Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Two

They came for him the next morning, just as the voice in the night had said they would, and they took him to the abbot's lodgings, where the abbot told him all the lies the voice had warned him to expect. He pretended to believe them, just as the voice had advised him to do: Of course, he said, his voice low with wonder, it's all coming back to me now. I remember this place-over there's the drill hall, where I did my twelve grades, and the novices' dormitory's in the next yard over, and opposite that's the dining-hall. The voice had drilled it into him the night before, made him repeat it all a dozen times, to make sure the geography of the place was firmly fixed in his mind.

Listening to the deceptions, knowing the truth, Poldarn couldn't help feeling a sense of elation, of release-partly because he was the one who was deceiving them, not the other way round, mostly because now, for the first time in a long time, he knew who he was. To begin with it had come as a complete shock; then he'd started to remember-not actual memories, but fragments of dreams in which he'd been the man he now knew he was, in which he'd heard and seen and known things that couldn't possibly have been picked up by eavesdropping on stray conversations or extrapolating from what Copis had told him. Also, it made perfect sense, explained so many of the strange, meaningless things that had happened to him-the attack on the cart by the three horsemen, shortly before they reached Cric; the meeting with Chaplain Cleapho in Sansory, and the soldier who'd recognised him in the kitchens of the inn, the one he'd had to kill before he could make the man tell him his own name. Most exhilarating of all was the realisation that his life had meant something, that he'd attempted and achieved things worthy of his talents and abilities, that he was on the right side.

(And now he was about to achieve something else, far more important and beneficial than anything he'd ever done before; furthermore, he'd have the opportunity to punish the order with appropriate savagery for trying to trick and use him. No wonder he was the sworn enemy of these people, or that they'd been so keen to get him out of the way.)

He listened carefully to what they had to say, while speculating as to which of the grave, solemn men sitting round the table was the voice he'd heard the night before. Only one of them spoke, making it possible for Poldarn to eliminate him at once (the prior of observances; and he was too tall, anyhow), which left him nine to choose from. Five of them were the right height and build. He'd have time and opportunity to figure it out over the next few days, and then he'd be able to make direct contact with his ally and put into operation a plan of his own that ought, if everything went as it should, to set everything right.

(Your name, the voice had told him, is Cronan Suvilois. You were born on the sixth day of the Ninth, in the fourth year of Emperor Massin Dasa, in Torcea. Your family are southerners. Your father's name was Lalicot, and your mother, before her marriage, was called Actin Doricalceo. Your family was comfortable rather than wealthy, minor provincial nobility, of no great account in the capital; your father felt, correctly, that in order to make your way in the world you would need to follow a career, either the army or religion. Accordingly, when you were six years old, he sent you to the Paupers' Institute at Collibortaca-)

'Of course,' the abbot was saying, 'we appreciate the fact that you probably won't remember the details of what you used to know for some while yet; as it happens, we have doctors here who've made a study of your sort of condition and probably know more about it than anybody else in the empire. When there's time, we'll send them to take a look at you, see if there's anything they can do. I believe they've managed to cure some pretty stubborn cases in the past.'

'That'd be wonderful,' Poldarn said, making a mental note to add this to the list of crimes for which these people had to be punished, this wanton planting of false hopes. 'You don't know how much it means to me, even the hope of someone finding a cure. It'd be something to live for.'

The abbot nodded. 'Plenty of time for that later,' he said. His face was stern but sympathetic, wisdom, justice and mercy combined in it like three elderly sisters sharing a house, ideal for the role of father, or god. 'First things first; we've got to get you back to where you're needed. Probably best if we supply you with an escort-trying to keep track of where you'd be likely to run into one of Cronan's scouting or foraging parties is a sure way to go mad, the way this war's going. With fifty horsemen along for the ride, it won't actually matter who you run into, short of a full cavalry squadron or a field army.'

Awkward, Poldarn thought, but he had the presence of mind to appear pleased and grateful. He did it very well, and that seemed to disconcert the monks. No bad thing, needless to say.

'Talking of which,' he asked as a diversion, or the equivalent of a rest in music, 'how is the war going? Has anything much been happening?'

The abbot smiled. 'That's a very good question,' he said. 'If you mean battles and sieges and the like, then no, not much. It's what's not been happening that's so confusing.'

It wasn't just the abbot who talked like that, of course. These monks all seemed to have the annoying habit of being gratuitously cryptic. He wondered what it was like in the dining-hall, when the grand prior wanted to ask the dean of the archives to pass the horseradish.

(You graduated with honours from the Academy of Arts and War at nineteen, the voice had said, the youngest officer ever to join the service. Your first command was a platoon of pioneers attached to a frontier station on the Morevich border-no accident that you were given such a miserable assignment, you'd made enemies as well as friends at the Academy. That was the year the raiders sacked Malevolinza; with the main provincial garrison wiped out to a man, your station was the only Imperial resource left between the mountains and the sea. The Morevich rebels and the mountain tribesmen saw their chance; a dawn attack came within a hair's breadth of forcing the gates. They were beaten back, but all the station's command staff were killed in the first hour, leaving you in charge of a desperate, impossible defence-)

'When do you think I should leave?' he asked. 'From what you've just told me, it'd better be sooner than later, surely.'

The abbot dipped his head in agreement. 'Quite right,' he said. 'There are a few things we'll need to sort out in due course, and when you get back we'll have to give you a quick refresher course on being a sword-monk, and a good bit of additional background material on Brother Stellico, to make up for what you can't remember yet. But there really isn't time for any of that now.'

What if they were telling the truth, and the voice in the night had been lying?

He let the thought sit quiet for a moment, afraid of waking it up. 'What about my-' Involuntary hesitation; couldn't think of the right word. 'Wife' wasn't true; 'friend' was fatuously coy. 'What about my business partner?' he asked. 'I haven't seen her since this morning.'

The abbot frowned. 'Oh, she'll be all right,' he said. 'Of course,' he went on, 'it'll be awkward for her, losing her associate so suddenly, but we'll see to it she's not out of pocket.'

That was the first time that it occurred to Poldarn that there wouldn't be a place for Copis in this new old life of his. Was he still married? He didn't know; oh, he knew all manner of things about himself just from having overheard them in inns and bakers' shops, besides what the voice had told him, but the things he wanted to know weren't the sort of thing that anybody else could possibly know.

'That's all right, then,' he said. 'So what'll you do? Let her go back to Sansory?'

The abbot nodded. 'If you like, we can provide her with an escort,' he said. 'Probably just as well, if she's carrying a large sum of money and with the roads as they are.'

'I'd appreciate that,' Poldarn said, wondering if he'd just made a serious mistake. They couldn't help but have heard the note of concern in his voice, the one that proclaimed, I care about this person, who would therefore make an ideal hostage, loud enough that they'd probably heard it in Boc. If he'd kept quiet and not mentioned her, perhaps they'd have forgotten about her and left her alone-no, precious little chance of that. He had an idea that the order made a virtue of scrupulous attention to detail. Still, going on about her now would only make things worse, and it wasn't as if he was in any position to do anything constructive for her.

(Your first marriage, to Bolceanar Hutto, was purely a political affair, and ended in divorce once you achieved your first prefecture, to the great satisfaction of all parties. When you were twenty-six, however, and just about to leave Torcea to assume command of the expedition against the Fodrati, you made the drastic mistake of marrying for love. Sornith Eollo was the daughter of a prosperous building contractor rather heavily involved in bidding for military contracts-not to put too fine a point on it, for a master tactician you were either blind or deliberately obtuse. It didn't help that your feud with the young princes was just starting to become a major annoyance-it was the year of your infamous duel with Tazencius, which led to his disgrace and earned you the undying hatred of the entire Revisionist faction-)

'Well,' the abbot said, 'I think that's more or less everything. Welcome back to the order, Brother Stellicho, and the best of luck for your mission.'

That signified the end of the interview; he could feel them turning over his page and moving on to the next item of business. He allowed himself to be politely shooed out of the room by the four sword-monks who hadn't left his side since early that morning, and went with them across the yard, through a couple of arches, past the stables and the coach-house He didn't stop, because he didn't need to. When a man's been jolting and rattling along muddy, rutted roads in a cart for any length of time, he gets to the point where he can recognise that cart by the thickness of its tyres or the degree of warp in the side panels. Definitely his cart, their cart, but it was backed in and surrounded by a dozen others in the coachhouse, suggesting it had been subsumed into the transport pool, to be booked out and assigned to the duty carter next time a load of charcoal needed to be fetched or two dozen crates of chickens brought up from the market.

Attention to detail, just as he'd guessed. Easy enough to reconstruct what had happened. A monk would have come back from the lower town that morning and sent for a carter, explaining that there was a cart down at the inn, and that its owners wouldn't be needing it any more; if it stayed there, the innkeeper might get to wondering what had become of the man and woman who'd brought it in-he wouldn't say anything out loud, of course, but loose ends like that are bad for morale. So the monk would have given the carter some kind of warrant or letter of authority, and the carter would have given it to the innkeeper, and the innkeeper would have told his groom to get the cart ready, and the carter would have turned it over to the transport officer or the duty officer, who would have told him to put it away with the others (waste not, want not; men and women die every day, but a functional cart is valuable property), and the cart itself would henceforth serve the order, purged of its identity and memory, because a piece of equipment is there to serve and be used by whoever has a right to it.

'Just a moment,' he said, slowing down without stopping. 'I left some things in my cart last night. Would it be all right if we stopped off at the inn and picked them up?'

'Don't worry about it,' one of the monks replied. 'We'll arrange for all your stuff to be collected and kept for you till you get back. If there's anything you need, we can stop by the quartermaster's.'

They were in perfect position, two in front and two behind, just outside his circle. If they'd been closer or there had only been three of them, he'd have given it a try. But the order wouldn't make a mistake like that. Poldarn shrugged. 'No, the hell with it,' he said. 'It wasn't anything important.'

'There'll be a horse waiting for you at the gate,' the monk continued. 'You'll have three days' rations, money for expenses in the saddlebag, change of clothes, blanket, water bottle, all the usual kit. Is there anything else you might need, do you think?'

Poldarn didn't smile, though he felt moved to do so. 'Well,' he said, 'there's my book. Normally I wouldn't go anywhere without it, but just this once won't hurt.'

The monk was curious. 'Book?'

Poldarn nodded. 'Marvellous thing,' he said, 'contains all the wisdom in the world. Still, I won't be needing it for this job, I don't suppose.'

'All the wisdom in the world,' the monk repeated. 'Must be a big book, then.'

'Quite big,' Poldarn replied. 'Not as big as the recipe book, but it makes a good pillow.'

The cavalry escort was waiting for him: fifty sword-monks, in dark brown and grey coats drawn from the quartermaster's bin marked 'Riding Coat, Civilian, Nondescript'. Would they be wearing armour under them, he wondered, or didn't sword-monks feel the need of steel rings and scales when they had their invisible circle of sharp steel around them at all times? If getting away from four monks on foot was beyond him, escaping from fifty of them on fast horses wasn't going to be any easier. Falx Roisin would have been delighted to give any one of them a job riding dangerous cargo.

On an impulse he turned to the monk he'd already talked to and asked him, 'What do you know about a god called Poldarn?'

The monk hesitated for a moment, then grinned. 'Bit late to be asking that now, isn't it?' he said. 'Besides, it should be me asking you, shouldn't it?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Well, you know,' he said. 'I always like to know who I've been.'

'You were pretty good at it, by all accounts,' the monk replied. 'But really, she should've known better, or else she didn't know. Talk about tempting providence.'

'I don't quite follow,' Poldarn said quietly.

'Oh, no, of course,' the monk said. 'I forgot, sorry. The thing about Poldarn is, you see, that anybody who gets up in the cart with him always dies.' He made a vague gesture with his right hand. 'You could just about come up with a worse omen, but it'd take some fairly serious research. Still, there you are.'

'Quite,' Poldarn replied. The monk had moved very slightly out of position, no more than a single step, but enough. He could see the sequence perfectly clearly in his mind's eye, as if he was remembering something that had already happened. From the draw, he cut the side of this monk's neck and carried on, so that the curved tip sliced into the soft skin under the second monk's chin as he stepped away and left. By this time the two monks behind him had drawn and were one step, of the right foot forward, which was why his turn pivoted around his left heel, bringing the overhead diagonal slash perfectly in line with the left-side monk's right wrist; then the clever move, dodging left to keep the wounded man between himself and the fourth opponent, just long enough for a feinted lunge to make him shy backwards into a right-side rising cut to the chin; the wounded man, dealt with at his leisure, completed the pile of bodies, all four dead before the first hit the ground. And Father Tutor, looking on with grudging approval 'Is something the matter?' the monk asked him.

Poldarn looked up sharply. Last time he'd looked, the monk had been toppling over backwards with the white of his spine showing through the red lips of the cut. Then he remembered: that hadn't actually happened, or not yet. On the other side of the yard, three birds pitched on the ridge of a roof. He looked again, and saw that they were pigeons.

'This may sound like a silly question,' Poldarn asked slowly, 'but do we know each other?'

The monk actually smiled. 'You're remembering, aren't you?' he said. 'Go on, see if you can…'

'No,' Poldarn snapped. 'You tell me.'

'All right.' The monk was still smiling. Three of them were now out of position, as good as dead; in another part of his mind he could see a fine mist of a few drops of their blood, hanging for a tiny moment in the air. 'My name's Torcuat. Ring any bells?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Names don't mean anything to me. Tell me how long we've known each other.'

'Since sixth grade, actually,' Torcuat replied. 'At least, we were in the same class, but so were a hundred other kids. You were always the high flyer, of course; four months in sixth grade and then straight on to seventh. I was stuck in sixth for another two years, and by then you were a junior proctor. Then you were my-'

'Tutor in swordsmanship for six months,' Poldarn said. 'You were clumsy. In fact you were worse than clumsy, you were a menace to yourself and others. You even dropped your sword once, I wanted to have you thrown out of the school-'

The monk grinned, and pulled up the left leg of his trousers to show his ankle. 'There,' he said, 'see it?'

Poldarn saw it very clearly indeed: a crescent-shaped pink scar, just above the bone. He could remember the same mark when it was gushing blood; how he'd almost panicked, for just a moment convinced himself that one of his students was going to bleed to death right there in the schools, and that'd be the end of his teaching career. He looked up at Torcuat's face.

'I remember you,' he said. 'You used to keep-'

He couldn't say the words.

'A crow in a cage,' Torcuat said. 'Horrible, mangy old thing, and it wouldn't eat table scraps-just my luck, a gourmet crow; I had to go scrabbling about in the cellars hunting mice for the useless bloody creature, and even then it wouldn't touch them till they were three days old.'

Poldarn took a step back and to the side, putting all four monks back into position, like a king granting a reprieve to condemned men already standing on the gallows drop. 'It had a gold ring round its neck,' he said.

Torcuat laughed. 'Brass, actually,' he said. 'It was a curtain ring, from the big hall at home. About the only thing I ever had to remember home by, actually; I left when I was six. It was you held that damned crow still while I shoved that ring down over its head-'

'Poldarn. It was supposed to be Poldarn's crow.'

Torcuat was beaming now. 'You do remember,' he said.

'Yes, that's right. We had that southern kid in the dormitory with us, we wanted to scare him out of his wits because he believed in Poldarn, and seeing the crow… You know, I'd forgotten that myself till you reminded me.'

Poldarn took a step forward and left. 'The woman I came with,' he said. 'What's happened to her?'

The abrupt change of subject seemed to take Torcuat a little by surprise. 'I don't know,' he said, fluently enough. 'I guess she'll be going back to Sansory, unless she feels like staying here for a while. Weren't you two doing a good trade down in the town? Maybe she'll be hanging on for a day or so, carrying on the good work.'

That would, perhaps, explain the cart. 'I think I'd like to go back for my book now,' Poldarn said.

Torcuat shook his head. 'Sorry,' he replied, 'but we've kept the escort hanging about long enough as it is, standing around chatting like this. Under the circumstances, of course-' His eyes lit up. 'I know,' he said. 'What if I were to change places with the escort sergeant? Then we could carry on talking about old times, and you-'

He didn't draw. Instead, he swung his fist, smacking Torcuat so hard on the point of the chin that the monk dropped immediately, like a sheaf thrown out of a hayloft. For a moment the other three hesitated, unable to cope with an assailant who hadn't drawn and therefore couldn't be restrained with deadly force. The moment was long enough for Poldarn to take four quick, short steps backwards, clearing their circles.

'What the hell do you…?' one of them shouted, and the captain of the escort lifted his head and stared. By then, though, Poldarn was standing beside the horse so thoughtfully provided for him (but there would always be a horse standing by when he needed one, and a sword ready to his hand when he felt the inclination to spill blood). He mounted awkwardly, his foot slipping out of the stirrup at his first attempt, but he still had time in hand when he grabbed the reins and pulled the horse's head round, facing it away from the gate and towards the inner yards. Tactically it was a mistake-not running to any place in particular, just running away-but just for once, when he wanted choices there weren't any.

As he passed under the gate arch, a monk with a staff stepped out of the shadows about twelve yards in front of him. He pitied the poor fool as he reached for his sword, but the monk took a step forward, turned sideways and threw the staff at him like a javelin. The squared-off point hit him in the middle of his chest; he felt his feet drop out of the stirrups, then all he saw was dancing sky, until something very broad and fast-moving slammed into his back.

The monk put a boot across his throat before he could move. Neither of them said anything.

'Well done.' He couldn't look round, of course, but he recognised Torcuat's voice. 'Is he damaged?'

The monk shook his head. 'Shouldn't be,' he said.

'That's all right then. Bastard nearly broke my jaw,' Torcuat went on, his voice suggesting that he found it hard to understand how anyone could bring himself to resort to violence. Someone stooped down and relieved Poldarn of his sword. So this is what losing feels like, he said to himself. Actually, it's even worse than I'd imagined.

They lifted him up, and two monks held his hands behind his back while a third tied his wrists together with thin, sharp cord. 'What was all that about, anyway?' Torcuat asked. 'One moment we were talking about the Poldarn legend, the next you were trying to ram my teeth down my throat. Was it something I said?'

They turned him through ninety degrees so that he was facing the main gate. Of course, the fifty horsemen, his cavalry escort, had been watching the whole time. Most of them hadn't moved. He wondered what they were making of all this.

'I told you,' he replied. 'I want to go back for my book.'

'What? Oh, there really is a book, then. I thought you were joking.' Torcuat rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Why didn't you just say so?'

'I did. You didn't seem to be listening.'

'Oh, for pity's sake.' Torcuat shrugged, then turned to one of his colleagues. 'Be a good man, run up to the provost's office, get him to open up our friend's locker and find this book of his.' He looked back at Poldarn. 'You haven't got more than one book, have you? I wouldn't want him fetching the wrong one.'

Poldarn shook his head. With his hands tied and the monks bracing his feet with their own, it was about the only part of himself he could move. Curious, he thought. When I didn't know who I was, I could do any damn thing I liked. Now I'm me again, and I can't even wipe my own nose.

'That's all right, then,' Torcuat said. 'Otherwise, we could be here all day. Right, if you'd be kind enough to follow me.'

They marched him across the yard and lifted him like a dead weight into the saddle. Two monks passed a rope around his waist and tied it to the pommel (attention to detail…). By the time they'd finished, the monk was back with Poldarn's book and had tucked it into his saddlebag.

'Cheer up,' Torcuat called out after him as the escort moved off. 'You'll probably find you like it when you get there.'

Six horsemen held perfect position around him: two in front, two behind and one on either side, making rescue as impossible as escape. They'd put his sword back in its scabbard, but since he couldn't even reach it with his teeth, thanks to the rope around his waist, he couldn't imagine it being much use to him. The main street of the lower town was just as empty as when he'd last seen it, but there was quite a long line at the gate (they rode round it) and most of the people waiting in it seemed to be staring at him as he went past. He assumed that they were looking at the monk's habit and issue boots he'd been given to wear, and were wondering what a brother of the order could possibly have done to warrant forcible restraint and expulsion under heavy guard. Their faces suggested that they were watching a god being thrown out of heaven. That reminded him; he looked up at the branches of the trees beside the gate. No crows anywhere.

(Figures, he thought. No cart, no priestess, no superhuman strength and skill with weapons. Why would a crow waste his time looking at me now?)

He wondered what they would do to Copis; whether they'd done it yet; whether he'd ever find out. What a terrible thing it must be, he thought, to be a soldier dying in the middle of a battle, never knowing whether his side won or lost. Victory in war must go to the party the gods favour most, the one with right on its side (or where was the point in it?); to die without knowing if you'd been right or wrong was a special kind of torture that the gods must reserve for only the most hopelessly evil and depraved.

An hour after Deymeson dropped down out of sight behind the horizon, the column stopped suddenly. It was open country, apart from a large wood a few hundred yards away on the left and a small, steep hill crowned with five spruce trees beyond that. There was no obvious reason for stopping here.

A horseman detached himself from the front of the column and rode back to the middle, where Poldarn was. He stopped his horse a yard or so away.

'Recognise me?' he said.

Poldarn nodded. 'You were at the council meeting in the abbot's lodgings,' he said.

'That's right. And?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'Say something else,' he said.

The monk was short and fat, with very curly grey hair and a rather babyish face. 'All right,' he said. 'What'd you like me to say?'

'I don't know. Anything that comes into your head.'

The monk shrugged. 'All right,' he said. 'Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree. Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree. Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree. And along comes Lucky-'

'It's you,' Poldarn interrupted. 'You broke into my room at the inn last night.'

The monk's expression didn't change. He was definitely the right height and build. 'Did I?' he said. 'I don't think so. You probably had a dream.'

'I'm sure it was you. Why have we stopped?'

The monk grinned. 'Do you really want to go and join up with Prince Tazencius? I have an idea that the welcome he'd give you would be enthusiastic but probably not enjoyable.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'You know,' he said, making an effort to move his arms and failing. 'You know, I don't think I'd really have much of a choice in the matter, even without all these damned annoying ropes. You could call it predestination, I guess.'

'You haven't got any choice,' the monk said. 'Luckily for you, though, I do. Several choices. For instance, I could have you killed, right here and now, or I could let you go free on your solemn undertaking not to be a pest in future. Or a nice sensible compromise, later on when we've finished and we don't need you any more. Wouldn't that be best?'

'No,' Poldarn replied. 'Letting me go's still the best one you've mentioned so far.'

The monk laughed. 'No, you're too valuable,' he said. 'But as it happens, that's exactly what I'm going to do: cut the ropes and let you go free. I'll even ride with you to Cric, make sure you get there.'

The name Cric was, of course, very familiar. 'What would I want to go there for?' he asked.

'Don't worry,' the monk replied. 'It's where Cronan's camp was, last time I heard. I don't suppose anybody's going to take issue with you because of what you did and who you were the last time you were there, and even if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. It's Cronan's personal guards you want to worry about.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Why?' he said. 'Won't they recognise me?'

This time, it was the monk's turn to look confused. 'Surely that's the point,' he said. 'What we've got to do is try to get you past them before they recognise you. I'm sorry if this sounds unduly negative, but being handed over to Tazencius would be a positive pleasure compared with what Cronan'd do to you. And when all's said and done, you can't really blame him after the way you've treated him.'

Ah, Poldarn thought. Not the same voice, then, after all. He looked round for a crow with something in its beak, but there wasn't one anywhere to be seen. Then another explanation occurred to him. 'Just remind me,' he said. 'My memory's been weak for so long I don't seem to be able to remember anything for very long. What was my name again?'

A long moment of silence. 'Stellicho,' the monk said. 'How could you have forgotten that?'

Poldarn nodded. 'That's right,' he said. And why am I going to General Cronan's camp?'

The monk sighed impatiently. 'To kill him, of course. We sent our best man, but he's obviously failed. Then suddenly you turn up again out of the blue-either by coincidence or Poldarn heard our prayers and sent you. Can't you remember anything?'

'It's coming back to me,' Poldarn said, 'I just need to be reminded. So why did the abbot say I was being sent to Tazencius?'

The monk scowled. 'Because of what you did,' he said, 'the reason you ran away in the first place. Don't say you've forgotten that too.'

'I'm not sure, I mean, I may not be remembering it straight. You tell me.'

'You killed-sorry, let's not mess about. You murdered a brother; your father tutor, not to put too fine a point on it. Which is why the abbot sentenced you to death. Sending you to Tazencius because you'd lost your memory and didn't know what you'd done to him-well, Father Abbot has a weakness for poetic justice. For my part, I think it's a waste of resources. As far as I'm concerned, the deal is that if you manage to kill Cronan you'll be the saviour of the order and the empire and the abbot's bound to give you a free pardon. If not-well, you're dead already, and the term "no great loss" springs readily to mind. Does that seem fair to you?'

Poldarn nodded. 'So the abbot doesn't know you're doing this. You're disobeying orders.'

The monk smiled. 'I'm a member of chapter and a councillor,' he replied. 'I do what's best for the Order. Now, you have a choice. Don't take too long about it, I'm getting cold hanging around in this wind.'

Poldarn glanced at the escort. They were sitting still, quiet, upright in the saddle as good troopers should. If the monk's story was for their benefit, they didn't appear to be paying much attention. On the other hand they were sword-monks, probably trained from childhood in secret unobtrusive eavesdropping techniques. 'That's not my idea of a choice,' he said. 'If I manage to kill General Cronan, will you let me go? Really let me go, I mean.'

'Of course,' the monk replied, 'if that's what you want. You can go back to Sansory and your lady friend and spend the rest of your life selling buttons, if that's what you want.'

Copis, Poldarn thought, but of course he couldn't trust anything the monk had told him. 'I think so,' he said. 'If this was my old life, I reckon I'd be well out of it. Horrible way to live, if you ask me.'

'I'm sorry to hear you talk like that,' the monk replied, and he sounded quite sincere. 'You were my student, you know, for two years. I'd never met anybody that age with such an intuitive grasp of abstract theology.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said. 'What's abstract theology?'

The monk kept his promise and had one of the horsemen untie the ropes. Poldarn hadn't realised how cramped and painful his arms had become until he had the use of them again. 'Of course,' the monk warned him, signalling the column to move on, 'if you even look like you're thinking about trying to escape, I'll kill you myself. Please don't make the mistake of thinking I like you,' he added, with a little smile. 'I don't. In fact, it's only the extreme unlikeliness of your getting out of Cronan's camp alive that's reconciling me to doing this. If I thought there was a serious risk of you surviving, I'd cut your throat now and deal with Cronan myself. I just thought I'd tell you that,' he went on. 'Just in case nobody's thought to mention it to you.'

After that nobody said anything for a long time. They were making good progress without hurrying unduly, which suggested to Poldarn that they had a long way to go. He still didn't have a very clear picture in his mind of where Deymeson and Cric were in relation to each other; his mental geography was calibrated in other units besides measurements of physical distance. He let his mind wander-very easy to do when you're riding a horse and not having to navigate for yourself-and found himself humming a tune. It was, of course, the only tune he knew: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, And along comes the Dodger and he says, 'That's me.'

The monk had made him think of it, of course, by reciting the words just now. He hummed it a little louder, and suddenly realised that all the horsemen near enough to be able to hear were staring at him.

'Sorry,' he said. 'It wasn't that bad, was it?'

None of them said anything, but the look on their faces was pure hatred. But, since Poldarn had decided by now that he didn't like them either, he carried on humming even louder. Needless to say, they were too well trained and disciplined to rise to the bait, which was fine, too, since he didn't want to fight anybody, just be annoying. He started to sing: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree He wasn't, he realised, a particularly good singer. He resolved not to let that deter him. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree 'Do you mind?' said the horseman to his left. 'If you must sing, perhaps you'd care to sing something else.'

'I don't know anything else.'

'Oh, come on.' He could tell that the man was furiously angry about something, for all that he sounded like a man discussing the best way to grow carrots. 'Of course you do. The Vespers hymn. The "Come, Shining Light". How about "There Is No Rose"?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Don't know any of them.'

'You must do, you're a brother of the order.'

'What, are they religious songs or something?'

That, apparently, made the man too angry to speak at all. Poldarn shrugged and went back to singing the song about the crows, softly, under his breath, but just loud enough that the horseman would know what he was doing. At one point he noticed the monk looking round at him and frowning, but he pretended he hadn't noticed. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree It was the kind of tune that works its way into your head and stays there, itching and annoying, like a burr in your shoe or a little strand of meat lodged between two teeth. It was getting on his nerves now. He made a special effort to stop singing it and put it out of his mind. A few minutes later he realised he'd started singing it again. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree There was an old dry-stone wall on the north side of the road, and behind it a stand of spruce trees; seventy years or so ago, someone had planted them out for timber, but he'd died or gone away before thinning the stand out, and the trees were far too crowded and close together; they'd grown up spindly and crooked, no good for anything. Poldarn could see where a few of the tallest and weakest had blown down, falling halfway before their branches fouled in those of their neighbours and stopped them, allowing briars and other green rubbish to spring up and tangle their shoots in the thin, dead twigs. Holly and birch and hazel had sprung up to fill in the gaps, turning the copse into a fortified position. Poldarn smiled; talk about your tall thin trees Two crows got up and hung circling in the air, almost directly above his head, screaming abuse at him He was still singing, instinctively, without thinking. And so was somebody else: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, And along comes the Dodger and he says, 'That's me.'

Somebody else was singing the song, from behind the wall. At once the monk yanked back on his reins, making his horse rear, and started shouting orders. The monks were drawing swords-why? There wasn't anybody to fight -Yes, there was. From over the wall, and from a ditch on the other side of the road that Poldarn hadn't even noticed, there came a great crowd of men, a hundred, perhaps two hundred, all standing up at the same time, like soldiers performing a drill. But they weren't armed The horseman on his right yelled something and started his draw. Difficult to gauge circles on horseback; Poldarn threw his weight to his left and slid off his horse, the quickest way of getting clear, and as his shoulder connected painfully with a large stone in the road, the horseman's sword sliced through the parcel of air where his head would have been. As he tried to get up and found that for some reason (some reason that hurt a lot) he couldn't, he saw another horseman slashing down at one of the men who'd come from behind the wall; some cut, clean through the spine on the diagonal, missing the collarbone, uncharacteristically wasted effort. Poldarn couldn't see any reason why the horseman should attack like thatOld crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree -The same tune, he realised. The other voice had been singing the same tune and words that meant the same thing, but in a different language.

Something hit the ground a few inches behind his head. He jerked his head back and bent his spine, and found he was nose to nose with a dead man, the monk who'd been riding on his right. A pair of boots stepped over him; it was one of the men from the ditch, and he wasn't unarmed by any means. He was swinging a short, fat sword with an unmistakable curved, concave blade, what Poldarn had come to know as a backsabre. The leg of his horse was in the way and he wasn't able to see the blow land, but he heard it, a sucking, hissing sound, like a man pulling his boot out of deep mud.

I think I probably know who these people are.

He'd been planning on lying still and pretending to be dead, but the horse backed up and scuffed him in the face with the back of its hoof, not hard, but enough to make him wince. He noticed one of the strangers watching him, and figured he must have seen the movement.

He knew the man's face: long, with a pointed chin and straggly, wispy hair. He was holding a backsabre, letting it hang by the rear horn of the hilt from two fingers. A sword-monk, on foot, stepped quickly up behind him-Poldarn couldn't see the sword in his hand, but he knew where it was from the position of the monk's arms.

Eyvind; that was the stranger's name. Pointless, remembering it a heartbeat before the poor fool had his head cut off-Later, Poldarn figured that Eyvind must have seen a change in the look in his eyes and somehow realised what it meant; something must have warned him of the danger, because he spun round astonishingly quickly, using the speed and momentum to swing the backsabre in a down-slanted side cut that opened the monk up a finger's breadth below his ribcage. The monk noticed what had happened, but he'd already embarked upon his own cut, which should have split Eyvind's head in two, like an apple. When it arrived, however, somehow Eyvind wasn't there. Poldarn didn't see him move, he just seemed to relocate, materialising instantly a yard to the monk's right. He tugged the backsabre out of the wound like a tired woodcutter freeing his axe, and let the monk flop to the ground; the next moment he was busy again, but Poldarn couldn't see, there was a boot in the way.

By the time it moved, it all seemed to be over.