Pattern

Chapter Twenty-Seven

He sat up and opened his eyes. The sudden movement disturbed a pair of crows that had settled on the porch rail while he'd been dozing; they spread their wings and lifted up, cawing furiously while they found their balance in the air. Poldarn's hand reached out for a stone or a cup or something to throw, but he was out of luck. They took their time leaving, as if they knew they were safe. They sailed away towards the mountain, the tips of their long wings flicking gracefully down at the end of each stroke.

It's time, he thought. Sitting around here won't do anybody any good. It's time we were on our way.

The red glow over the mountain was dawn, and something else as well. He went into the house and woke up Raffen and Asburn with the toe of his boot.

'We're leaving,' he said.

Raffen turned over and scowled at him. 'Already?' he grumbled.

Poldarn nodded. 'The fire-stream's gained a lot of speed going down the lower slope; it'll reach Haldersness by noon tomorrow. We're going to have to take a pretty wide detour because of it, and we can't take the horses, let alone the trap, so we need to allow an extra half-day to get there; the sooner we start, the better.'

He left them to get ready and went across the yard to the barn. Everything they needed was there, ready where he'd left it; not very much of anything, since they'd have to carry it a long way over difficult ground. He checked it all over one last time, and as an afterthought he added Boarci's axe to his pile. If everything went right he wouldn't be needing a weapon-there was no reason why it should come to that-but there was always the risk of a bear, evicted from its territory by the latest eruptions on the mountain, or something of the sort. He hadn't cleaned the axe properly since the last time he'd used it, and it had acquired a coating of gritty, sticky red rust; but it hadn't exactly been a thing of beauty to begin with, so who gave a damn?

They got themselves up and ready as quickly as anyone could reasonably expect, but Poldarn's nervousness had made him irritable, and he wasn't very polite to any of them. By the time they moved out, nobody was talking to anybody else; the silence was grim and awkward and miserable, but they started at a good pace and kept it up all morning.

At noon they stopped for a brief rest, while Poldarn went on ahead to look at the fire-stream. Nobody had asked him how he'd known all that stuff he'd told them, about how it had picked up speed and had made a longer detour necessary. He had no idea himself-maybe he'd had a vision or the divine Poldarn had appeared to him in a dream-but when he got to the top of the ridge and looked down, he found it all exactly as he'd expected it to be. The fire-stream itself was much wider and longer than it had been, and it was moving at nearly twice its previous speed. A tributary stream had broken out from the main body as it rode over the little crest he'd noticed from Ciartanstead. It was comparatively minor and wouldn't have the legs to make it over the next crest, but crossing it was nevertheless out of the question; they'd have to skirt round it, and that meant going right down to the terraces at the foot of the mountain. They'd be able to go a little way on the flat, but then they'd come up against a rill in spate that was too fast and wide to ford. The only way round that was to go back up the mountain and get across it while it was still just a frothy white splash falling almost vertically off the rocks. That was going to be a long, tiresome climb; they'd have to rest for at least an hour afterwards; and from there to the old road it wouldn't exactly be a gentle stroll. All things considered, even with the early start they were going to have to keep up a stiff pace if they wanted to get to where they had to be before nightfall tomorrow.

'Come on,' he called out, as soon as he'd rejoined the main party, 'that's plenty long enough. We're going to have to get a move on.'

Elja, who'd taken off her shoes, gave him a scowl. 'We can't go any faster,' she said. 'I've got blisters on both heels as it is.'

'Then you should've worn your boots,' Poldarn snapped. 'The fire-stream's thrown us out more than I'd expected-we've got to go right down into the valley, then right up again. There's no time for dawdling.'

Elja didn't say anything as she pulled her shoes back on. They were just rawhide moccasins with thin wooden soles, quite unsuitable for scrambling over rocks. He should have checked she was wearing her boots before they'd left, but he'd assumed she'd have had more sense.

The next eight hours were uncomfortable and unpleasant. They were all doing their best to keep up, but little things kept going wrong: knapsack straps broke, Raffen slipped on some shale and turned his ankle over, they tried a short cut that ended up costing them an hour. When it was too dark to see, they stopped beside a little pool under a waterfall and refused to go any further. Poldarn gave in, with a very bad grace. They had something to eat-dry bread and an onion each and went to sleep without exchanging a word.

Poldarn closed his eyes but stayed wide awake. He was afraid of going to sleep, for various reasons-cramp and stiffness, dreams, things like that. The sensible thing would have been to use the time productively, to go over his plans, work out alternative courses of action to meet predictable contingencies, but he couldn't concentrate. Instead, that wretched song kept jingling through his mind, and he couldn't keep himself from straining after the words he couldn't rememberOld crow sitting on the cinder heap, Old crow sitting on the cinder heap, Old crow sitting on the cinder heapBut the last line wouldn't come, it was just out of reach in the back of his mind, where he could feel it but not get hold of it. He thought of waking someone up and asking, but even he could see that that wouldn't be a good idea in the circumstances. So he had to put up with the itch, like a pain in a tooth that had fallen out years ago. The night was dark and starless; he had no way of gauging the passage of time, so that what felt like an hour might only have been a minute. He wondered if death was anything like this, a matter of lying in the timeless dark, straining to remember things that would never come back again.

But although the last line of the verse kept eluding him, he found that as he trawled his memory, other things came up in the net. Mostly they were trivial and he had no idea what they meant-little broken glimpses of himself, random as dug-up potsherds, each bearing a tiny fragment of the pattern but never enough to make any sense. In one he was climbing out of a stream, all wet, while people on the bank were laughing at him. In another, he'd just been stung by a bee, in a field of nearly ripe oats. In another, he was sitting on the deck of a ship, looking straight up at the mast above his head. In another, he was throwing a stick for a dog. In another, he was stuck in a deep patch of muddy bog, which had just sucked the boot off his left foot. In another, he was up a ladder, picking cherries off a tree. In another, he was waking up out of a recurring bad dream, in which he'd seen a man tortured to death, and either he was the victim, or else he was the evil monster who'd given the order to the executioners He tried to catch hold of that memory, but it was too far back; the version of himself who'd had that dream was only a boy, maybe nine or ten years old. He could see himself waking up out of that dream-he was on the porch at Haldersness, curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows, and he was howling and sobbing with terror, as people came running to see what the matter was. Was it that dream again? they were asking, and he was nodding tearfully, the salt stinging his eyes (and a tear dribbled down onto his lips, and a calm part of his mind savoured the interesting taste).

When it finally deigned to show up, the dawn took him almost by surprise. It came out of the dull red glow of the volcano like a party of soldiers sneaking out from an ambush; it was only when the sun showed its rim over the red clouds that he recognised it for what it was.

It was a spectacularly beautiful dawn, an extraordinary fusion of shapes and colours, in which the familiar landscape suddenly appeared strange, different and new. He sat for a while and stared at it, trying to remember the last time he'd paid a sunrise the attention it deserved; and he found himself thinking, what if there was a day so perfect in every respect that a man could be entirely content, simply living that day over and over again? What if a man could pull up the ends of the straight line from birth to death and forge-weld them together, making his life a circle, a closed loop into which nothing bad could intrude and nothing good escape? Even if the day wasn't perfect, what would it be like to circle endlessly over life, observing rather than participating, like the crow scouts? Nothing would matter, and so there could be no pain or sorrow, nothing behind or ahead to be afraid of; there would be no death overshadowing the future, no hidden guilt casting its shadow over the past, no causes or consequences, nothing ever irrevocable, nothing that couldn't be put right next time around, nothing that needed putting right to begin with. Wouldn't it be fine to divert the fire-stream and make it turn a wheel driving a shaft powering a mill or a lathe or a pump or a trip-hammer, something capable of doing useful work, tirelessly and for ever?

Then he remembered who he was and where he was going; and as the memory came back, he considered the thing he had to do that day. Before the sun rose again, he would have taken an utterly irrevocable step, channelling the fire-stream down onto the roof of his own house. In theory, here in the dawn's apparent infinity of choice, he could simply get up and walk away, keep walking until he reached the sea; in practice he couldn't turn back because he was already there, he couldn't abandon the job in hand because it had already been done. Understanding that, he realised that he was already committed to the circle, not the straight line, but his endlessly recurring day was the opposite of perfect. This was the day where he would have to live for ever, and he was locked into it just as he was locked into every previous day of his life, and that every past day controlled every day yet to come. The hammer-weld that kept the world out kept him in, and there could be no escape. The circle was nothing more than the steel band of memory, circumscribing his life as a tyre surrounds a wheel, supporting and confining the spokes.

Then the others started waking up, and he turned his attention to details.

'On your feet,' he told them all. 'We've got a long way to go today, and we're behind as it is.'

As they marched he went over the minutiae of the plan until he'd annoyed all of them to the point of mutiny. After he'd finished doing that, none of them said a word, to him or to each other. That made for a very long day.

Fortunately, he'd figured out the necessary diversions pretty well, and had estimated accurately the time their journey would take; as he'd anticipated, they came within sight of the roof of Ciartanstead just as the light was beginning to fade. When they'd reached the patch of dead ground where he'd paused after killing Carey, he ordered a halt.

'We'll hang on here for a while,' he said.

Raffen, who'd sat down and was rubbing his neck where the straps of his rucksack had bitten into it, grunted. 'How long's a while?' he asked.

'As long as it needs to be,' Poldarn replied. 'If you like you can get some sleep, all of you. I'll wake you up when it's time.'

They didn't need to hear the suggestion twice. How they could sleep, so close to the house, was beyond him entirely. While they slept, he kept watch from the lip of the rise. As he'd hoped, there was nothing to see. The Ciartanstead household were all inside, eating dinner, resting after what must have been a tense, fraught day. By now, he knew the routines so well that he could picture them all with total clarity-pulling out the benches and tables, sitting down, waiting for the food to be brought, passing round the dishes, porridge and onions again, why can't we have a bit of meat for a change? Of course he couldn't hear their voices or read their minds, but he could make himself think he could hear the silence as they concentrated wholeheartedly on the job in hand, eating and drinking with the same diligent efficiency that these people, his people, brought to everything they did. It would be a bit cosy in there tonight, needless to say, with all the Haldersness people as well as the Ciartanstead hands; they'd be squashed up tight on the benches, no room to spread elbows, they'd all be sitting up straight, shoulder to shoulder. Now they were done eating, and tables and benches were put away and the blankets were fetched out and laid on the floor; not to worry, room for everyone provided that nobody was selfish about personal space. Nobody was going to have any trouble getting to sleep tonight, not after such a tiring and eventful day; nobody was going to want to sit up late nattering, there was serious sleeping to be done. He wondered: when they sleep (when we sleep), do they dream, or is dreaming too frivolous and unproductive for them to countenance? And if they dream, do they all share the same words and images, do they all go to the same place and relive the same moments? Do they share the dreams of the head of house, taking their lead from him in that as in everything else? Where Eyvind was concerned, he could believe they did-he was a good householder, one you could confidently take as a model of a perfect community leader, a paradigm of his people. So; what did Eyvind dream about, he wondered, and did he remember his dreams when he woke up, or did they fade with the darkness? And even if he didn't remember, how about the rest of them? Did they retain the dreams he forgot? Did they all share the same recurring nightmares?

(He hoped that the Poldarn's Forge hands didn't share his dreams, or at least not the one he'd been having lately, where he watched the executioners cut open the man who was either his best friend or himself, while either he or his best friend watched approvingly. That dream, for some reason, he had no trouble remembering, though on balance he'd have preferred it otherwise.)

By now they should all have been fast asleep; but he kept still and quiet, resolved to wait a little longer, just to be sure. Behind him as well as in front, his people were fast asleep (and whose dreams were Raffen and Rook and Asburn and Geir and Elja sharing, he wondered) and it seemed only fair to let them be peaceful for a little longer. After they were through here, they might not find it quite so easy to get to sleep, or if they did they might have bad dreams to contend with. He lay on his stomach and gazed at the red glow from the mountain and the fire-stream seeping over the horizon like a rival dawn, or like blood soaking through a bandage.

(In theory I could still abandon the whole idea; in theory, none of this has to happen-not this time round, anyway, it'll keep till the next evolution of the wheel. But the little voice that kept whispering that in the back of his mind had missed the point completely. What was about to happen was even more inevitable than tomorrow's dawn; it was the point of contact between the wheel and the ground as Poldarn's cart rolled slowly towards the next condemned city.)

Suddenly he sat up. He'd arrived; this was the right time.

Gently, he nudged Asburn's shoulder. 'Wake up,' he said, 'we're here.'

The blacksmith opened his eyes, and maybe there was a very brief moment when he wasn't aware of where he was or what he was about to do. But it was over very quickly, and Poldarn could feel the weight of memory settling on him. 'All right,' Asburn said. 'I'm ready.'

The rest of them woke up without having to be prodded. One or two of them yawned, but nobody said anything as they gathered their tools and equipment and slowly got to their feet. They didn't wish each other luck-that would have been wildly inappropriate, and unnecessary as well. Whatever other problems they might be about to face, the risk of failure wasn't one of them. After all, it wasn't as if what they were about to do was difficult.

They walked slowly down the slope to the yard. It was very dark, but Poldarn didn't need light to find his way around the farm he'd built himself. They stopped outside the barn, opposite the main door of the house. They all knew what to do; there was no need for Poldarn to give orders or instructions. Each of them took a couple of deep breaths to steady their nerves, and went to work.

As was only fitting, Poldarn and Raffen saw to the most important task, that of barring the main door. It was perfectly straightforward, simply a matter of dragging the heavy timbers that leant up against the side of the barn across the yard, butting one end into the ground and wedging the other end against the door. That would be enough to keep the people inside from crashing their way out long enough for Poldarn and Raffen to do a proper job, passing stout battens across the door and nailing them securely into the frame on either side. Once they'd jammed the door with the timbers they waited for the others to do their part-Asburn and Lax to do the same for the side door, Rook and the rest of Geir's people to board up the shutters, the rest to stand by with the long poles from the woodstack, ready to push back anybody who tried to break out through the thatch.

Once he was satisfied that everyone was in place, Poldarn reached in his bag and found the hammer and the cloth bag that held the nails he'd forged for this purpose. Raffen held the battens up while Poldarn drove the nails home. He worked quickly but carefully, knowing that the first blows of the hammer would wake up everybody inside, and it wouldn't take them long to figure out what was going on. That shouldn't matter, with the long beams holding the door shut, but Poldarn wasn't minded to take any risks. If the people inside did get out, he and his crew would be hopelessly outnumbered and the whole project would founder. From the back of the house he could hear Asburn's hammer counter-pointing his own, while further pounding of steel on iron at either side of him reassured him that the others were keeping up, as they drove in the staples through which they'd pass the iron bars that would keep the shutters cramped down.

He'd got one side finished before he heard any voices from inside; then he felt the door quiver, as someone tried to open it. The vibrations in the wood intensified-whoever it was, he was trying to kick the door open or burst it out with his shoulder. But the timbers did their job admirably, just as he'd hoped they would, and he knocked in the remaining nails without any problems.

He knew without needing to be told when Asburn finished with the back door; the shutters were already secure. He put the hammer carefully back in his bag-it was a good hammer, he didn't want to drop it in the dark-and took a step back. Inside they were shouting, but it was all right, all the angles were covered, everything was still perfect. Hand and Rook brought up the big sack full of kindling, and emptied it on the ground. Poldarn took out his tinderbox and tried to get it to light.

No luck. It was the moment he'd been dreading most. It's not me who should be doing this, he thought ruefully, it should be Asburn or one of the others, I never could get a fire started to save my life. But, just as he was about to give up and call for help, a little spiral of smoke stood up out of the dry moss in the pan of the box; he gave it a couple of puffs, and a tiny orange ember started glowing brightly. Quickly he piled the moss up round it while Hand made a little nest of dry leaves and straw; then Poldarn dumped the box's contents into it, dropped to his knees and let go a series of long, slow breaths until the tinder caught and the first flame broke through, like the first corn-shoot of spring.

The others were standing by, waiting to light the torches they'd made, hay and straw wrapped tight around a stick and drenched in lamp oil. Once the torches were ablaze there was light to see by, not that they needed it; and once they'd tossed the torches up onto the roof and the thatch had started to burn, it was soon as light as day.

So far, he thought, so good; the roof was burning cheerfully, and they could turn their attention to the rest of the house. Raffen, Geir and Reno were carrying armfuls of kindling out from the woodshed; Asburn was on his way back from the forge with the first sack of charcoal. Surprisingly quickly, they built up a series of small pyres all round the house, primed with oil from the quench and lard and beeswax from the storehouse. Some of these they lit with their torches and portfires; others were set alight by handfuls of burning thatch sliding down from the roof.

Someone inside was attacking the main door with an axe; but that wouldn't do him any good-the battens themselves would take a quarter of an hour to chop through, let alone the main timbers of the door itself. They were screaming in there now, as well as shouting, but so far nobody had thought to try getting out through the roof; that was surprising, he'd given them credit for more ingenuity than that.

The smoke was stinging his eyes; he closed them, taking a step back, and in that moment he realised that what he could hear, muffled and indistinct in the background, wasn't the shouting or the screaming, all that was quite different in tone and pitch; what he could hear were the thoughts passing through their minds, a confused jumble of voices all talking at the same time. He couldn't make any sense at all of it, so he concentrated until he found the one voice he was looking for I'm waking up out of a dream about faraway places. I can see smoke.

It's hanging in the air, like mist in a valley; the chimney's blocked again. But there's rather too much of it for that, and I can hear burning, a soft cackle of inaudible conversation in the thatch above my head, the scampering of rats and squirrels in the hayloft.

Beside me, my wife grunts and turns over. I nudge her hard in the small of the back, and hop out of bed.

'Get up,' I tell her. 'The house is on fire.'

'What?' She opens her eyes and stares at me.

'The house is on fire,' I tell her, annoyed at having to repeat myself in the middle of a crisis. 'Come on, for God's sake.'

She scrambles out and starts poking about with her feet, trying to find her shoes. 'No time for that now,' I snap, and unlatch the partition door. It opens six inches or so and sticks; someone's lying against it on the other side. That isn't good.

It occurs to me to wonder where the light's coming from, a soft, rather beautiful orange glow, like a distant view of the fire-stream slipping gently down the side of the mountain. The answer to that is through the gap where the partition doesn't quite meet the roof-it's coming through from the main room. Not good at all.

I take a step back from the door and kick it, stamping sideways with the flat of my foot. The door moves a few more inches, suggesting that I'm shifting a dead weight. I repeat the manoeuvre five times, opening a gap I can just about squeeze through.

'Come on,' I urge my wife-comic, as if we're going to a dance and she's fussing about her hair. Hilarious.

The main room's full of orange light, but there isn't any air, just smoke. As I step through, the heat washes over me; I look down to see what the obstruction had been, and see Henferth the swineherd, rolled over on his side, dead. No need to ask what had killed him, the smoke's a solid wall of fuzzy-edged orange. Just in time, I remember not to breathe in; I lower my head and draw in the clean air inside my shirt.

Only six paces, diagonally across the floor, to the upper door; I can make that, and once the door's open I'll be out in cold, fresh air. The bar's in place, of course, and the bolts are pushed home top and bottom-I grab the knob of the top bolt and immediately let go as the heat sears my skin. Little feathers of smoke are weaving in through the minute cracks between the boards; the outside of the door must be on fire.

So what? Catching the end of my sleeve into the palm of my hand, I push hard against the bolt. It's stiff-heat expands metal-but I'm in no mood to mess about, and my lungs are already tight; also, the smoke's making my eyes prickle. I force the top bolt back, ramming splinters into the heel of my hand from a rough patch of sloppily planed wood, then stoop and shoot back the bottom bolt, which moves quite easily. That just leaves the bar; and I'm already gasping out my hoarded breath as I unhook it. Then I put my shoulder to the door and shove.

It doesn't move. I'm out of breath now, and there's no air, only smoke. I drop to the floor. Right down low, cheek pressed to the boards, there's clean air, just enough for a lungful.

As I breathe in, I'm thinking, The door's stuck, why? The door won't open, it's burning on the outside. No prizes for guessing what that means.

The axe; the big axe. Of course the door's too solid to break down but with the big axe I can smash out the middle panel, at least enough to make a hole to breathe through. Where's the big axe? Then I remember. The big axe is in the woodshed, where the hell else would the big axe be? Inside there's only the little hand-axe, and I might as well peck at the door with my nose like a woodpecker.

Something flops down next to me and I feel a sharp, unbearable pain in my left foot and ankle. Burning thatch, the roof's falling in. 'Bench,' I yell, 'smash the door down with a bench.' But nobody answers. Come on, brain, suggestions. There's got to be another way out of here, because I've got to get out. The other door, or what about the window? And if they're blocked too, there's the hatch up into the hayloft, and out the hayloft door-ten-foot drop to the ground, but it'd be better than staying here.

But the other door's forty feet away; the window's closer, but still impossibly far, and the hatch might as well be on the other side of the ocean. There simply isn't time to try, and if I stand up I'll suffocate in the smoke. The only possible place to be is here, cheek flat on the floorboards, trapped for the rest of my life in half an inch of air.

Another swathe of burning thatch lands on me, dropping heavily across my shoulders. I feel my hair frizzle up before I feel the pain, but when it comes it's too much to bear. I snuff up as much air as I can get-there's a lot of smoke in it, and the coughing costs me a fortune in time-and try to get to my feet, only to find that they aren't working. I panic, lurch, overbalance and fall heavily on my right elbow. The fire's reached my scalp, it's working its way through my shirt to the skin on my back.

A man might be forgiven for calling it a day at this point, but I can't quite bring myself to do that, not yet. I'd be horribly burned, of course-I've seen men who've been in fires, their faces melted like wax-but you've got to be philosophical about these things, what's done is done and what's gone is gone, salvage what you can while you can.

It hadn't been so bad back in the inner room-why the hell did I ever leave it? Seemed like a good idea at the time. So I start to crawl back the way I've just come. A good yard (the palm of my hand on her upturned face; I know the feel of the contours of her cheeks and mouth, from tracing them in the dark with my fingertips, tenderly, gently; but no air to waste on that stuff now) before the beam falls across my back and pins me down, making me spill my last prudent savings of air. The pain-no, forget that for a moment, I can't feel my hands, even though I know they're on fire, my back must be broken. Try to breathe in, but there's just smoke, no time left at all. Forget it, I can't be bothered with this any more Poldarn opened his eyes. 'He's dead,' he announced.

They looked at him. 'Who's dead?' one of them asked.

'Eyvind.' Poldarn let out the breath he'd been holding (as if he'd been the one trapped in the smoke, hoarding air like a prudent farmer stockpiling grain against a hard winter). 'All of them. It's finished.'

Someone-Raffen or Rook, in the darkness they all looked the same-coughed a couple of times and said, 'Well, we did it, then.'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied. 'We did it, and it's over. I wish we hadn't.'

'Bloody fine time to say that.' He wasn't sure who'd spoken. 'Bloody fine time. Next you'll be telling us it was all a mistake.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

'Is that supposed to be funny?' That sounded like Hand, but he couldn't be sure. 'Because if it was, I don't think much of it.'

'Sorry' Poldarn wanted to look away-the brightness of the flames was hurting his eyes-but he couldn't. 'But it's true, at the time it seemed like the right course of action. Now, I'm not so sure. It was a terrible thing to do.'

'That's no lie.' This time, he was almost certain it was Raffen. 'But the bastards asked for it. They had it coming, turning us out of our own house.'

Someone else said, 'That's right,' but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. And failing.

'And the way they went about it.' Asburn's voice, slightly hesitant. 'Sure, we've just done something pretty bad, but they started it. They got what they deserved. We showed them. And anyway, it's too late now.'

'What the hell are you all moaning about?' That was Elja, and she sounded hard, firm, resolute. 'It was all Eyvind's fault; he was supposed to be your friend, and he started this stupid feud. If it hadn't been for him, we'd all be getting on with our lives in the places where we ought to be. Come on, we all knew that before we started this. Otherwise we wouldn't have done it.'

The roof-tree fell in, lifting up a cascade of sparks, like a mob of crows put up off a newly sown field. It was a beautiful sight, regardless of context. 'If anything's to blame,' someone said, 'it's the mountain. If that hadn't started playing up, we'd none of us be in this mess.'

'Yes,' Poldarn said, 'but it was my decision. It all went wrong when Boarci died. I could overlook the rest, there was a sort of cack-handed justice about it, but he saved my life, and there wasn't anybody else to stand up for him. But getting killed like that was his own fault. He should never have stolen that barrel.'

'True,' Elja said. 'But if you hadn't hidden it, he couldn't have stolen it. You shouldn't have done that.'

'I did it for you,' Poldarn mumbled. 'So you'd have something to eat besides porridge and onions. It was only a little thing.'

'So's the peak of a mountain,' Elja replied, 'but everything else stems from it. I don't suppose it matters now, but if you want to know where it all started to screw up, that was it.'

'You should have killed Eyvind back in the old country,' Asburn said. 'Didn't he try to kill you the first time you met him?'

'He saved my life,' Poldarn replied. 'And anyway, it's not as simple as that. Nobody's to blame here except me. I killed a man, for no reason. I hid the barrel. I turned the fire-stream away. I brought Boarci home, and if I hadn't he'd still be alive.' He tried to look away, but the burning house held him, as though he was the one lying pinned by a fallen rafter. 'I did it all, everything. At the time, each time round, I thought I was doing the right thing-no, I was doing the right thing. At every turn, all I wanted was to be a good man, honourable, putting others ahead of myself. And this is where I've brought you all to, by doing the right thing. I guess that's the way it's got to be, with me. Everything I do turns bad on me, and I've never knowingly done anything wrong, in the small part of my life that I can remember. I don't know; Raffen, you're a sensible sort of man, what would you have done, if it'd been up to you? If you'd been the head of house and the fire-stream was headed straight at you down the mountain, what would you have done?'

Raffen laughed. 'Not what you did, that's for sure. But only because I wouldn't have had the wit to think of it. Maybe you're too smart for your own good.'

'You can't say you're sorry for doing that,' Asburn put in. 'It was amazing, how you thought of it. Anybody else would've run away, but you didn't. You figured out a way to save the house, and you made it happen. Nobody else could've done it but you.'

Poldarn closed his eyes. 'And look what happened. I saved the house from being burnt down by the fire-stream, then came back and did the job myself.'

Someone was pulling at his arm. 'Stop it.' Elja's voice. 'Listen to yourself, will you? You're trying to make out you're some kind of evil monster. Well, if you were, wouldn't I be the first person to know it? After all, I'm married to you. But I know for a fact you aren't evil, you're just a man who's done what he had to do, and in the end it's meant you've done some pretty unpleasant things. So, that's how it is sometimes. But I don't blame you, because it's not your fault, really it isn't. I don't think it was anybody's fault, it was just the way things turned out. Worse things than this happen every day, and the world doesn't come to an end. Don't stand there staring at me,' she went on. 'You've all done worse things than this, and for less good reasons-or haven't any of you gone raiding over the winter, and burned down whole cities, not just one house, all so there won't be witnesses, anybody who can say what we look like or where we come from? Is that a good reason for killing people, women and children? Oh, you can say it's because of what was done to us in the old country, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, but that's not why you do it, and you know it. It's just the most efficient way of going about the job, and you don't care about the people who get killed any more than you care about smoking out a wasps' nest. And that's all right,' she continued, 'because everybody does it and nobody even thinks about whether it's right or wrong. But you-' she tugged at his arm again, like an impatient child-'you've been fretting and worrying yourself about whether you're doing the right thing or not, but it's not like you ever had any choice-well, except for hiding the barrel, but you didn't mean for any harm to come of it, you were just trying to be nice. And when Boarci got himself killed, you did the right thing, you sorted out a settlement; and then they had to go and break it, sneaking over here and stealing that horse because Eyvind changed his mind. That was that, there was no way we could trust them after that. One morning we'd have woken up and there we'd be again, them pointing spears at our throats and moving us on because they wanted their farm back, or killing us even, because Eyvind had changed his mind again. You thought, the only way we'll ever be safe is if Eyvind and all his people are dead and can't hurt us any more. There really wasn't anything else you could have done, honestly.'

Poldarn pulled his arm free. 'I know that,' he said. 'That's what I've been trying to tell you. Even when I do the right thing, it comes out bad. In which case, what sort of a man am I? I don't know, I can't remember. But even if a fire can forget it's a fire, if you stick your hand in it, it'll still burn you. The only thing that matters is what people do. Everything else is beside the point.'

'And you're forgetting something really important,' Raffen added. 'We won, remember? They're all dead and we're all alive. Isn't it obvious what that means? We must've been right and they must've been wrong. Otherwise, nothing makes any sense.'

Nobody replied to that. Instead, there was an uncomfortable silence, until Asburn said: 'Well, so what're we going to do now?'

Poldarn opened his eyes and turned round to face them all. 'We're going to go home and get on with our work,' he said. 'There's nothing more to be done here, and plenty to be getting on with at home.' He looked up at the sky, but the red glow in the east was the fire-stream rolling over Haldersness. 'We'll have to stay here for the rest of the night,' he said. 'It's still four or five hours before sun-up. I don't think this is a good place to hang about, but we can get our heads down in the barn. Even if anybody does turn up looking for us, they won't expect to find us there. Then, as soon as it's light, we'll be on our way.'

'Fair enough,' said Reno. 'I suppose someone'd better stay awake and keep an eye out, just in case.'

'I'll do that,' Poldarn replied. 'I don't suppose I'd be able to sleep tonight.'

He was wrong about that. About an hour after the rest of them had settled down in the hayloft, he opened his eyes and found himself in a garden. It was a stunningly beautiful place (I must be remembering, he thought, I'd never be capable of imagining something like this). A closely mown raised camomile path led arrow-straight from the steps of the house behind him, which he couldn't see, to an ornate wrought-iron gateway. On either side of the path were neatly trimmed enclosures surrounded with knee-high hedges of box and lavender; inside each enclosure, intricate flowing patterns were picked out in flowers, their colours matching and contrasting to emphasise the clarity and grace of the design. In the centre of each enclosure there stood a small arbour, iron trelliswork covered in climbing roses. Another path bisected the first at right tangles, dividing the garden into four perfect squares; and at the point where the paths met, there was a circular fountain. Without being aware of having moved, he found himself sitting on a marble bench looking down into the water. He couldn't see his reflection because the streams from the fountain jets disturbed the surface, but that didn't matter, because he knew perfectly well who he was: this was his garden, and he was at home. Everything here was in its right place, because he'd put it there; he'd directed the placement of each flower, each bush, each slab of stone; it was his creation, a place he'd made where everything was right and all the choices had been good.

There was someone sitting beside him, though he couldn't see his face. 'You did well today,' the other man said. 'It was difficult and dangerous, it took some planning and seeing through, but you managed it. Nobody else could've done it but you.'

He looked up, because that was more or less what Asburn had said to him earlier, and he'd known it was true. 'Oh, that,' he heard himself say. 'That wasn't anything clever. Still, I don't suppose we'll be having any more trouble from that quarter for a while.'

The other man laughed. 'You're being modest,' he said. 'You planned the whole business out from the start, and none of them ever suspected a thing, right up to the last minute. And then, of course, it was too late. Really, I don't know how you did it. It's as if you could read their minds or something.'

He nodded gravely. 'Something like that,' he said. 'It's just a knack I've got. Everybody can do it, where I come from.'

The other man whistled in admiration. 'That must be a very strange place to live,' he said. 'Really, are you serious? They can all see what everybody else is thinking?'

'Pretty much. There's a few exceptions, but they're very rare.'

The other man was clearly impressed. 'And they can do this all the time?'

'All the time, without even trying. It's a way of life with them, like being able to see or hear. They don't think anything of it.'

'No wonder they wipe the floor with our lot, then,' the other man said. 'Just think of it, an army of soldiers who know exactly what they're supposed to be doing without having to be told. Is that how it is?'

'Exactly.' He yawned; it was warm, and he was feeling drowsy. 'No disagreements, either; there's no one man giving orders, the whole lot of 'em decide what to do, and then they do it. There's nothing else special about them, though. They're just a bunch of farmers the rest of the year.'

'Remarkable,' the other man said. 'You know, that must be a wonderful thing, to be linked so intimately to so many people. I'd love to be able to do that. If I'd have been you, I don't think I'd have left there.'

He laughed. 'Oh, I had my reasons,' he said. 'Truth is, I made myself a bit unpopular, and it seemed like it was time to be on my way.'

'Ah.' The other man didn't press for further details. 'So, do you think you'll ever go back there? On the one hand, I don't suppose you're in a hurry to get back to the farm and dig turnips. On the other hand, being so close to the rest of them, I don't see how you could give that up, once you'd got used to it.'

'Oh, I'll go back again some day,' he replied, 'once things have calmed down a bit. I left there once before, when I was still just a kid-things hadn't worked out very well, one way and another. Then I went back, a year or so ago, and everything was fine for a while until someone let me down badly and I had to do something about it. Well, that was a pity, because it meant I had to clear out again; but it'll all blow over sooner or later. They're a very forgiving people.'

'I suppose it's hard to bear a grudge when you can see what's in the other man's mind,' his companion said. 'I really would like to go there one day, it sounds absolutely fascinating.'

At the far end of the path, the gates were opening, though he couldn't see who was coming through. 'It's all right, I suppose,' he said, 'if you like the quiet life. Nothing much ever happens, but that's the whole point of the place, really.' He laughed abruptly. 'You know, if all the generals and elder statesmen in Torcea could go there and actually see these people they're so terrified of, they'd never believe it. This whole empire, scared stiff of a bunch of farmers. There isn't enough gold in the whole country to make up a year's wages for a palace clerk.'

Behind him the sun was setting, and the fiery red light glowed in the streams gushing down from the fountain. It put him in mind of a mountain far away; and that made him think of another pool, circled round with ferns and tall grass, where he'd first seen his face, on the day he stood up out of the river. He wondered about that; but the logical conclusion was disturbing, so he thought about something else instead. 'Well,' he said, 'tomorrow's the big day. Are you feeling nervous?'

'Me?' The other man laughed. 'Well, yes and no. After all, it's not as though it actually means anything, we both know that. But standing up in front of all those thousands of people, and trying not to make a bog of the ceremony, that sort of thing-I don't think I'd be human if I wasn't a bit nervous. So, yes.'

'I'm not,' he replied. 'It's just a theatrical performance, after all, and I've had a bit of experience in that line myself. Of course, I wasn't playing at being a king or an emperor, and the audience was rather smaller, too. But I should imagine the principle's the same.'

The sunset was closing in, and it was starting to get cold.

He stood up. 'Come on,' he said, 'we might as well go inside. Neither of us is going to do any good if we're sneezing and snuffling all through the ceremony.'

'True,' said the other man. 'Look, do you mind if I ask you a question?'

'Fire away.'

'If you had your time over again,' the other man said, 'would you do things differently?'

He smiled. The fountain was a bubbling cauldron of red-hot lava, and it was all his doing. 'First, yes, I will. And second, no, I won't. All right?'

'Fine,' said the other man. 'I was just asking, that was all. No offence, by the way.'

'None taken,' he replied. 'After all, when I haven't done anything wrong, what's there to be offended by?'