Pattern

Chapter Five

The vestry roof was burning.

When they told him, he was extremely annoyed. Damn it, he thought, as he yawned awake out of a delightfully pastoral dream (something about being a blacksmith on a farm, making pot-hooks), this is ridiculous. I'm a soldier, I'm supposed to be conducting an orderly defence of a fortified position, not fooling about with buckets of water. If they wanted a fireman, they should've hired a specialist.

But he left his post in the charge of a thoroughly terrified captain of archers, and hurried down the narrow spiral staircase. Twice he nearly lost his footing-the soles of his boots had been worn thin and smooth on the parade ground, and the stairs were polished-but luckily there was a guide-rope at the side he could catch hold of. Just as well; this wouldn't be a good time to fall and break his leg.

(There was a crow in this dream; but it was floating on top of the hot air rising from the fire, a long way out of stone-throwing range. It called to him in crow language, but he couldn't understand what it was saying. Its presence implied that he was still dreaming, though he could distinctly remember having woken up. Were there really such things as crows when he was awake? Or were they some species of fabulous beast, the sort you can only believe in when you're dreaming?)

From the courtyard he had a good view of the problem. At some point during the night, the enemy had got tired of lobbing stones and arrows over the wall into an empty square with nothing left in it to break or hurt and had started sending over firepots instead. Most of them had smashed harmlessly on the flagstones and burnt themselves out-throughout the attack, he'd been convinced that his greatest asset and ally was the enemy's chief engineer, who clearly couldn't read a scale or set an accurate trajectory if his life depended on it-but one or two had overshot the yard completely and pitched on the vestry slates, where their burning oil could drip through the cracks made by their impact into the roof space below. It was a pity, all things considered, that the monks had decided to use the roof space to store a thousand years' worth of archives.

'I say let it burn,' said the ranking engineer, third from the top in the chain of command and clearly not happy at being woken up in the middle of the night. 'After all, it's freestanding-even if the wind changes it's not going to spread to the other buildings. And it's got no strategic importance, it's just a chapel.'

He couldn't agree more; but unfortunately he had his orders. 'Unacceptable,' he said. 'We've got to put it out. What I'm asking you is, how?'

The red and yellow light of the fire made the engineer's face shine grotesquely in the darkness. 'That's a very good question,' he said. 'Once a building like that makes up its mind to burn to the ground, there's not a lot you can do. What with the confined space and the lack of equipment, you're down to a lot of men with buckets. There's the well in the yard, but it's too deep and narrow to give you enough water for this job. You'd be better off with a longer chain, drawing off the carp ponds or the aqueduct. Both would probably be best.'

'Fine,' he replied. 'All right, you round up every bucket and basin you can find.' He turned to face the guard commander. 'You get anybody who can move, I want a chain from the ponds and another from the aqueduct, like he just said. See if you can get up the back stairs as well as the front; if we can tackle the fire from both ends at once, I reckon we'll have a better chance.'

Neither of them looked exactly hopeful as they scurried off on their respective errands, and he couldn't say he blamed them; from where he was standing the fire was already fairly well established, and even a slight breeze would turn the whole building into a furnace. He'd seen enough fires in his time to know that.

(And yet, when you're camping out in the cold rain and what you need most in the whole world is a nice cheerful roaring fire, can you get one to light? Can you hell as like. Just like when you've got a busy day ahead of you in the forge, and the coal's damp and there's no kindling in the bucket. The fire god's sense of humour isn't his most attractive attribute.)

They did the best they could in the circumstances, but that was never going to be enough. A hundred men dragged out of desperately needed sleep and told to put out a well-established fire in an entirely superfluous building with an inadequate supply of buckets and water were always going to be wasting their time. When the rafters and joists were starting to burn through and the situation got too dangerous to justify the risk, he called them off and told them to forget it. By that stage they were too exhausted to get back to sleep, and most of them stood aimlessly in the yard, watching the building gradually subsiding into the flames. They didn't seem to care particularly, one way or the other.

'It was a lost cause,' said a voice beside him. He looked round, and saw the diminutive figure of the vice-chaplain, whose name he couldn't remember offhand.

'Even so, I'm sorry,' he said. 'I know how priceless those papers were. A thousand years of history-'

He stopped; not because the chaplain had interrupted him, but because he could sense that the little man was laughing at him. 'Please,' the chaplain said, 'don't worry about that, it really doesn't matter. True, we've just lost ten centuries of collected theological commentaries, speculation and debate. Good riddance. They were all wrong, you see.'

He frowned. 'Oh,' he said.

The chaplain laughed; not the sort of hysterical cackle you might expect from someone who's watching his entire world slowly drifting down in the form of thin slivers of white ash, but the genuine amusement of someone who's fully recognised his own absurdity. 'Well, of course,' he said. 'For a thousand years, we've been anticipating the return of the divine Poldarn. Every possible interpretation and analysis and hypothesis, every argument and refutation and counter-refutation-I don't know if you're familiar with the Sansory school of intaglio jewellery, but its main feature is that every last pinhead of space is covered with florid, intricate engraving and decoration, unspeakably vulgar and overdone. That's religious scholarship, only we don't just limit ourselves to the superficial level. We've left our tasteless little acanthus-leaf scrolls on everything. And now we have the satisfaction of knowing that everything we ever said and wrote about the subject was completely wrong.'

'You do?'

'Obviously we do,' the chaplain said. 'It's as plain as day. Poldarn has indeed returned, and he's nothing at all like what we'd thought he'd be. All in all, they've done us a favour, setting light to the archive, covering up the monumental waste of time, effort and money. Otherwise, we'd have had to do it ourselves, sooner or later.'

He scowled. 'No,' he said, 'you're wrong. Poldarn hasn't returned, and the man passing himself off as Poldarn is really nothing more than a vicious, unscrupulous two-quarter mercenary soldier. He's no more a god than I am, believe me.'

'Well.' The chaplain shrugged. 'I agree with you about the man's character and antecedents. But he's Poldarn, no doubt about it.'

The roof-tree of the vestry fell in, showering the courtyard with brilliant orange sparks that were burnt out by the time they reached the ground. 'Excuse me,' he said wearily, 'but that doesn't make sense. Either he's a god or a mercenary captain. He can't be both.'

'Why not?'

Dislodged by the fall of the roof-tree, the cross-beams gave way, one by one, pulling the rafters down with them. 'All due respect, Father,' he said, 'but it speaks for itself. Human beings are human beings, gods are gods. If they weren't gods, where's the point in having them?'

That amused the chaplain, for some reason. 'The truth is, Commander,' he said, 'you're far too clear-headed and straightforward to be a theologian.'

'You're too kind,' he grunted.

'Now I've offended you,' the chaplain sighed. 'I'm sorry. What I meant was, it takes a rather warped sort of mind to follow high doctrine. It's like doing arithmetic using only the odd numbers, and arbitrarily missing out any figures that begin or end with a seven. You live by logic and common sense, which is why you'll never understand theological theory.'

He coughed as the light breeze blew smoke into his face. 'Probably just as well,' he said.

'Oh, quite. You're far more use to everybody, myself and yourself included, doing what you were born to do, commanding a regiment-'

'Actually,' he interrupted, 'I don't. You've promoted me two ranks. I command a battalion, which isn't the same thing at all.'

'There,' the chaplain said cheerfully, 'that's exactly the sort of thing I have in mind. No, the point is, there's no reason at all why this bandit chieftain can't be the god Poldarn; and all the evidence suggests that that's precisely who he is. Of course,' he added, yawning, 'I'm not suggesting for one moment that he knows he's the god. In fact, it's almost certain he doesn't.'

'I see,' he said, inaccurately. 'Well, thank you for taking the time to explain. Can't say I believe any of it, but that's my loss, isn't it?'

'I suppose so. He's just as much a god if nobody believes in him; and since believing in him won't do you the slightest bit of good now that the world's coming to an end and we're all going to die, I can't see that it matters terribly much one way or another.' Almost absent-mindedly, the chaplain picked a glowing cinder off his sleeve. 'Which is why there's no earthly point in trying to save the archives; first, because they're all wrong, second, because even if they'd all been totally accurate and every prophecy and prediction had been correctly interpreted, we're all going to fry in a month or two, so, honestly, who cares? Still.' He shrugged his lean shoulders. 'My order has just lost its memory,' he said. 'From now on, for the very short time remaining to us, we don't know who we are, what we stand for, what we've said or done for the last thousand years. All that's left of us is us, and that simply isn't sufficient to justify our existence.'

He wished he hadn't got caught up in this conversation; the longer it went on, the more he could feel it oozing in over the tops of his boots. 'Well,' he said, 'if you're right about the end of the world and all that nonsense, pretty soon you won't have an existence to justify, and the problem won't arise.'

'True. And at times like this, it's a great comfort, believe me.'

The last of the girts and stays collapsed in a flurry of hot embers, filling the sky with spots of fire, like a volcano. It was obvious that the chaplain had come badly unstuck-hardly surprising, in the circumstances-and although he was talking in the most rational, lecture-to-first-years voice, all that was coming out of his mouth was half-digested drivel. On a basic infantry brigadier's pay of ninety quarters a month plus five quarters armour allowance, he wasn't paid enough to listen to elderly academics assuring him that the world was going to be burned to cold ashes before Harvest Festival.

'Anyway,' he said, 'I'll certainly bear that in mind. Still, just in case you're wrong, I suppose I'd better see about this fire.'

'Certainly,' the chaplain answered. 'You go right ahead. I think I'll stay here and enjoy the smoke.'

There was enough of it, no doubt about that. Something inside the vestry-whether it was the books or the tapestries or the wall hangings or the irreplaceable masterpieces of eighth-century religious painting-was spewing out rolling black clouds of the stuff, foul-smelling and probably very bad for your health if you breathed in too much of it. Not that there was anything he could do now, needless to say, but he very much wanted to get away from the chaplain; so he walked slowly towards the empty door frame where the bronze double gates had been.

Someone was yelling to him. He looked round and saw a young first lieutenant, whose name eluded him for the moment.

'Problem, sir,' the kid panted, wheezing like an old man. 'My platoon was on the bucket end in the south chapel when the roof came down. We were all accounted for except one. Now we've found him.'

'So?'

'It's where we found him,' the kid replied. 'He must've been in the Lady chapel when the roof fell in, and now he's got a rafter across his leg and can't shift.'

He thought for a moment: Lady chapel. Oh yes. No mouldy old books in there, but there'd been a pair of very nice gold candlesticks, a complete service of silver communion ware, and of course the offertory chest as well. All irreplaceable works of art, that went without saying, and it was very brave and heroic of the soldier to go back in there and try and save them for posterity, but now, thanks to his sheer bloody altruism, some poor suicidal fool was going to have to go in there and fish the bugger out.

Even from back here, the heat from the blaze was enough to blister someone's face. No way he could bring himself to send anyone in there; which left him with precisely one candidate for the mission. Fortunately, he'd just had it on the very best authority that the world was going to end any day now, so even if it was a suicide mission it was all as broad as it was long.

A few simple precautions, nonetheless; he confiscated a soldier's heavy overcoat and soaked it with water; did the same with two empty feed sacks and wrapped them round his face; no gloves to be found anywhere, of course, until someone suggested the bee-keeper's hut behind the guardhouse. The wet fabric felt clammy and revolting against his skin, but he couldn't think of anything better at such short notice.

He posted the young lieutenant in the doorway, with strict instructions to keep everybody else out; then a very deep breath, and inside Poldarn woke up to find that for some reason he'd tangled himself up comprehensively in the bedclothes, as if he'd deliberately twisted them round himself.

'Fire,' he shouted. 'Come on, the building's-'

He opened his eyes wide. Nothing to see. He was lying on the floor of the great hall. Everybody else had long since trooped off to work.

There'd been something utterly terrifying going on just a moment ago, but he couldn't remember what it was.

He stood up, rubbed his eyes until they could be trusted to stay open, and tottered out into the daylight. Nothing even remotely scary out there, either; all peaceful and industrious and as it should have been-apart from the carpet of black cinders lying over everything, of course.

One of the women came out of the house, carrying a basket. He stopped her.

'Rook back yet?' he asked.

She shook her head. 'Cettle's gone over there to see what's going on,' she told him. 'Mountain's playing up again.'

The way she said it made it sound like a job for the house handyman: mend the burnt skillet, the rat-house door's sticking, the yard broom needs a new handle, and when you've done that, the mountain's playing up again. 'Badly?' he asked.

'Terrible,' the woman replied. 'Been doing it half the night, puking up fire and god knows what else. That filthy ash everywhere.'

Now she was making it seem like the mountain was a naughty little boy given to vomiting on the rugs, just to get attention. 'Oh,' he said. 'Where's Halder?'

'In the cider house,' she answered, 'turning the apples.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Thank you,' he said, and crunched across the cinder-covered yard to find him. Why the hell bother turning the apples? In case they got bored, presumably.

On his way, he stopped to take a proper look at the mountain. There was that glow again, a red bruise on its cheek, and the black pillar standing out of the summit; it was ugly and unnatural, and he didn't like looking at it. And surely Rook had to be back by now?

Grandfather didn't look round when he clambered up the ladder into the cider-house loft. 'What was that word you used? About the mountain.'

'Volcano,' Poldarn replied.

Halder grunted. 'Well, it's at it again. Black shit all over the grass. God only knows where it'll end.' He made it sound like it was all Poldarn's fault, as if knowing a special word for the phenomenon made him guilty of causing it. 'You know any way of stopping the bloody thing?' he asked hopefully. 'I mean, if they've got them in the Empire, they must've figured out a way of dealing with them, or the whole place'd be knee-deep in ashes.'

'Sorry.' What was he apologising for, Poldarn wondered. 'Like I told you, I really don't know anything about them, except the word.' Halder didn't say anything and the silence was embarrassing, so Poldarn went on, 'But they can't be all that common over there, because I never saw one, or any black ash or anything like that.'

'Just our luck, then,' Halder said gloomily. 'Well, if there's nothing we can do, there's nothing we can do, so we might as well get on and get some work done.' That reminded him. 'You should be up at the forge,' he added. 'Isn't Asburn there, or something?'

'I don't know, I haven't been over there today. Is Rook back yet?'

Halder grunted. 'No,' he replied. 'I asked Asburn the other day how you're getting on, he says you're doing fine but maybe you'd care to try your hand at some of the less straightforward pieces.' He picked out an apple, rotated it in his fingers and threw it in a bucket. 'He's very polite, young Asburn; diplomatic, that's the word. What he means is, you aren't interested and you can't be bothered to learn. That's a pity. That's your work he's doing, you know that.'

He managed to make it sound like a reproach and a warning, that Asburn was encroaching on his prerogatives, of which he should be fiercely jealous. Poldarn picked a loose flake of dry timber off the wall with his fingernail.

'You know,' he said, 'I don't think I'm cut out for forge work. I think you need a feel for it, and I haven't got it. I'm sure I'd be much more use as a stockman or in the middle-house gang.'

Long silence, during which Halder rejected another apple. 'And then there's this wedding coming up,' he went on, 'and then you'll have your house to build. Bloody fool you'll feel, moving into your own house and all the hinges and nails and fire-irons and hardware's been made by someone else. You'll regret it the rest of your life if you let that happen, believe me. Really, you ought to knuckle down, learn your trade. I'm not going to live for ever, you know.'

'Yes, right,' Poldarn said. 'Will you let me know when Rook gets back?'

Halder stood up and looked round at him. 'Oh,' he said, 'I see what you mean. Yes, if you like. Now, why don't you get along to the forge and do some work?'

Indeed, Poldarn asked himself, why don't I do just that? 'You need any help with that?' he asked, more hopefully than realistically.

'No.'

'Fine. If Rook comes back, I'll be in the forge.'

'Good boy.'

The forge door stuck, of course; and when he dragged it back, it scooped up a little moraine of black ash. 'Asburn?' he called out.

'Morning,' the smith answered cheerfully. He was always cheerful, when he wasn't being worried. 'Is it still coming down out there?'

No need to ask what it was. 'Afraid so,' Poldarn said. 'Chucking it out all the time.'

'Filthy stuff,' Asburn replied. 'Come on in, you're just in time to see something.'

Oh, happy day. 'Just a moment,' Poldarn said, 'I'll get my apron on.'

As usual, it took him a little while to get used to the dim light. Eventually, however, he was able to make out a little stack of thin, narrow plates resting on top of the anvil. Each plate was about as wide as his thumb joint, as long as his hand from fingernails to wrist, and roughly the thickness of a bulrush. There were five plates in the stack, all the same size, and they were carefully wired together.

'You may not have seen this before,' Asburn went on-he was grinding something up in the mortar-'and it's quite basic stuff, so it's just as well you're here.'

'Right,' Poldarn replied. 'So, what is it?'

Asburn took a pinch of whatever it was he'd been grinding between thumb and forefinger, testing its consistency. 'The regular term is pattern-welding,' he said, grinding doggedly with the pestle, 'though you'll hear people call it other things, like watered steel and the like. It's where you take, say, two bits of hard steel and three bits of ordinary soft iron, and you stack 'em up like this-iron, steel, iron, steel, iron, see?-and then you weld 'em together into a single billet, draw it out, fold it over, weld again, draw out, fold-you get the idea. What you finish up with is a piece of material that's as tough as iron and as hard as steel. Bloody useful for all sorts of things, and it's a wonderful use for all your odds and ends of scrap.'

'Ah,' Poldarn said. 'So what's that in the mortar?'

'Flux,' Asburn replied. 'When you're welding iron to steel, see, you've got to make sure you don't get any rubbish in the join. The flux draws out all the shit.'

'Ah,' Poldarn repeated. There didn't seem to be much else he could say about that.

'Nice thing about this stuff is,' Asburn went on, 'when you've welded and folded a couple of times, you've actually got like-well, if you've ever seen where a river's cut a deep channel, and you can see all the different layers in the sides of the cut, one on top of the other, topsoil and clay and gravel and shale and rock and stuff. It's like that, only you've got maybe a hundred layers, iron and steel alternately; and when you make something out of it, if you etch it right with salt and vinegar, it brings out the most amazing patterns, like ferns or feathers or ripples in water, or the backbone of a fish. Which is why they call it pattern-welding.'

'I see,' Poldarn said, relieved to have that particular mystery cleared up before it had a chance to eat into his subconscious mind. 'Why not just use a piece of solid steel, though? We've got plenty in the scrap, haven't we?'

Asburn nodded. 'Loads,' he said. 'But some people reckon this stuff's better for holding an edge and not breaking, though I'm not so sure about that myself. Mostly because it looks good, and it's the way we've always done it, I guess.'

'Fine,' Poldarn replied. 'All right, so what happens now?'

Asburn reached up for the bellows handle and gave it an apparently effortless tug. 'First,' he said, 'we need a good heat.' His eyes took on that worried look. 'I don't suppose you'd just fetch over that sack, there by your foot?'

Poldarn nodded. As he lifted it, he realised what it was. 'This is charcoal,' he said. 'I thought we didn't use it.'

'Oh, got to use it for this job,' Asburn replied. 'Coal's too dirty and full of clinkers and shit. At least, there's a sort of coal they've got up north that welds really quite nicely, but-'

But Poldarn wasn't to be deflected so easily. 'So we can afford to use charcoal for this job, which by all accounts isn't really necessary; but when I want a couple of handfuls just to get the fire started-'

'I'll have a proper look at that tue-iron later on this week,' Asburn said quickly. 'I'm sure it's not drawing right, and that's why you're finding it hard to get a fire in. If you could see your way to just dumping a bit here, where it's handy to rake in when I need it.'

Poldarn grunted and poured a quarter of the sack out into the forge bed. Odd, he thought, the coal dust and debris in here looks just like the black ash from the volcano. 'Will that do you?'

'Oh, that's absolutely fine,' Asburn assured him, 'to be going on with.' He drew down on the bellows handle, smooth and slow, forcing a terrific blast of air through the heaped-up fire. A great spout of yellow flame burst out of the apex of the heap-again, just like the mountain outside. No wonder they'd called it Polden's Forge. 'Now we bung in the material,' Asburn continued, 'and heap up the fuel round it like so. There.' He pulled out the tongs and laid them on the anvil, ready for when he needed them next.

'Would you like me to do the bellows?' Poldarn asked.

'If you wouldn't mind.' Asburn made it sound like Poldarn had offered to take his place on the gallows. That sort of thing got annoying after a while. 'That's it,' he went on, as Poldarn's overstretched shoulder muscles registered the effort of pumping the bellows with little fissures of pain. After a long and uncomfortable interval, Asburn fished out the billet, which was now an even sunset orange all the way through, and sprinkled it with his magic dust, which sparkled as it burned on the hot surface. 'Now,' he said as he poked it back into the fire, 'we've got to listen out for when it gets hot enough.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Listen?'

Asburn nodded. 'It's a sort of hissy, scratchy sound, when the metal's just beginning to melt on the outside. You'll know it when you hear it.'

All Poldarn could hear was the creak of the bellows leather, the squeal of a dry bearing and the huffing of the blast as it aroused the fire. No hissy scratching, unless he'd gone deaf. But Asburn must've heard it, because he suddenly darted forward with the tongs and nipped the billet out of the fire, like a buzzard swooping on a rabbit. The metal was white-hot, very slightly glazed and translucent on the surface, and a few white sparkles were dancing in the air around it.

'All right,' Asburn said breathlessly, 'this is the-' He smacked the billet with his hammer; not particularly hard, but a cascade of incandescent sparks exploded from the point of impact, showering his arms and shoulders. Poldarn could hear them patter to the ground as they cooled and fell.

'-Good bit,' Asburn concluded, as he tapped and pecked at the billet, working so fast that Poldarn couldn't really follow his movements. Instead of ringing on the metal, the hammer made a sort of flat, squidging noise. When the billet had cooled to a bright yellow, Asburn stopped hammering and picked it up in the tongs. 'There,' he said, sounding thoroughly surprised, 'it's taken, see?' Poldarn leaned over close, until the heat radiating off the metal started to burn his face, and tried to see what all the fuss was about. Asburn was right: the weld had taken-he could see that by the way the heat was soaked evenly into the sides and edges.

'You could've warned me about the sparks,' he said. 'I nearly jumped out of my skin.'

'Sorry,' Asburn said, immediately looking the very image of horrified remorse. 'Are you all right? It didn't burn you, did it?'

'No, not at all,' Poldarn said, wishing he'd kept his mouth shut. 'I'm fine, really. Does it always do that?'

Asburn nodded. 'If it doesn't, you haven't got it hot enough,' he explained.

'I see. And then, if it hasn't taken, you've got to go back and do it again.'

'Well, you can try, certainly,' Asburn said. 'But usually, if you don't get it right first time, chances are it'll have got all full of clinker and rubbish and you'll never get it to go. Right,' he went on, 'back it goes in the fire, we take a normal working heat and draw it down till it's about twice the length it is now. Then we fold it and weld again.'

In spite of himself, not to mention the hard work of pumping the bellows and swinging the sledgehammer, Poldarn found he was almost enjoying this; particularly the rain of sparks, like a blizzard of burning snow, each time Asburn welded the folded billet. Quite why, he wasn't sure, since it was uncomfortably close to the view from the courtyard, and he'd come in here in the first place to get away from that.

'How many more times have we got to do this?' he asked, as Asburn put the billet back in the fire after the fourth weld.

'Depends,' Asburn replied. 'Mostly, on what you're figuring to make out of it. This time it's just a skinning knife for Raffen, so that'd probably do as it is. On the other hand, a couple more times won't hurt, and we'll get a better pattern. Not that I'm planning on anything fancy,' he added defensively, 'but if a job's worth doing, and all that.'

'Sure,' Poldarn said. 'I was just wondering, that's all. When you've done that, what next?'

Asburn shrugged. 'Just forge it like an ordinary lump of steel,' he said. 'You can do it if you like, Raffen doesn't want anything fussy or complicated.'

Then he's out of luck isn't he? Poldarn thought. 'All right,' he heard himself say, though why he wanted to volunteer for a job he didn't have to do he couldn't quite understand. After all, it'd be a crying shame for Asburn to do all this hard work and then have the result screwed up in the final, easy stage by an incompetent buffoon.

In the event, though, Poldarn made a reasonable job of it-the blade straight, the back very, very nearly level, no dirty lumps of clinker or scale carelessly hammered in, no ugly pits or stretch marks, and it didn't warp when he tempered it, either. True, compared with the knives he'd seen Asburn make it was ugly, graceless and pedestrian, but if the worst came to the worst and Raffen didn't have anything else handy to do the job with, it'd probably cut something up without snapping in two or wiping its edge off on a hazel twig. After Poldarn had filed it and burnt on a piece of stag-horn for a handle, he let it lie on the bench and looked at it. I made that, he thought; well you can tell, can't you? Nevertheless.

While he'd been making the knife, Asburn had been up the other end of the building, fussing round a partly made lampstand with chalk and a piece of string. Asburn was capable of spending a whole day just measuring one piece, prodding and fiddling and fidgeting to get an exact fit on something that nobody but him would ever notice or care about. Poldarn had actually asked him once why he bothered; Asburn had replied that maybe right now nobody would be any the wiser if he sent out work that wasn't just right; but in a hundred years' time, or two hundred, a smith would come along and know in an instant what he'd done and where he'd gone wrong, and until then he wouldn't be able to lie still in his grave for fretting about it.

Poldarn reckoned that attitude was too silly for words, but decided not to say so.

All in all, he decided, as he gave the knife blade a few last touches with the stone, he'd had worse days. Which wasn't to say he was reconciled to this absurd system, whereby he was being politely frogmarched into a life and a line of work that he didn't like and wasn't good at; but when he compared this existence with what he'd been through on the other side of the ocean, there wasn't really any need to stop and think before choosing. Quite apart from the comforts and the security, he hadn't had to kill anybody since he'd arrived. That was the sort of thing he shouldn't get into the habit of taking for granted.

'I think I'm calling it a day,' Asburn said. 'How about you?'

'I think that'll-' Poldarn began, and got no further. Three bangs, absurdly loud, shook the floor and filled the air.

'What the hell-?' Asburn muttered; but Poldarn knew exactly what it was. Rook had mentioned them last time, he remembered distinctly because he'd been in the forge when they happened, and they'd been drowned out by the sound of his hammer. Well, he'd heard them all right this time, no question about that.

'The mountain,' Asburn said.

They ran outside and looked over the house roof. The first thing Poldarn noticed was how dark it had become. It took him rather longer to figure out why; the cloud of ash billowing out of the mountain was now so huge and thick that it was blocking out the sun.

'Not very good,' Asburn said.

Apparently he wasn't the only one who thought so; a mob of crows who'd been sitting on the middle-house roof flew up with a chorus of furious screaming and shrieking, and swirled in a barely controlled spiral over the house roofs. They're lost, Poldarn was shocked to realise, they don't know where they are or how to get to where they want to be. Somehow, that was almost more worrying than the sight of the volcano itself. He had no idea why they were having such problems, or even whether it was to do with the ash cloud or the mountain at all; but he'd been watching rooks and crows all his life (he could remember watching them) and he'd never seen anything like this before.

'Bloody stupid birds,' Asburn said, as a group of six or more sailed right over their heads, almost close enough to reach with a pitchfork or a long rake. 'It's like they can't hear their friends over in the long copse.'

The colony in the long copse was almost certainly where these birds were from; but the copse was an hour and a half away to the west. Then Poldarn realised what Asburn was talking about. Well, he thought; takes one to know one. 'You think so?' he said.

'It fits in with the way they're carrying on,' Asburn replied. 'At least, it's not the dark, because they fly home at night in darker than this; not the noise, because it's stopped; could be all the ash and shit in the air, I suppose, but if rain and snow don't bother 'em particularly, I wouldn't have thought flying through ash was so totally different as to spook 'em out completely' He frowned, wiping black grime off his forehead-something of a waste of time, since he was already black and filthy from the forge's dust and scale. 'I think the noise pushed 'em out, and there's something about the ash that means they're suddenly out of touch with the others. It's like the body's still moving around, but the brain's dead or asleep or something.'

Poldarn wasn't paying attention. He was too busy watching the birds, as if he could somehow interpret the crazy patterns they were weaving in the air. He'd been wrong; he had seen them like this once before, years ago, the first time he'd managed to outwit them with his decoys. He'd been proud of the achievement, and rightly so; it was the day when he'd finally identified the scouts, the singletons who go in front of the main mob and check for signs of danger. Instead of opening up on them with his slingshot as soon as they pitched, he'd let them land and strut about on the ground, no more than fifteen feet from where he was lying, until the section leaders got up out of the roost trees and dropped in, putting their wings back, banking into the slight wind to slow themselves down. He'd spared them, too-it was torture, not moving for so long, hardly daring to breathe-and after they'd walked around for a while like they owned the place, in came the rank and file, tens and twenties at a time. And then he'd jumped up and started slinging, handfuls of stones to each release, so that he was killing and stunning them by threes and fours, so closely were they packed in their arrogance. They'd flown up at once, of course; but they couldn't understand, because there hadn't been an enemy in sight twenty minutes ago and they hadn't seen one come up, so there couldn't be any danger, could there? And while they debated and tried to figure it out, they swooped and circled and turned and banked and braked and fluttered, like drunks in the dark, while he crammed gravel into the pad of his sling and hurled till he felt the tendons in his forearm twang with pain, and each time he let fly it was a victory of unsurpassed sweetness; until quite suddenly the sky was empty, and the ground in front of him was littered with black objects, hopping and thrashing, twitching and fluttering broken wings, somersaulting bodies with brains already dead (it takes them a long time to stop moving after they die), cawing and screaming and struggling in their extreme pain; and black feathers floated in the air like volcanic ash, gradually drifting down to settle on the bare earth.

'You know,' Poldarn said, looking at the mountain, 'you may well be right. Screw this, let's go indoors.'

But a single crow swung over them, jinked away in terror as it saw what it was flying over, and sailed straight through the forge doorway. 'Bugger,' Asburn said. 'I hate it when that happens.'

'What?'

Asburn's shoulders drooped visibly. 'Bloody birds getting in the forge. They peck at the chimney hood and shit all over the tools and the scrap, and they're too stupid to leave when you try and shoo 'em out. Panic,' he explained. 'Would you mind-?'

Poldarn nodded, and followed Asburn back inside. It was even darker than usual, of course; the only light was red, bleeding out of the subsiding fire. At first there didn't seem to be any sign of the crow, and Poldarn wondered if it had flown under the hood and straight up the chimney. But no such luck; it had pitched on a cross-beam, and when they walked under it, the stupid creature erupted in a flurry of wingbeats and shot between them before either of them could react.

'Where the hell did it go?' Poldarn shouted.

Asburn shrugged. 'Too quick for me,' he replied.

And for me, Poldarn admitted, in shame. But it won't be the next time; he grabbed the poker from the hearth and held it down at his side, like a sheathed sword ready for the draw. Come on, he told himself, I thought this kind of thing was second nature to you.

'Right,' he said. 'You go up that end, I'll stay here. The thing about crows is, they're smart as anything, but they can't count.'

Asburn hesitated, as if he was having extreme difficulty with the idea of being told what to do. 'Yes,' he said eventually, 'I'll go this way' He advanced down the workshop, clapping his hands over his head; and sure enough, the crow materialised as a burst of black movement out of a shadow and accelerated, flapping desperately, like a man learning to swim as he drowns. It passed Poldarn so fast that he didn't really see it; but the poker in his right hand lashed out, and he felt the shock of impact travelling down it and jarring his hand. He'd hit the crow like it was the ball in a game of stickball; it shot through the air, smashed into the tue-iron and rebounded onto the hearth, wings still pumping but not having any effect. With one long stride Poldarn was onto it. He slammed the poker down diagonally across the bird's outstretched wings, crushing it into the glowing embers, while his left hand fumbled for the bellows handle. The crow was strong, arching its body, thrusting with legs and neck and wings against the strength of his wrist and hand, but he held it there-as the bellows blasted air into the fire and made it flare up, he could feel the terrible heat frizzing the hair off his arm and scorching his skin, while the stench of cooking meat and burning feathers made him feel sick. Three more pumps on the bellows, as hard and fast as he could work it, and the bird's feathers were crackling, all full of fire; the force of its body against the poker was wrenching the muscles of his arm, tearing his sinews, but he was past caring about that, all that mattered now was the victory.

Poldarn was shocked at the suddenness of its death. It died in the middle of a frantic shove, and the cessation of resistance against his hand made him stumble forward, almost lose his balance. At the same moment, the remaining feathers ignited in a sudden flare that singed his face and made his eyes smart. He hopped back two steps, dropping the poker on the floor with a clang. Then he was aware of Asburn, staring at him.

'What did you do that for?' Asburn asked.

It was as if the man who'd killed the crow had stepped out of his body; he'd gone, and Poldarn couldn't remember a thing about him, who he'd been or why he'd done what he'd done. It didn't make sense. He'd never do a thing like that.

'Bloody thing,' he answered awkwardly, trying to sound like his grandfather hating the mountain, and the blaze of feathers died down, leaving a black cinder in the heart of the fire. 'Serves it right for coming in here in the first place.'

Asburn looked at him, then looked away without saying a word. Poldarn felt he owed him some kind of explanation, even if it was only a lie, but he couldn't think of one.

The door opened, and one of the farm boys came in. 'God almighty,' he said, 'what's that horrible smell?'

'Broiled crow,' Poldarn replied. 'What do you want?'

The boy shrugged. 'Halder sent me with a message. You wanted to know when Rook got home. Well, he's back.'