Shadow

Chapter Nineteen

Monach drew and cut, and as he watched the soldier drop to his knees and slump forward he thought, I can't believe I've made such a mess of it. Everything's going wrong, and it's all my fault.

The other three soldiers were closing in; one dead ahead, one on either side. He took a step back, sheathing his sword-this was a standard exercise he'd learned in third grade, but the sequence started from rest, sword sheathed, and he wasn't in the mood for improvisation. As soon as they impinged on his circle, the sequence began; it was as if it couldn't wait and had started without him. The knuckles of the right hand touched the sword handle; as the hand flipped over and the fingers found their place around the handle, the left foot came back half a step, then turned inwards, placing heel against heel at ninety degrees, so that as the sword left the scabbard, the body pivoted towards the left-hand target and the cut slid out into the space the oncoming target's neck was about to occupy. No time to waste looking to see if the cut had connected; the back foot went forward in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc, swinging the body round to face the right-hand target, while the arms lifted the sword up and back till the point touched the base of the spine, at which moment (like a mechanism engaging an escapement) the leftside diagonal overhead cut launched the sword into a perfectly located slice (number four in the manual, 'dividing the earth from the heavens'); the momentum pivoted the right heel as the arms followed through and used the spare energy of the last stroke to reset the correct position as he turned to face the enemy in front; another perfect cut, to be taken on trust since there still wasn't any time to waste on gawping; pivot once again to face the first target and deliver a conclusive, if redundant, finishing cut down the line of the collarbone. A simple but impressive sequence; a good sixth-year should be able to complete it and return to rest, sword flicked free of blood and back in the scabbard, in the time it takes for an apple to drop from a tree.

Monach felt the sword click back into the tight jaws of its sheath, and looked to see what had happened just as the first target hit the ground. The other two followed a fraction of a second later. There was still a fine mist of blood hanging in the air.

That appeared to be that. A threat had presented itself and been dealt with quickly and efficiently; he could be forgiven for thinking that he'd actually got something right, for a change. But he hadn't. The plan had been to sneak up on the patrol, grab one of them and force General Cronan's current location out of him. As it was, all four of them were dead, and in no position to tell him anything. Screwed it up again.

It wouldn't be so bad if he had a clue where he was, but he didn't. Somewhere in the woods below the hilltop village of Shance, where Major-General Ambosc's cavalry detachment was spending the night before pressing on, probably just after first light, to meet up with the main army, and the general, at Cric. Put like that, it sounded precise and entirely sufficient; but the whole truth was rather different. In practice he had no idea which direction to go in, or where he was in the wood. He was lost.

…Which was infuriating, because there wasn't time for any such nonsense, not if he was to stand any chance of intercepting Cronan on his way to Cric (when he'd be at his most vulnerable, with only an honour guard of half a dozen cavalrymen, out in the open with nowhere to hide). He didn't even know for sure whether that plan was still feasible, since he wasn't very clear about how long he'd been in this damned wood, let alone how long it was going to take him to get out again. Of course the soldiers he'd stumbled across on the edge of this small, deceitful clearing could have told him, if only he'd had the wit to pretend to be a wandering trader or a government courier or something. Instead he'd killed them all. If it wasn't such a nuisance it'd be a joke.

He sat down on a moss-covered log and applied his mind to the problem. Now, unless the soldiers were lost too, it stood to reason that they were passing through the wood on their way somewhere, presumably following the track that he could just make out between the trees. Whether they'd been going up the track or down it was a secret they'd taken with them to the shadows; likewise, which direction led to Shance, and which ran straight back to Mahec Ford, where he'd just come from. Choices, options, decisions; Monach shook his head, he couldn't be doing with them. There's nothing on earth as helpless as a man lost in a wood, he reflected bitterly. It's as bad as losing your memory; you're left with nothing but what you're wearing and carrying, cut off from everything that might help you, with no very clear idea of what to do next or for the best.

Nothing else for it, he was going to have to guess. He pulled a face; ordained sword-brothers of the order didn't guess; either they knew or they found out. He wasn't even sure he knew how to go about it any more. Should he just close his eyes and start walking, or would it be more appropriate to use some formal method-tossing a coin, blowing a dandelion clock, observing the flight of roosting birds? Undoubtedly it was a point addressed somewhere in Doctrine, though he didn't know where was the best place to start researching the point. Genistus' Observances? The Secondary Digest? Lathano on General Procedure?

Roosting birds would seem to be the best bet; it was starting to get dark, and the sky was full of rooks and crows, wheeling and shrieking all around him. He chose a tree at random. If ten birds flew past it on the right before an equal number went by on the left, he'd go up the track, and vice versa. The idea had a certain charm; he could pretend it was an omen from the divine Poldarn, master of crows, rather than a wild, feckless guess.

Nine to the right, all in a clump, and only three to the left. One more needed on the right; but instead, a mob of seven flew left while the right side stayed clear. He followed the seven; six of them carried on but one peeled off, circled behind him and came back in on the right. Monach sighed. Did that one count, or would it constitute cheating? He shrugged. The way things were going with him, if he'd decided to flip a coin instead the wretched thing would probably have ended up landing on its edge.

Just to be awkward he went down the track, realising after a few yards that it was probably a mistake. After all, Shance was on the top of a hill, so didn't it stand to reason that he'd have to go uphill to get there? Unfortunately it wasn't quite as simple as that. He'd been going uphill whenever possible for a long time now, several hours at least, and where was he? Lost.

But he carried on nonetheless, and was rewarded by a sudden violent change in gradient. No question about it, he was going uphill now, for sure. This was promising, even if he did have to stop and lean against a tree for a few moments to catch his breath. The comforting width and straightness of the trail was reassuring too, a trail that gave every sign of knowing where it was going. Or coming from.

But it wasn't in any hurry. Once again he lost track of how long he'd been walking, and he couldn't help thinking that Shance Hill hadn't looked anything like this high or steep when he'd seen it in the distance from the road that morning. He was wondering whether it wouldn't be better after all to give up and retrace his steps when he came round a corner and saw a house.

Not just a shack or a shed, a real house, with a chimney and a porch, large enough to be a farmhouse or something of the sort. Better still, there was a cart outside, conspicuous in the small bald patch immediately surrounding the building. Monach got closer, and was rewarded with the sight of four horses tethered to a rail. It looked very much as though somebody was at home.

He knocked at the door-oak, grey with age but hanging straight and recently scraped clean of moss and lichen-but nothing happened. He couldn't quite understand that; the horses hadn't got there by themselves and tied their halters to a post, so it stood to reason that whoever had brought them here was still in the immediate vicinity. He pushed the door gently with the edge of his left hand, waited for a moment in case there was an ambush or booby trap, and walked quietly inside.

Ah, he said to himself, that would explain it.

There were two people sitting in chairs on opposite sides of a table, a man and a woman. The man had been killed by a single thrust to the heart, and was lolling backwards, his arms hanging down parallel with the legs of the chair. The woman's skull had been split by a square-on overhead cut, delivered with a sharp weapon and a lot of force. He recognised them as the god in the cart and his priestess, the two frauds he'd interrogated in the prison at Sansory.

Well, they weren't going to tell him the way out of the wood. He sighed, and made a closer examination. From the tone and texture of the dead flesh, not to mention the smell, he reckoned they'd been dead for two or three days, just conceivably longer since the house was more than a little chilly In which case that cart might well be their cart, but those horses weren't their horses, or if they were, someone else had fed and exercised them recently. Monach frowned. There was a reasonable chance that this mystery was nothing to do with him, and he certainly didn't have time to indulge his curiosity. On the other hand, if these two characters were spies or agents who'd been masquerading as frauds (a thoroughly unsuitable cover, but possible, and the manner of their deaths suggested something other than robbery or mere dislike), they might turn out to be very relevant indeed. Or not. He found he wanted very badly to know who'd been looking after the horses.

It was also curious, to say the least, that they were sitting facing each other, since the wounds that had killed them were the sort almost invariably inflicted from in front, and the table didn't look ferocious enough to have killed both of them before either of them had a chance to run away. Deliberately propping up dead bodies in chairs so as to give someone else a shock, or a warning? Monach shook his head. There was a lot of evidence to be read here, but he wasn't in the mood.

A horse, on the other hand, would come in handy. He shut the door quietly behind him and headed across the clearing into the trees, then made his way round in a circle through the briars and saplings and other tiresome undergrowth to a point where he could watch the horses for a while; the concept of bait was floating about in his mind, and he wasn't in such a tearing hurry as all that.

True, he'd had an exhausting time of it lately and not nearly enough sleep, but his first reaction, on waking up with a crick in his neck and one leg completely numb, was self-disgust and shame. That was quickly followed by fear; he'd been woken up by the sound of something coming towards him through the wood, and with his right leg asleep he couldn't move. Everything wrong, he told himself resentfully, all my fault. Of all the stupid things to happen He'd managed to crawl-hobble a few yards towards the edge of the wood when it occurred to him that he was going in the wrong direction. Out in the open, he'd be even more vulnerable, unless he had time to get to one of the horses-but even if he did make it that far, how was he proposing to get on the creature's back with one leg out of commission? He stopped, leaning against a tree as the pins and needles surged up his leg as far as his groin. He couldn't face going back, directly towards whatever was making the noise (more than one of it, whatever it was). Going forward didn't appeal. Staying put was very probably a bad idea too, but he didn't feel up to anything else. He closed his eyes and begged for it all to have been a dream.

They came out of the undergrowth around him as if by magic, like fish jumping up through the mirror surface of a still lake; eight men, armed. 'Where the hell have you been?' one of them asked.

Monach slumped a little against the tree he was standing by. 'I could ask you the same question,' he said. 'I got fed up waiting for you, so I set off on my own. Bloody fine back-up squad you turned out to be.'

They were, of course, sword-monks, eight of the ten men he'd chosen specially for the job of tracking down and killing the commander-in-chief of an imperial field army. He'd posted their orders on the chapter door two hours before he was due to leave, and they hadn't shown up. Now, apparently, they were here, having followed his trail and tracked him down in the depths of this impenetrable wood, where even he hadn't a clue where he was. He couldn't help feeling impressed. 'All right,' he said, 'we'll go into all that later. Which way is Shance?'

One of them grinned. 'You mean to say you're lost?'

'Yes,' Monach admitted, tentatively pressing the sole of his foot on the ground and wincing. 'And we're very short on time.' He paused. 'Do any of you know anything about the two dead bodies in that house?'

One of the monks shook his head. 'We've only just got here,' he said.

'Oh.' He thought for a moment. 'You three, you're coming with me. Get that cart spanned in, and you'd better know the quickest way to Shance. The rest of you, follow on as quick as you can. And keep your eyes open; somebody killed a man and a woman, possibly spies, in there; those are probably their horses.'

'Our spies or theirs?' one of the monks asked.

'Haven't a clue,' Monach replied (define ours; define theirs). 'Don't get sidetracked, mind; if you see them, keep out of their way, that's all. Understood?'

He didn't explain why he had to hobble slowly to the cart, and they didn't ask. Neither did he ask, or they volunteer, how they'd found him. He let one of the brothers drive; he wasn't very good at it, never having had much experience.

The brother found it humiliatingly simple to get out of the wood; he just followed the road, which came out on the top of a ridge. Less than half a mile away was a walled town, coiled round a spur like a length of rope. Shance, presumably.

'So,' the brother said (nobody had said anything since they left the house in the wood), 'what happens here?'

Monach, who'd been half dozing again, sat up sharply. His leg was fine now, but his neck was still painful. 'We need to find a prefect or a duty officer, someone who can tell us where Cronan's going to be coming from.'

'Coming from.' The brother thought for a moment. 'So we know where he's going, then.'

Monach nodded. 'Cric,' he replied. 'Of course, there's every chance he's there already, but it's worth a try. Certainly better than trying to get at him in the middle of a military camp.'

'Agreed,' said another brother in the back of the cart. 'So how do we go about it?'

Of course, Monach hadn't given it any thought. He wasn't inclined to try barging in and beating it out of them, whoever they were. Far better to be subtle, using some persona or other-superior officer, government courier, spy, something from his usual repertoire. He half turned.

'Scout around in the back there,' he said, 'see what you can find in the way of clothes and stuff. We've got to pretend we're staff officers or messengers or imperial agents, something like that, and right now we're unmistakably scruffy monks.'

A little later, the brother reported back. 'There's clothes in here all right,' he said, 'but I don't think they'll really be all that suitable for what you've got in mind. This stuff is weird.'

He held a sample up for Monach to see: a black velvet robe embroidered with glass thread, further decorated with paste gemstones and sequins forming mystic-looking symbols. 'Bloody hell,' Monach sighed, remembering who the cart had formerly belonged to. 'That's no use, then, unless one of you jokers feels up to impersonating a god.'

The monk frowned. 'Do gods wear this sort of thing, then?' he asked. 'I'd have credited them with better taste, personally.'

Monach laughed. 'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'Not any gods I've ever come across, anyway. Well, if we can't be gods, we'll just have to be spies. All comes down to the same thing in the long run.'

The sword-monks looked at each other but didn't say anything, and the cart rolled up to the town gate. A bored-looking halberdier waved them through-just as well, Monach realised; his imagination wasn't up to the task of concocting a plausible explanation for a cartload of illegal divine vestments.

At least finding the prefecture wasn't a problem. It was where it ought to be, in the old, thick-walled tower overlooking the road, at the weakest point in the town's natural defences. A clerk told them the prefect wasn't there; he was out with the garrison on exercises, and hadn't said when he was likely to be back. No, he couldn't see the duty officer, the duty officer was a busy man… Monach handed him the pass, signed by Father Abbot and wearing the Great Seal of the order. Suddenly, the duty officer's schedule turned out to be far less hectic than the clerk had first believed.

'I'm sorry,' the duty officer said, plainly terrified at the thought of four sword-monks in the same town as himself, let alone the same small half-circular room at the top of the tower. 'I really wish I could help, but I can't, I've got specific orders not to release the general's itinerary to anybody without-'

'You idiot,' Monach growled. 'How many times have I got to explain this before it seeps through the cracks in your brain? They're going to kill the general. They're going to ambush him somewhere on the road, cut his head off and take it to Feron Amathy in a jar of spiced honey, unless you stop fooling around and tell me which road he's going by, so we can get to him, warn him and fight off this ambush. Do you understand? If you don't give me that itinerary, the general is going to die, and it'll all be your fault.'

The duty officer looked as if the whole town had just been buried by a landslide and he was the sole survivor, the man who'd set it all off by throwing a pebble at the side of the cliff face. 'Well, I suppose it'll be all right,' he said at last, 'since you're religious, after all; I mean, if you can't trust a priest, it'd be a pretty poor show.' He pulled a brass tube out of the jumble on his desk and fished out a roll of thin, crisp paper. 'All right,' he said. 'I don't know much, no reason anybody should tell me, after all, but before he left the prefect got this.' He unrolled the paper, which proved to be a map. 'He had orders from Cronan to meet him with the garrison at this village here, Cric. The orders said that Cronan would be coming up the north-west road from Lesar's Bridge-that's down here, see, that squiggle; you can just make it out if you look closely. And here's the road-well, it isn't actually marked on this map, but it follows the line of this little river here; if you find the river, you'll find the road.' An unpleasant thought struck him, and his face changed. 'What if you're too late and they've already ambushed him? God, that'd be terrible.'

Monach requisitioned the map, together with another one that had rather more places and things marked on it, and left the tower as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. 'Right,' he said, as they clambered back into the cart, 'here's what we'll do. You four, find whatever passes for a horsefair in this town, get yourselves four horses and cut up across the top here.' He prodded the map. 'If you get a move on and don't stop to admire the scenery, you might just catch up with him. I'll head for Cric and see what's happening there. If he's already arrived, of course-well, we'll skin that goat when we get to it.'

The monks nodded agreement. 'Just one thing,' one of them asked. 'Can you give us a few more details? I mean, all we really know about what's involved is what you told the man back there; someone's going to try and kill General Cronan, we've got to stop them-'

'What?' Monach looked up. 'No, you've got that completely wrong. Didn't anybody tell you?'

The monk looked puzzled. 'We assumed-'

'Don't. Our orders are to kill General Cronan. Got that?'

There was a moment of complete silence. 'Understood,' the monk said. 'Any other considerations?'

'You aren't monks, you don't belong to the order, you've probably never even heard of the order. Try not to get captured or killed if you can avoid it. That's it.'

'Understood,' the monk repeated, and it was as if his former impression, his misunderstanding of the object of the mission, had never existed. 'We'll need some money for the horses.'

Monach searched in his sleeve and took out a small cloth bag. 'Twenty gross-quarters,' he said. 'While you're at it-this is a long shot, so don't waste too much time on it-see if you can lay your hands on at least one raider backsabre. You see them in markets sometimes. If you can get one, use it for the kill. A little confusion never hurt anybody.' He looked at each of the monks in turn. 'Does anybody have a problem with any of that?' he asked.

'Not really,' replied one of the monks, a newly ordained brother tutor. 'It's just that I can't help wondering what all this has got to do with religion.'

Of course, Monach knew the answer to that, and recited it to himself several times as he drove the cart north towards Cric. In its simplest form:

1. The order is the world's most important centre for the preservation, study, teaching and development of doctrine; therefore 2. The survival of the order is essential to religion; therefore 3. Any steps taken to preserve, protect or strengthen the order are by definition beneficial to the order and acts of grace.

Simple. Even second-year novices could grasp the logic. As for 'steps taken to preserve, protect or strengthen', the only definition of the phrase that a brother tutor needed to know was 'whatever a superior officer tells you to do', the argument being that if the superior cleric was in error and the mission turns out not to qualify as an act of grace, the brother carrying out his instructions nevertheless enjoys as much grace and absolution as if the mission had been legitimate. Without a provision like that, the work of the order simply couldn't get done; you'd have brothers and brother tutors and canons and possibly even novices questioning every instruction they were given, from kill the general down to it's your turn to bale out the latrines on the grounds of imperfect doctrine and heresy. Religion in the empire would collapse inside a year.

In which case, why did his mind keep returning to the question, like a child picking at a scab?

It was the fault of these confoundedly slow carthorses, giving him too much leisure to worry away at things he shouldn't even be thinking about. Religion, after all, was something quite specific and concrete as far as he was concerned. Religion was the ultimate grace expressed in the form of the perfect draw, in which there is no delay whatever between the infringement of the circle and the cut; the draw that is no draw, because it's too fast to be perceived with the senses and therefore by any reasonable criteria doesn't exist.

(So too with the gods; the gods are beings so perfect that they can't be perceived with the senses and can therefore only exist inside the grace of impossible perfection; the eye can't see everything at once, the ear can't hear every voice simultaneously, the body can't be everywhere at the same time; accordingly, the all-seeing, all-hearing, omnipresent must be divine, as invisibly real as the city just out of sight over the horizon, or land that can't be seen from the crow's nest; the faster the draw, the nearer to God, and to be impossibly close to God is to be God. Nothing could be more straightforward than that.)

Monach frowned. He'd made that speech to five years' intakes of novices, and it had made sense even to them, implying that it had to be true. Now, though, it made him think about the god in the cart, what he'd heard from Allectus, and the two dead bodies in the wood. What is perfection, he asked himself, but the elimination of everything that isn't the true essence, the fluxing off and purging away of all impurities from the meniscus of the molten metal (metal that's lost its memory in the fire; the divine Poldarn, who doesn't know he's a god)? To become perfect, to become God, you must eliminate thought, fear, memory, anything and everything that lies between the sheathed and the unsheathed sword And instead, here he was out in the world, sitting in a cart behind four of the slowest horses in the empire, on his way to murder a general. Good question: what did all this have to do with religion? Except that instinctive, unthinking obedience is grace, just as much as the instinctive, unthinking draw. The hand doesn't need to know why the enemy has violated the circle, or where the merits of the quarrel lie, and neither does the sword-monk. God draws us, and we cut.

One good thing about these speculations was that they kept his mind occupied all the way to Cric.

At first glance he didn't recognise the place. For one thing it was full of soldiers. There were tents everywhere, and spear stacks and carts and shovels and pickaxes and mattocks leaning against the sides of half-finished trenches. There were portable forges for the farriers and cutlers and armourers; a stack of cordwood taller than any of the houses; rafts of posts, piles and rails from which the carpenters were building a corral for the horses; a big round tent that didn't need a sign or board outside-the smell alone announced that it was the field kitchen. Above all there were men, each of them busy with some task or other. They made the place look like a city. A soldier came up and asked who he was and what he was doing there, but that was all right, because he'd prepared an identity. He told the soldier some name or other, ignored the rest of the question and asked if the general had arrived yet.

'Why do you want to know that?' the soldier asked. He had an accent that Monach couldn't quite place.

'None of your business,' Monach said. 'Is he here or isn't he?'

The soldier shook his head. 'He's expected,' he added. 'Any time now, in fact. What's it to you?'

Monach pulled a face. 'All right,' he said, 'which direction is he coming from? I'd better go out to meet him, this can't wait.'

'Messenger, are you?' Monach didn't answer that. All right, please yourself,' the soldier went on. 'He ought to be coming in up the east road.'

Monach knew that already, of course. Still, it did no harm to verify. 'East road,' he muttered, 'that figures. Right, thank you, I'd better get moving.'

An hour up the road, he was overtaken by a horseman riding dangerously fast on the sloppy, stony road. It turned out to be one of the sword-monks he'd sent after Cronan.

He pulled up and waited for the monk to come back and talk to him. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he asked him.

The monk was grey with exhaustion. 'Came back to find you,' he said. 'Bad information. Cronan wasn't coming this way after all. Wild-goose chase.'

Monach scowled. 'Bloody hell,' he groaned. 'Where did you get that from?'

'Courier,' the monk replied. 'Carrying a letter under Chaplain Cleapho's personal seal, telling Cronan to sit tight at the Faith and Fortitude till he's told otherwise. Here,' he added, pulling a rolled-up page from his pocket; he tried to hand it down and dropped it instead. Monach retrieved it and read it quickly.

'Buggery,' he said. 'That screws up everything. Where did you find this courier, then?'

The monk closed his eyes, struggling to find the words. 'Back along,' he said, 'maybe an hour up the road from here. Courier said he was coming down from Toizen.'

'What? Toizen's on the north coast. What in hell's name is Cleapho doing all the way up there?'

The monk had just enough strength to shrug his shoulders. Monach shook his head. 'I'm not sure about this,' he said. 'Yes, that looks like Cleapho's seal, and I've seen it once or twice before, but it could be a good fake. Then again, why would anybody want to fake a message like that? If Cronan's not at the Faith and Fortitude, he'll know that a letter telling him to stay there must be phoney. I don't get this at all.'

The monk sighed impatiently. 'Well, he's not where you said he'd be. We've been up and down this road, no sign of him. Nobody's seen anything like a troop of cavalry, either. So, that letter may or may not be bad information; what you got from the captain in Shance definitely was. Go figure.'

Monach thought for a moment. 'All right,' he said. 'Where's this courier now?'

'Ah.' The monk grinned. 'That's more a matter of theology than geography.'

'You mean you killed him?'

'Wouldn't hold still,' the monk explained. 'It was that or let him get away.'

Monach shook his head. 'Just for once,' he said, 'wouldn't it be nice if something turned out the way it's supposed to? All right, not your fault. Where are the others?'

'Heading for the Faith and Fortitude,' the monk replied, 'Wherever the hell that might be. Brother Aslem reckoned he knows where it is.'

'Halfway between Josequin and Selce,' Monach said. 'Please, tell me that's where they're headed.'

'I think so. Doesn't mean a lot to me, because I haven't a clue where Selce is, either, but I'm fairly sure that's what Aslem said.'

Monach sighed. 'That's something, I suppose,' he said. 'All right, here's what I want you to do.' He clicked his tongue. 'First,' he said, 'find a tree or a bush or something and rest; I'd say come with me back to the camp at Cric, but I don't think you'll make it that far in the state you're in. When you're feeling better, I want you to head back to Shance, find that little snot of a duty officer and put the fear of the gods into him-tell him he's a traitor, deliberately misleading us, put it on thick as you can, because I need to know where this CO got his false orders from; someone's playing games with someone else, and if we can find out who, we might stand a chance of figuring all this out. When you've done that, get back here to Cric; if I'm not there, you can bet I'll be at the Faith and Fortitude. If I'm not, get yourself back to Deymeson and tell them there's something very screwy going on, and to make ready for an attack, just in case. I don't think either Cronan or Tazencius has tumbled to what we're up to,' he added, as a look of fear crossed the monk's face. 'I certainly can't think of any way they could've found out, and we haven't actually done anything yet, so it couldn't be educated guesswork; still, better safe than sorry, and if all this is deliberately to mislead us, somebody must know what we're up to and they may just possibly consider a direct attack on the order. Not worth the risk. You got that?'

'I think so,' the monk replied, yawning hugely. 'Sorry,' he added. 'And you're right. I've got to stop for a rest, before I fall off and break my silly neck.'

Monach left him to it, turned the cart round and headed back to Cric. It was just his rotten luck, he reflected, to find himself in the middle of a situation that was far too complicated for him to manage, with responsibility for the survival of the order, possibly the empire as well, and nobody to tell him what to do or how to do it. All his life he'd been taught not to think for himself-better still, not to think, just draw and cut, guided by faith and instinct. All his life he'd been warned that the overall view, the big picture was not for the likes of him, at least not until he'd achieved enlightenment and been promoted to Father. All his life, he'd been trained to believe in the value of instinct and ignorance, two qualities which weren't likely to get him very far in his present situation. No wonder that he felt such a strong affinity with the divine Poldarn, harbinger of confusion, the god who didn't know he was a god.

A bizarre thought occurred to him, and he laughed out loud. Maybe he was Poldarn.

The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became. Here he was, driving through the northern villages in a cart, liable at any moment to make a mistake that would plunge the empire into war, bring about the destruction of the order (which would mean the end of religion, since it was an article of faith in the order that nobody else knew the most fundamental bases of doctrine) and quite possibly open the gates to the enemy incarnate, the raiders-how they fitted into the picture he wasn't sure; but then again, if he was Poldarn, that was to be expected; that they were involved in some way he was absolutely certain.

It started to rain, but he hardly noticed. Of course; that solved everything. Had Father Tutor known who he really was? Of course; Father Tutor knew everything, and that was why he'd chosen him for the mission, sent him to find out the truth about rumours of his own (false) appearances. Unfortunately, he'd been too stupid to make the obvious connections at the time, and Father Tutor had died before he'd had a chance to explain-or perhaps it was essential that Poldarn should remain ignorant of his true identity until the end of the world had been successfully encompassed-in which case something had gone wrong, he'd failed; had Father Tutor sent him on the mission on purpose to expose him to the truth and therefore make the end of the world impossible? Just the sort of thing you'd expect a father tutor of the order to do-frustrate destiny, save the world from its appointed doom. Had he always been Poldarn, he wondered, or was divinity something that happened to you later in life, like puberty or baldness; was it something you were chosen for, on merit, like the priesthood? If so, what had he done to deserve it? Had he been chosen out of all the world because he was the only man alive stupid enough to become a god and not realise it? Above all, what ought he to do next? As Poldarn, it was his duty to bring about the end of the world, but Father Abbot had ordered him to kill Cronan because that was the only thing that could save the world from ending. Which took precedence, his duty as a god or the direct orders of his superior officer? Or had Father Abbot sent him to kill Cronan because killing Cronan was the event that would bring about the end of the world-which would mean that Father Abbot had deliberately misled him; until recently, that would have been inconceivable, but now he knew that Father Abbot fornicated with loose women in the dead of night, he had to admit it was possible.

What should he do next? Trust his instincts, of course. Have faith. Above all, resist the disastrous temptation to think, because thought allows a moment to slide in between the breached circle and the draw, thought negates faith. To become God, you must become perfect, eliminate the moment, eliminate thought… Was that why he'd been chosen? Because he was the best of his year at swordfighting?

…And if my sister had six tits she'd be a cow, as they said in Sansory. He sighed, and shook his head. For a moment, he'd almost believed it, proving how easy it can be to pick up a bloody stupid notion, like a nail in the sole of your boot. Whoever he was (and at times it was hard to keep track, what with his true name and his name in religion and all those aliases), he was pretty certain he wasn't a god; and if he was a god he wouldn't be Poldarn, not if you paid him. The plain fact was, the gods didn't exist, as he'd known in his heart since he was a second-year novice. Religion wasn't about gods, it was all in your own mind, it was the self-denying moment between the instinct and the draw, nothing more or less than that. He grinned. A god who didn't know who he was, maybe. A god who's an atheist, no.

'Besides,' he said aloud, 'if I'm Poldarn, where's the crow?'

Whereupon not one but three crows erupted out of a tall, skinny ash tree beside the road and paddled noisily away through the wet air. For a moment, Monach sat quite still with his mouth open, then he burst out laughing.

He was still chuckling when he rolled into the camp at Cric. It was beginning to get dark, and the campfires stood out in the gloom, their light reflected in glowing clouds of smoke. The rain was falling steadily now, hard enough to make it difficult for Monach to think much further than shelter, warmth, food and sleep. He was wondering how these objectives might best be achieved when a soldier stepped out beside the cart and grabbed the lead horse's bridle.

'You're back, then,' he said. It was probably the man he'd spoken to earlier, he wasn't quite sure. 'You'd better get down and come with me. The general wants to see you.'

Monach woke up out of his train of thought with a snap. 'What?' he said. 'General Cronan?'

There were several soldiers now; lots of soldiers, a dozen at least and more coming. Two more were holding the horses, one was climbing up on to the box of the cart beside him, at least three behind him in the bed, and as many again closing in round him in a rapidly shrinking circle. While he sat still and tried to figure out what was going on, the soldier sitting next to him reached across and pulled the sword out of his scabbard, before he could do anything about it.

The first soldier's face broke into a grin. 'No,' he said, 'not General Cronan. General Feron Amathy. You coming quietly, or what?'