He frowned, startled by the coincidence; then he shrugged. They'd have several days' notice, so there was no real danger to the household there. They'd evacuate to Ciartanstead in good time, taking with them a judicious selection of their goods and chattels, only those things that would be less trouble to find space for than to make again. It'd be a tight squeeze in Eyvind's new house-his people, the Ciartanstead household and the Haldersness refugees as well-but it was wonderful how many people you could fit into a confined space if you really had to. All of them, together under one roof. From one point of view that would be a definite advantage, the divine Poldarn helping him to cover an angle he'd overlooked in his original concept. From another point of view it was rather a pity, but it certainly wasn't his fault, not this time.

(Well, maybe it was. Maybe it was because he'd diverted the previous outburst that this one had broken out in exactly that spot. Or maybe it was the fault of the god under the mountain. Or both.)

In any event, if the fire-stream followed the route he'd figured out for it, it oughtn't to cause him any problems in getting home; a slight detour, over marginally rougher ground, perhaps adding an extra hour or two but no more. As far as that side of it was concerned, the divine Poldarn had been delightfully considerate. As was only right and proper, of course.

As it turned out, the detour shortened the journey home by at least three hours, though he had more than one awkward moment as he picked his way across sloping beds of deep shale. That was good. Almost certainly, Eyvind had found the body by now. If he'd found it fairly soon after Poldarn had left, and had immediately come to the conclusion that Poldarn had been responsible, there was a chance that retribution was already on its way. Once again, the divine Poldarn was on his side, since by the time the putative expeditionary force reached the mountain road, the fire-stream would be an hour or so further on its way, cutting off the route he'd taken himself and forcing them onto a longer, slower track. Even so, the extra three hours he'd shaved off the trip would come in handy, just in case.

They came out to meet him, clearly aware that something was wrong. At first he assumed it was the mountain that was bothering them-he was feeling quite blase about it himself, and as he drew close he started to figure out what he'd say to put their minds at rest. But it wasn't the mountain, as it turned out; because Elja's first words to him were, 'Where have you been?'

'Ciartanstead,' he replied casually. 'I told you, I had some business over there.'

Elja looked at him steadily, as if she already knew what she was looking for. 'There's dried blood all over your shirt collar,' she said. 'But I can't see any cut or anything, so I'm guessing it's not yours.'

'No,' he confessed. 'It's not.'

'Has it got something to do with the business you had at the old house?'

He nodded. 'Quite a bit to do with it, yes.'

'I see.' Elja didn't look surprised, or angry, or disappointed, or even pleased. 'Did it go the way you wanted?'

He nodded. 'The mountain breaking out again was an unexpected help,' he said. 'It got me out of there without any bother at all.'

'Glad it's turned out useful for something,' Elja said, looking straight at him. There had been a time when a look like that would have bothered the hell out of him, but he couldn't spare attention for it right now. Maybe later, but probably not.

'I think we'd better make ourselves scarce for a while,' he said, sliding off his horse and stumbling as his cramped legs buckled under him. He straightened up and waited for the strength to come back. 'Just a precaution,' he added. 'I think they'll have other things on their minds right now. But I may be overestimating their intelligence, so we'd better play it safe.'

Asburn said: 'You'll be wanting a lookout, then.'

'Yes,' he replied. 'That'd be a sensible idea. You volunteering?'

'I'll go up the side of the mountain, to where there's that fallen-down old hut,' Asburn said. 'If anybody can spare the time to bring me up some dinner later on, I'd appreciate it.'

'Actually,' Geir put in, 'we could all do worse than head up there, if there's a chance trouble could be on the way. We'd see them long before they could see us, we'd be able to get out of there and scatter up the mountain before they could get up to us, and at least there's the best part of a roof on there if it comes on to rain while we're waiting.'

Poldarn agreed. 'All right,' he said, 'you get together whatever we're likely to need and head on up there; take the horses, just in case. I'll join you in a short while, there's a few things I need to see to first.'

'Such as?' Elja asked him, but he didn't answer. Instead, he hurried away to the barn, where he reckoned he'd be able to find pretty much everything he'd need. The errand took longer than he'd expected-there was never a ball of strong thatcher's twine around when you really needed one-but eventually he had everything neatly piled, bagged and stashed where he'd be able to find it in a hurry. Then he trudged up to the ruined hut; slowly, because by now he was very tired. He hadn't really been able to sleep the previous night, perched on a ledge on the side of the burning mountain, and what little sleep he'd managed to get had been spoilt by a bad dream.

When Poldarn rejoined the others, he was immediately aware that they knew what he had in mind. That was disconcerting, to say the least, and he wondered what it signified; but it cut out the need for long, difficult explanations and justifications, neither of which he was really in the mood for.

'You found everything you wanted?' Asburn asked. His voice was low and strained-part of it was fear, part of it something uncommonly like embarrassment, as if he felt awkward talking to someone who was in disgrace with the rest of the group.

'Ready and packed,' Poldarn replied. 'Now it's just a matter of waiting for the mountain to do its part.'

'And how long do you figure that'll be?' someone asked; he couldn't be sure who it was, in the growing dark. One of the offcomers.

'Difficult to say,' he answered. Though in his own mind he was quite sure: the fire-stream would reach Haldersness on the morning of the fourth day from tomorrow, but the evacuation would be fully complete by nightfall on the third day. Since the schedule was in his mind and so, presumably, visible to them all, he didn't bother to say anything else out loud, and nobody asked.

'You think that's the best way to go.' Elja wasn't asking him to reconsider or anything; it was a statement, not a question. He confirmed it with a slight nod of his head. 'All right,' she said. 'I think we should be able to go back to the house in the morning, so long as we leave someone up here to keep an eye out, just in case Eyvind does come. But I don't believe he will.'

'I agree,' Poldarn said. 'Still, the very worst famous last words a man can utter are I was sure he wasn't going to do that.'

In the morning they went down to the house, feeling stiff, bad-tempered and rather foolish for having spent the night on a damp earth floor when they hadn't had to. Nobody seemed to have any work to do; they sat around on the porch or pottered about, not talking, not even looking at each other. Sullen was the best word to describe it; they were like children ordered to go on a treat they didn't fancy. Poldarn spent most of the day watching the mountain. He couldn't see the progress of the fire-stream, of course; he tried to deduce what he could from the direction of the smoke and ash, but mostly he knew he was fooling himself. It was frustrating to have to rely on an ally he couldn't watch, or talk to, one he'd never even met, whose existence he didn't really believe in, but whose contribution was vital and on whose timing everything depended.

He tried to prise his way into Eyvind's mind, but that turned out to be impossible; so instead Poldarn had to rely on his imagination. He tried to think the way his old friend would be thinking, the way he'd always been able to do when killing crows. Uppermost in Eyvind's concerns would be the pressure of responsibility, the priorities forced on him by events, the need to think clearly and pay attention to detail. That would be hard, with his entire world cracking up and burning all around him-Carey murdered, and he'd be sure he knew who'd done it, but what standard of proof would he need to show before he could take the decision to act on it? And the mountain, choosing this moment to flare up and reach out towards Haldersness; what the hell was he supposed to make of that, for pity's sake? Then he'd be constantly itching in his mind about what he'd already done, the extent to which he'd been right and wrong, how much of it was someone else's fault and how much was his own. There would be a voice in the back of his mind urging him to change tack, to find some way to deflect the course of events from the terrible conclusion that was being forced on him. Wouldn't it be possible, that voice would be urging him, to chip a hole in the side of that unbearable chain of consequences, tap it and draw off the heat and the violence, sending it rushing away in some other direction where it couldn't do any harm? Failing that, couldn't he just get out of the way, leave, go somewhere else where the stream of consequences couldn't follow him? But he'd know that was out of the question; because every stream diverted flows into someone else's valley, and such a horrible force of heat and destruction can never soak harmlessly away, all he'd be doing would be changing the place where the end would come, possibly disrupting the schedule a little, almost certainly making things worse for himself, reducing his chances of being the one left alive when it was all over.

Poldarn thought about that. There had been a time when he'd pulled himself out of the mud and had realised his memories had all been washed out, like bloodstains from a shirt; a time when he'd had infinite choices, with no inevitable course he was bound to follow, no channels and slopes and lips and troughs forcing him to flow in any certain direction. He'd felt alone then, terrified, one defenceless little man in a vast open space, where everybody had to be presumed hostile until proven otherwise. Then his course had been aimless, he'd been sure of that. He'd chosen his turnings on a whim, allowing the most trivial factors to sway his decisions. But, as he'd flowed on and gathered speed down the side of his mountain (moving down and out from the peak of Polden's Forge, the sharp apex at the beginning from which he could see everything and recognise nothing), so as he went he'd gathered up dust and stones and ash that stuck to him and formed a skin, an armoured crust that constricted him more and more as his descent gathered pace, forcing him to follow the contours and the features of the terrain, directing him… here, to the point where he was rushing down on the roof of his own house, the house he'd built for himself from the timber that had been ordained for that purpose since the day of his father's birth. That conceit pleased him-the trees growing up to meet the fire-stream coming down, the perfectly timed confluence of fire and fuel, destroyer and victim, Poldarn and Ciartan; the threads drawn together to complete the obscure and complex but ultimately satisfying pattern.

Well now, he thought, how about that for a neatly planned conclusion?

He stayed watching the mountain until it was quite dark. The evening was unusually warm, and somehow he didn't want to go into the house (any house, at this particular time) so he sat in a chair on the porch and closed his eyes. The chair was newly made and really rather fine-Raffen's work, the man had a definite flair for making furniture-and he thought how pleasant life could have been here, if only he'd arrived in this place by a more auspicious route.

The chair was so comfortable that he slipped away into a dream, where he was sitting in a chair on a porch, watching a glowing red sunset over a mountain. But in the dream he was wide awake, because he was waiting, nervously, for a very important appointment. Beside him was a door, a rather magnificent thing made of bronze, with eight panels and slightly over-ornate hinges. Just as the sun set-such timing-the door opened and a grave-looking man in an ecclesiastical robe beckoned to him to come in.

The room he found himself in was big and rather dim; there were scores of candles, but all down at the other end. There wasn't any furniture apart from the table the candles stood on, but there was a mat-a wholly inadequate word to describe such a glorious piece of work. It was dark red, patterned with black and gold lines intertwined in a way that made him dizzy, so that he looked up, and saw the ceiling. That was even more spectacular. It was covered in a fresco, executed in a style he recognised as very old indeed, and it seemed to be telling a story, though he hadn't a clue what it was about. In one corner, a man and a woman were riding in a cart across a field covered with dead crows, while in the background a volcano was erupting, spewing red lava out of one side of the summit. In another corner, the same man who appeared in the cart was getting married, apparently to four women at the same time. Opposite to that, the same man was engaged in the sack of a city, amid scenes of graphic and very artistic carnage. In the fourth corner, he was standing in the bed of a river, surrounded by dead bodies. There was no indication as to the order of events, and the four panels converged on each other in such a way that they formed a continuous circle. In the centre, two sword-monks faced each other in a crowded room, transfixed in the moment of the draw; somehow the painter had contrived to give the impression that the events surrounding that central scene were all taking place in that same frozen moment. Although he reckoned he knew pretty much everything there was to know about the draw by now, he couldn't make out from the position of the figures which one was going to win; in fact, it looked almost certain to be a dead heat.

Someone walked between him and the bank of candles. Actually, there were two men: one of them a young man, the same age as himself, the other older by some twenty years or so. They both wore the standard robes of the order, perfectly plain and ideally suited for the exercise of religion, and both had swords in their sashes, just like his own.

'Has it stopped raining?' the older man asked.

'Quite some time ago,' he replied. 'In fact, it's a lovely evening.'

The older man nodded. 'It's about time we had some better weather. Now, Monach, Poldarn, when you're both ready.' He stepped back a pace or two and stood with his arms folded, while the younger man loosened his sash and tied it again, twisting two turns of cloth around the scabbard of his sword before tightening the knot.

'Can we begin?' he asked.

'Whenever you like,' the older man replied.

The young man took a deep breath and knelt down on the floor, slowly drawing his sword and laying it on the mat in front of him. He did the same; then, at the same moment, they bowed to each other, sat up on their heels and sheathed their swords. The older man clapped his hands once, and they both stood up. 'Poldarn,' the older man said; and the younger man bowed again. 'Monach.' He returned the bow. It was all very polite and graceful, but it wasn't making him feel any less nervous. Quite the reverse, in fact.

'You may begin,' said the older man; but neither of them moved. The younger man, Poldarn, took two deep breaths, drawing the air slowly down into the pit of his stomach, holding it there and slowly letting it out again. Suddenly he realised, as if remembering something obvious but temporarily forgotten, that when Poldarn had finished taking in his third breath, he'd draw; that would be the moment. He also knew that it was far too late to prepare himself to meet that draw, that inevitably he'd lose. He took two steps back and held up his hand.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

Poldarn relaxed, slumping forward slightly as the tension drained from him. 'That's perfectly all right,' the older man said. 'Take a moment and start again.'

This time, he knew exactly what he had to do. Instead of watching Poldarn he ignored him completely, concentrating instead on his own breathing, making sure he knew where his own hands and feet and head were, building his circle so that he'd be able to tell when something broke into it even if his eyes were shut. He drew in his third breath until his lungs and stomach were full; only then did he look for his opponent-found and marked him, though really it wasn't necessary, his hand would know where his enemy's neck would be. As soon as there was no more room left for air inside him, he felt his right hand relax In the event, he did the draw perfectly, flawlessly, to perfection, in accordance with all the precepts and observances of religion. The back of his hand found the hilt and flipped over so that the fingers could close around the sharkskin-wrapped handle. His left thumb flicked the swordguard forward to free it from the jaws of the scabbard and the draw launched: the sword slipped effortlessly free and began its precisely directed journey, sweeping forward like a lava flow, unstoppable and deadly. It was a perfect draw.

But apparently Poldarn's was better. As he fell backwards, in the last moment of consciousness, he wondered how on earth anybody could draw so fast; and he realised that the difference between them was one of time, because somehow his draw had been in the present, whereas Poldarn's had already happened, Poldarn had already drawn and struck and beaten him before they'd even faced each other on the mat.

Then he opened his eyes. Poldarn was kneeling over him, looking worried. The older man was standing behind Poldarn's shoulder, with a faintly disappointed look on his face.

'Never mind,' the older man said. 'My mistake. I believed you were ready, and you aren't. It's just as well we had this practice, before we tried it with sharps.'

'I'm sorry,' he heard himself say. 'It was the wrong time. I hadn't realised.'

'That's all right,' the older man said. 'It's all part of learning, after all. Help him up, Poldarn, and get him a drink of water.'

Poldarn pulled him to his feet and steadied him with an arm around his shoulders. 'I hope I didn't hurt you,' he said.

'No, I'm fine,' he lied. 'My own silly fault-seems like I've been missing the point all along.'

'Quite,' the older man said. 'In fact, it's quite remarkable that you were able to fool me into thinking you were ready. If you can draw that fast with just your hand and arm, you ought to do well once you've learned the proper way.'

That sounded like a compliment, but he was feeling too groggy to parse it thoroughly. 'It's because-' he started to say, but he couldn't find the words.

The older man nodded approvingly. 'It's because once Poldarn set his hand to his hilt, the draw was already done and over,' he said, 'whereas in your case it was just beginning. You still exist in the moment.' And he pointed up at the ceiling, to the two painted swordsmen frozen in the instant of the draw. 'You have everything, all the technical accomplishments, but you have no religion. It's very perplexing,' he added, 'because usually, at your stage of training, it's the other way round: still not perfect technically, but perfect in religion, which is all that matters in practice. You're still nothing but a human being with superb reflexes. Poldarn, on the other hand, is a relatively slow and cack-handed god. Now,' he went on, 'if I were you I'd go and sit down outside for a while, since it's such a pleasant evening, and take a moment to catch your breath and pull yourself together.'

That seemed like an excellent suggestion, so he followed it; and after a while he began to feel drowsy and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he knew at once that he was actually asleep and dreaming, because the first thing he saw was a huge black crow.

It was sitting on a fire-blackened timber that stuck out from a pile of rubble and ashes, and as soon as it saw him it spread its wings with a resentful squawk and lifted laboriously into the air. He felt an urge to grab a stone and kill the horrible creature, but he couldn't be bothered; instead, he watched it flap away until it was out of sight. Crows, at that precise moment, were the very least of his worries.

'Well,' someone standing next to him said, 'that's that, then. A pity it had to end this way, but it wasn't your fault. Wasn't anybody's fault, really.'

Far away in the distance, the mountain was leaking glowing red blood. 'How can you say that?' he replied, finding enough passion to be angry, much to his surprise. 'It was their fault for starting it. It was my fault for finishing it. Of course,' he added bitterly, 'you can't be expected to understand, since you're just an offcomer.'

'Fair point,' the other man said-he hadn't turned to look at him yet, couldn't be bothered to do so now. 'But it was all just trivial stuff, a quarrel about a cart. Odd how it always seems to begin with a cart-there's some sort of pattern there. I think I'll go and see if there's anything worth having in the barn.'

Some of the embers were still smoking, but mostly there was just black ash. He ground some of it under his foot and listened to the crunch. It had been a fine house, but now it was just so much charcoal. That thought made him grin in spite of himself; maybe he should come back here with a cart and some sacks and bag it up, then there'd always be plenty of charcoal to get the forge lit. He considered that for a moment, but dismissed it as profoundly lacking in taste and respect for the dead.

There was nothing more to do here, so he turned his back and walked away. Nearby, next to the trap-house wall, he saw a nice sturdy log and sat down on it, his back to the wall. Once he'd taken the weight off his feet, he suddenly became very much aware that he hadn't slept for several days. This was hardly the time or the place for a nap; but resting his eyes for a moment or so couldn't do any harm.

As soon as his eyelids closed, he knew he was somewhere else, in a dream; he was sure of that, because he was sitting at a table, in the middle of which stood a wonderfully lifelike ebony statue of a crow with a ring in its beak. It was extraordinarily realistic; in fact, it looked more like a crow than any crow he'd ever seen, especially the live ones. The urge to throw a doughnut at it was almost impossible to resist.

But that would have been a waste of an exceptionally fine doughnut-there was a plate piled high with the things right next to his hand, and beside that another plate of honey-cakes, and a silver basket of cinnamon biscuits. In the distance-it was a very long table-he could just make out a parcel-gilt fruit bowl overflowing with oranges, apricots and peaches. Closer to hand was a huge chunky wine goblet, silver with gold inlays-vulgar, but impressive nevertheless. This was clearly a better class of dream altogether.

'And just then,' someone was saying, 'the stable door opened and in walked the sergeant; and he looked at the young officer, and he said, "Actually, what we do is, we use the mule to ride down the mountain to the village."'

Everyone-everyone but him, of course-burst out laughing, and someone suggested that that called for a drink. A pair of hands appeared over his shoulder; they were holding a gigantic silver wine-jug, which gurgled a stream of red wine into his cup. Then someone out of sight at the far end of the table called for a toast, and everyone started to get up. Naturally, he followed suit.

'His majesty,' said the distant voice, and everyone repeated, 'His majesty,' and had a drink. Then they sat down again. As he settled back in his chair he noticed that everyone was staring at him, though they stopped doing so almost immediately and started talking to the person next door. It was only then that he realised that he was sitting at the head of the table, and the toast had apparently been aimed at him; hence their surprise when he joined in. Bad form, to drink your own health.

They were all substantial-looking types, wearing some pretty fancy clothes-lots of velvets and heavy silks, the men as well as the women-but they didn't look like the sort of people you'd expect to see gathered around a royal dining table. In fact, they looked more like bandits or pirates or the men who hold horses for money outside theatres and brothels. Or soldiers, of course. But their appearance didn't seem to be bothering him unduly, which suggested that he'd had a drop or so to drink already (and a vicious twinge of heartburn went a long way towards corroborating that theory).

'Now then,' someone said, 'we've all had a nice dinner and a nice drink. How about the entertainment?'

That was a popular suggestion; all the villainous-looking men were shouting and banging their cups on the table; the women were trying to be a little bit more refined, so they just clapped and cheered. If anything, they looked marginally rougher than the menfolk.

'Well?' someone said, looking at him. 'How about it?'

Well indeed, he thought, why not? Naturally he had no idea what the entertainment would turn out to be, though if he had to hazard a guess he assumed it'd be either fire-swallowers or young ladies with very few clothes on. But he had no deep-rooted objections to either category; and since the decision seemed to rest with him, he nodded. That made everyone very happy indeed, and a lot of perfectly good wine ended up soaking away into the tablecloth.

After a few bumps and thuds off stage, eight men in overstated livery brought in two large wooden frames (like window frames without glass or parchment). Inside each frame a human being was stretched like a curing hide, hands and feet pulled tight into the corners. One of them was a woman, and she looked familiar; he thought for a moment, and the name Copis came into his mind, though he couldn't fit a context to the name. The other was a man, and he was familiar too-in fact, he'd seen him a few moments before, in his first dream: he was one of the two monks (Monach, he remembered, and Poldarn) but offhand he couldn't recall which one. Both of them were naked and dirty and thin, with rather disgusting ulcers and sores on their ribs and shins. Their heads had been recently shaved, which was a blessing-there were few things more likely to put a man off his food than the sight of matted, greasy hair-and their eyes and mouths were red and swollen. If this is what passes for entertainment in aristocratic circles, he decided, I don't think much of it.

The men in livery lugged the frames up onto a raised dais on the right-hand side of the room-they tripped, dropping the woman, which caused a great deal of mirth around the table-and someone passed ropes over hooks in the ceiling beam. From these they hung the frames, securing them at the bottom with more ropes passed through rings set in the floor. The presence of these rather specialised fixtures suggested to him that this performance, whatever it might turn out to be, was a regular event. Personally, he'd have preferred a string quartet or the ladies with very few clothes, but obviously the customs of the royal court overrode his personal tastes.

Once they'd finished fastening the ropes, the servants got out of the way in a great hurry; which turned out to be a sensible move on their part, because the company around the table were busily arming themselves with missiles of every sort, from soft fruit to the chunkily vulgar wine goblets. The barrage they let fly was more vigorous than accurate. Most of their projectiles banged and splatted against the wall rather than against the poor devils in the frames; but such was the volume of missiles that inevitably a proportion found their mark. He saw the man's head knocked sideways by a goblet, splattering the wall behind with wine or blood or both. Two of the men in the middle of the table were having a contest, to see who could be the first to land a napkin ring on one of the woman's breasts. Other diners were throwing spoons and knives. He wasn't sure whether he ought to join in; he didn't really want to, so he kept his hands folded in his lap and just watched instead.

It wasn't long before the table was stripped bare. The ebony crow had been the last missile to fly; it had been claimed by a tall thin man with a very long beard, who took a long time over his aim and managed to catch the woman square in the ribs with considerable force. The thin man got a good round of applause for that, and it was hard, in all conscience, to begrudge it to him.

Well, he thought, that was rather childish, but I guess it does them good to let off steam after dinner; and presumably these two are wicked, antisocial types who've done something to deserve it. It was impossible to tell just by looking at them what their particular malfeasances might have been. Anybody who's been locked up in prison and starved for a month or so will inevitably come out looking guiltily wretched, whether they were locked up for infanticide or stealing clothes from the public baths. He wasn't sure he approved of the proceedings, at that; but he was a stranger here and didn't know the score, so who was he to pass judgement?

After the last missile had been thrown there was a general round of cheering, mixed with shouts for more wine (and more cups). When these basic needs had been provided for by the impressively efficient table-servants, one of the men down at the far end of the table called out, 'Get on with it!' Everybody laughed and cheered, and two men appeared from the direction they'd brought the frames in from. They were clearly very serious men indeed; they were dressed in military uniforms, with gleaming black boots and white pipeclay belts, immaculate red tunics and breastplates whose metallic gleam hurt the eyes, especially after a drink or two. One of them was carrying a long stick like a broom handle, and the other a long knife with a curved thin blade.

The man with the knife stopped, right-wheeled, saluted him and said, 'By your leave, sir.' That caught him offguard, but he heard himself say, 'Carry on, sergeant,' so that was all right.

The sergeant turned to the man stretched in the frame and wiped a section of his midriff clean of fruit pulp and wine dregs. Then he pinched a fold of skin near the solar plexus and carefully inserted the point of the knife, working it in with the skill and concentration of a high-class surgeon. Once he'd made his incision he pushed the knife in an inch or so-he was taking care not to puncture any of the internal organs-and drew it down in a straight line, slitting the skin like a hunter paunching a hare. He tucked the knife into his belt without looking down, then pushed his two forefingers into the incision and gently drew the skin apart to reveal the intestines. His skill and delicacy of touch earned him a round of applause from the diners that actually drowned out the noises the man was making; it was hard to see how the sergeant could keep his mind on his work with such a terrible racket going on, but apparently he was used to it, because he didn't seem to be taking any notice. Retrieving his knife from his belt he hooked a strand of the man's stretched gut round his finger and sliced through it. Then he nodded his head and the other soldier handed him the stick, around which he started to wind the severed gut.

I'm not sure I care for this, he thought, though nobody else seems to mind; in fact, they're lapping it up, and this substantial gathering of important people can't all be wrong. But he wished, he felt an urgent need to remember, which of the two this one was, Monach or Poldarn; he wasn't sure why, but he had an idea it was extremely important, if not now then at some point in the future. But, for some reason, he couldn't see clearly what was going on. It was as though he was being carried further and further away, or his sight was fading, or perhaps this was what happened to your senses when you died; he was a long way from the scene by now, so that the noise was an indistinct blur, screaming and cheering scrambled together, and the people were just shapes melting into a mass of colour, and then nothing.