Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Three

He was standing on a cliff, with thin, wiry grass under his feet and a brisk, cold wind on his face, staring out at a blue-grey sea the colour of steel in the forge fire, just before it turns red. In the middle of the sea, he could see the white sail of a ship. Fifty yards or so to his left, two crows were pecking at something he couldn't quite see.

When he looked up again, the sail had disappeared; but he was minded to walk down the steep, rather terrifying path that ran diagonally across the cliff face, like the cut of a sword-monk's blade on a man's neck. At the bottom of the path there was a little triangle of shingle, folded in the arms of two spits of rock: a private one-berth harbour set in a fortress wall of gleaming yellow sandstone. You'd never find it if you didn't know exactly where to look.

Either the ship couldn't make it in, or it was in a hurry; instead they'd lowered a little frail boat, leather hides stretched over birch ribs and sewn up in thick, well-greased seams. Two men were rowing, two others sat with their backs to him. The boat was lower in the water than it should have been.

While he waited for the boat to crawl through the lively waves, he took a moment to admire the ship, not that he knew anything much about ships, but it was the aesthetics rather than the technicalities that appealed to him. Long and sweet it appeared to him; the castles at either end melodramatically high, the wide, fat middle absurdly low. It was built to roll with the waves without capsizing, even he could see that; as it bobbed and wallowed in the water, its lines seemed to flow unceasingly, sinuous and meretricious as a dancer.

You'd never get me out in one of those things, he told himself. Not if you paid me.

Then he felt impatient, without yet knowing why, so much so that he splashed several yards into the water, wincing as the cold unpleasantness seeped in round his toes and ankles. The boat was still a long way out when he took a deep breath and shouted, 'Have you got it?'

One of the men with his back to him turned half around; the movement was ill advised and nearly swamped the boat. The oarsmen yelled at him to sit still at the same time as he shouted something inaudible, presumably a reply to the question.

He found this extremely frustrating. 'I said, have you got it?' he yelled, even louder. This time he could just make out the man's reply. 'Yes.'

That was evidently the answer he'd wanted to hear; he could feel joy flooding his heart, as palpably as the sea had flooded his worn-out boots. Of course, he hadn't got a clue what it was.

Perhaps it was because this was a dream, and in a dream things happen at extreme speed, so that you can dream a week in a few minutes of real time, but the minute or so it took for the boat to reach the shore seemed to last an entire lifetime. Just before the brittle prow bit into the shingle, a single crow dropped down on the rock beside him and turned its head away.

'Well?' he shouted.

The man who'd answered his question hopped over the side into the water, then reached back into the boat and picked up a familiar-looking bundle. 'He's asleep,' the man said, 'for a change, the little bastard. You're bloody lucky we didn't pitch him over the side.'

'It's a boy, then.'

The man scowled. 'Well, of course it's a boy. Do you think we'd have bothered otherwise? Here, you take the dirty little snot. If I never see him again, that'll suit me just fine.'

Stepping a yard or so further into the water he took the bundle from the man's outstretched hands and at once felt an all-consuming sense of relief that nearly stopped him from breathing.

'My grandson,' he murmured.

'Yes,' the man from the boat confirmed. 'Almost as big a pain in the bum as his grandpa, if you ask me. Next time you want a kid fetched from a long way over the sea, do it yourself. Now, if you don't mind getting out of the way, we've got valuable cargo to land.'

Some other men had come down the path; they were helping the men from the boat with barrels and jars and boxes. The baby in his arms looked like some exotic wild animal.

'Thank you,' he said, and the man from the boat nodded.

'That's all right,' he replied. 'Tursten was a good lad, I'm sorry.'

He turned away and started on the long, painful climb back to the top. He didn't notice the gradient, or the treacherous footing, or the wind that tried to comb him off the side of the cliff. He was utterly fascinated by the way the strange creature was opening and closing its tiny five-fingered hands, almost but not quite the way a human being would do it. It occurred to him that if some inhuman thing, a monster or a god, were to take a human body to live in for reasons of expedience or policy, probably it would familiarise itself with the way the thing worked by flexing the muscles and testing the nerves and tendons, just as this strange object seemed to be doing. The thought made him stop for a moment and frown. The idea had been that his dead son would somehow have found his way into this small body (because Tursten couldn't really be dead, that would be unthinkable; there had to be a way round it), but now that he was actually holding it, he wasn't sure. Maybe something else was in there, as well as or instead of Tursten.

Well, he thought, it'll be interesting finding out. Even if it is my son, he can't be expected to remember anything of his previous life, it'll be as if Tursten had come home but with all his memories wiped away-in which case, of course, he wouldn't be Tursten at all any more. Take away someone's memories and all you've got left is an empty bottle, a piece of scrap only fit for putting in the fire and bashing into something else.

At the top of the cliff he paused and looked back. There was the sail, more or less exactly where it had been when he first looked down from there (but since then, everything had changed; the old world had come to an end and a new one had slipped in and taken over the physical remains). He noticed something yellow and shiny in the child's left hand, just visible through the gaps between the soft, damp fingers. A gold ring, or something of the sort; he wondered where that had come from, and what it meant.

The child opened its mouth, miming a cry though no sound came out. He cast about in his mind for a nice soothing lullaby, but all he could think of was: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree Hardly a wonderfully apt choice; but the kid seemed to like it, so he carried on: Dodger sitting on the red-hot coal, Dodger sitting on the red-hot coal, Dodger sitting on the red-hot coal, Then he jumped in the slacky-tub to save his soul.

The child started to howl, which suggested a certain degree of taste, if nothing else. He laughed, and started to sing 'Sweet Meadowgrass' instead, but found he could only remember the first two lines.

He took his time walking home, as if part of him didn't really want to get there. At the top of Enner's Steep he stopped and leaned against the orchard gate, looking down over the sprawl of thatched and tiled roofs of the farm. For some reason he felt a need to preserve an image of it in his mind, as if something he was just about to do would change it for ever. He made a careful mental note of the position of each building, taking the main house as an obvious datum and locating the barns and outhouses in relation to it, then he looked up at the sun to check the time, though that was hardly necessary. At Enner's, you didn't need the sun to tell you the time, you looked up at the thin, spindly fir trees and then down at the yard. If the crows were roosting, it was early morning, midday or evening. If they were in the yard, mobbing the stalls, it was morning or afternoon feed. If they were pitched out on the grass in the long meadow, it was mid-morning or mid-afternoon; and if they were crowding together on the branches of the apple orchard, it was morning or evening milking and the boys had driven them off the yard as they walked the stock through. As often as not, you could tell the time with your eyes shut just by listening to them. All the years he'd lived here, he'd been aware of them nearly all the time, their single cold mind reaching into his, groping in the dark for his thoughts-where was he going, what was he doing, was it safe to be out or was it time to fall back to safe positions and wait for him to go away? Once a year, ever since he was old enough to toddle and throw a stone, they'd assaulted the castles and cities in the fir copse with every weapon at their disposal, from pebbles and slingshots to blunt arrows and twenty-foot poles, trying to break up the nests while the season's children were too young to fly; every year, no matter how hard they tried to wipe them out, they killed or drove off a third of them, thereby preserving an exact balance with their normal rate of population growth. It was the only time they could even pretend to win a victory against the rookery; the rest of the time, the raiders raided, stole, wrecked and withdrew, undefeated and unassailable.

(Tursten hated the crows, always had; he could remember him as a small boy, standing in the yard screaming at them. As he got older he stopped screaming and went quiet, his cold, savage mind devising some better way, and as always he'd found one. He collected twelve birds whose wings he'd managed to break with stones, and pegged them out a dozen yards out from the meadow hedge, their legs tethered to short sticks. At midday, the birds in the trees flew down and pitched next to them, assuming they were the scouts sent out to find safe pasture; Tursten was waiting for them in a hide of freshly cut hazel, perfectly still, with his forty-pound bow and plenty of lead-nosed blunts. Every bird he stunned, he pegged out, until he had dozens of decoys; and the more decoys he put out, the more birds came to join them. At dusk he went out and killed them all, apart from half a dozen he kept for the next day. After three days the survivors got wise and circled above his head all morning, screaming at him the way he'd screamed at them; he appreciated that. It was the greatest victory ever achieved in the war, but he never managed to repeat it; and two years later, the numbers were back to where they'd always been.)

'Your dad was a clever man,' he told the child, who was asleep now. That was no lie, he reflected. Tursten could be a vicious little bastard when he wanted to, but he was clever.

Probably would've made a good soldier, if he'd hated the enemy like he hated the crows.

As he walked down the meadow slope he caught sight of a face framed in the upstairs window, but at that distance he couldn't be sure who it was, Elgerd or Bergtura. Probably not Elgerd. It occurred to him that he hadn't really considered how she'd take it, being expected to bring up her dead husband's child by some foreign woman whom he'd raped and who'd then killed him. Come to think of it, he couldn't remember any occasion when anybody had stopped to consider Elgerd's feelings about anything, so it was probably safe to assume that she didn't have any. Not that it mattered, Bergtura had enough for both of them (Gods help us all!). It was a safe bet that the face in the window was hers.

Well, he thought, for some reason, it's too late now. He pushed open the back door with his left hand, and heard his wife's clogs clumping down the stairs. He wondered what on earth he was going to say to her; something utterly banal, probably, such as, 'Here he is,' or, 'I'm home.'

'Here,' someone called out, 'you missed one.'

Poldarn opened his eyes, the dream exploding like a glass bowl dropped on a stone floor. He started to get up, but someone behind him put a heavy boot between his shoulder blades, forcing him back down into the mud and perceptibly stretching his bones. Out of options once again, and this time he was on the ground and couldn't move. He made himself relax, theorising that the pain would be less if his muscles were tense and stressed when the blade cut into them. He felt surprisingly, agreeably calm.

'Hold on.' The voice could have been Eyvind, but he didn't know him well enough to be sure. 'Leave him alone, will you? I know him.'

'You sure?' A different voice, puzzled. 'He was with the column.'

'Yes, well, he would be. Byrni, stop treading on the poor bugger.'

The pressure relaxed. 'What's all this about, then?' Another voice, this time directly above him.

'You'll see. Hey, whatever your name is. Say something, that'll prove you know Western.'

That made sense; nobody in the empire knew the raiders' language, which was what he assumed they were all talking. 'Is that you?' he managed to say. 'Eyvind? The man I met on the road?'

'That's him,' said the voice. 'Yes, it's me. Don't just stand there, you bloody fools, help him up.'

They hauled him to his feet as if he was a dead weight, an inanimate object of some kind. He saw the man who'd called himself Eyvind, the same one he'd seen before, on the road and later in the battle. Please, he prayed silently to the divine Poldarn, don't let anything happen to this man, not until I'm safe and out of here. All around, the raiders were stripping the dead, bending to their work like field hands pulling carrots. He noticed one of them dead on the ground; all the other bodies were sword-monks, carved with deep cuts sloping diagonally inwards from the junction of shoulder and neck.

'Yes,' Eyvind said, 'I definitely know this man. Saved my life.' That was an exaggeration, as Poldarn remembered it; all he'd done was refrain from killing him when he killed his companion. But his memory was tricky, at the best of times. 'He's one of us, I promise you.'

'Really?' The man who'd been treading on his spine sounded good-natured, curious. 'Then what was he doing with all these freaks?'

Poldarn remembered something. It came as a flash of bright light in his mind, blotting out everything around him, even the fear of dying that was still clouding up his mind; but it wasn't anything special, just a memory of himself standing next to an older man in a ditch beside a bank-the man with him was draping a little net across the mouth of a rabbit hole with his right hand; his left was down by his side, holding the back legs of a furiously kicking rabbit. He wasn't taking any notice of the animal; a methodical man, one thing at a time. Get the net back in place first, in case the dog flushed another one out, then kill the one you've got in hand. While he was resetting the net, the man was talking about something else, some routine job they'd have to start tomorrow if the weather held off. That same calm, detached, methodical economy of movement that the raiders displayed as they searched the dead bodies for articles of value (things trivial enough: a penknife, a sharpening-steel, a belt buckle, a dozen horn buttons; obviously valuable enough to these people to be worth killing for, as the rabbit's meat and fur were to the old man), and carefully and thoroughly despatched any monks who were still alive.

Eyvind was saying something to the other man, Byrni. Everybody else had lost interest and gone back to work. 'My guess is,' Eyvind was saying, 'Uncle Cari'll know who he is. He was much more involved in all the preparations than I was; at least, I was there but I wasn't listening half the time.'

Byrni laughed. 'Sitting still's never been your strong point,' he said. 'All right, can't see any harm in it. If he does anything I don't like, mind, I'll cut him in half He turned his head and looked Poldarn in the eye. 'Did you hear that, mister?' he said.

Poldarn nodded, to indicate that he had. 'Don't worry about Byrni,' Eyvind interrupted, 'he just likes scaring people.'

'He's very good at it,' Poldarn replied.

For some reason, Byrni thought that was enormously funny. 'He's a smartass and no mistake,' he said, clouting Poldarn on the shoulder with his left hand. In his right hand he held a backsabre, its cutting edge dirty with blood, dust and grime. He looked as if he'd just been trimming back a hedge, and had paused for a whet and a sly mouthful of beer.

'You two.' Someone else, further up the road. 'Whatever you're doing, do it later. We've got a war to fight, or had you forgotten?'

The raiders weren't hurrying, just doing their work more quickly. Poldarn noticed how little effort they wasted, like old men doing a familiar job. Mostly they were young, between nineteen and twenty-four, but they looked older; they had the broad chests and thick necks of hard workers, square heads and solid jaws, small noses and broad foreheads, and their skin had been burnished by long exposure to cold, hard winds. They didn't look like him at all, but the way they moved and stood and walked seemed right, in a way that none of the other people he'd come across did. The monks, for example, moved with almost excessive grace, as if everything they did had been practised for hours in front of a mirror-the grace wasn't inherent but painfully acquired. In Sansory, people moved too quickly; in the villages, they lumbered, as if they were forever carrying heavy sacks on their shoulders and wearing lead-soled boots. In Mael, they'd walked about like factory hands or field workers coming home after a double shift. Copis-she'd been different, her movements were like someone dancing the steps of one dance to the tune of another, and making it work thanks to an amazing natural ability to improvise. These men, he realised, moved entirely naturally, the way humans were meant to move. He couldn't imagine one of them slipping in mud or catching his foot in a tree root or accidentally barging into a heavily laden trestle in a market.

Eyvind grabbed his arm and pulled him to one side. 'I think it'll be all right,' he said. 'I don't suppose you've been able to remember anything since the last time I saw you?'

Poldarn shook his head.

'Oh well. So what were you doing with this bunch of old women?' He prodded a dead man with his toe by way of illustration.

Poldarn cracked his face with a grin. 'Actually,' he said, 'I was on my way to be killed. They were to make sure I didn't get away.'

'Ah.' Eyvind nodded. 'Aren't you the lucky one, then? What did you do to get them so annoyed at you?'

'I wish I knew,' Poldarn replied. 'They knew who I am, that's for sure, but I don't believe what they told me.'

'Really? What was that?'

Poldarn smiled. 'Oh, they said I was one of them, and I murdered a brother. And then they said I was the empire's most famous general. And then they said I had to go and murder the empire's most famous general, or they'd cut my throat.'

Eyvind gave him a startled look. 'Fine,' he said. 'They enjoy playing games, obviously. You know, I have a feeling you'll be better off with us.'

'Me too. But what makes you think I'm entitled?'

'You don't know, do you?' Eyvind grinned. He had straight, white teeth, unlike most people in Sansory. Of course, Poldarn had good teeth too. 'You talk our language; not only that, you talk with a strong South Island accent. Even if you were one of them who'd learned Western (and we've never heard of any of 'em who's lived long enough to do that), you couldn't do the woollyback voice, not unless you were born and bred within fifteen miles of Eddinsbrook.' He thumped Poldarn between the shoulder blades with the flat of his hand; deceptively strong. 'I don't know who you are now, friend, but I can tell you who you were once. And this lot know it as well as I do, or you'd be dead on your face right now.'

Poldarn let what he'd been told sink in for a moment. 'But they don't look anything like me,' he said.

'So what? We're all North Islanders. On South Island, they're all as ugly as you are; and on Unnskerry too, but they don't talk like that. More nasal, if you know what I mean, like they've always got a half a carrot shoved up their noses.'

Poldarn considered that. 'All right,' he said. 'But if I'm one of you, what the hell was I doing wandering around on a battlefield surrounded by dead people?'

'I've been thinking about that,' Eyvind replied. 'And there's at least one perfectly simple explanation. For years, you see, we've been planting a few of our people here, to spy out the land, let us know what to expect and where the good prospects are, keep us in touch with the traitors on their side who think they're on our side, if you can follow all that. My guess is that you're one of them. It all fits quite neatly,' he went on, pulling an earring out of a dead monk's ear like a man picking blackberries. 'If you think about it, one of us who's spent a year or so pretending to be one of them-well, he couldn't help getting just a bit confused, having to be two completely different people at the same time. Then, suppose he gets a bash on the head and can't remember for sure whether he's who he really is or who he's been pretending to be-well, you get the idea, I'm sure. And that's who I think you are.'

Abruptly they left the road and plunged into the wood. Poldarn found it very hard to keep up-where Eyvind and his people always seemed to find deer tracks and gaps in the brambles, he kept blundering into thorny tangles, tripping and staggering and ripping his hands and face against trailing fingers of briar. He had a feeling that he wasn't at home in woods.

'Of course,' Eyvind told him, when he said as much. 'No woods worth talking about on South Island.' He shook his head. 'I keep forgetting, you don't remember it at all.'

Poldarn decided to change the subject. 'So how did you find these people?' he asked. 'Last time I saw you, you were on your own on the other side of the Bohec.'

Eyvind nodded. 'That's right,' he said. 'But thankfully I got it in my head that I should keep going north; crossed the river and started walking in as straight a line as I could manage. Then one day I came over the top of a hill and there they were. It was enough to make a man religious, I'm telling you.' He shook his head again; it was a common enough gesture among these people. Poldarn had caught himself doing something similar once or twice. 'This lot's just one scouting party,' he went on. 'Apparently the army that's over here at the moment's the biggest expedition ever to leave the islands. Ever hear of a man called Feron Amathy?'

Poldarn nodded. 'All the time,' he said.

'And nothing good, I'll bet. Well, he's the brains behind all this, apparently. He's got some scheme or other for taking over the empire; we don't give a damn about that, goes without saying, but his plans fit in perfectly with ours, and he's given us all kinds of useful information, things our own spies would never have found out-sally-ports, blind spots, soft spots where you can dig under walls, you name it. He says he learned it all back when he was hired by most of these cities as a mercenary soldier, at one time or another. You can believe that or not, whichever way suits you best. Personally, I figure anybody who'd sell out his own people like that doesn't deserve to live.'

Poldarn didn't express an opinion. 'And where are you off to now?' he asked. 'Joining up with the rest of the army and going home?'

'Don't you believe it. We've hardly started yet. Talking of which, as far as I'm concerned you can hang on with us and we'll give you a ride home-back to the islands, I mean. Best offer you'll ever get.'

Poldarn thought for a moment before replying. 'I'd like that,' he said.

For men who didn't appear to be in a hurry, the raiders moved deceptively quickly. Poldarn soon came to understand how they achieved their effects of suddenly vanishing from one battlefield and miraculously appearing at the next. Magic had nothing to do with it; instead they used the terrain, following river valleys, crests and ridges to stay out of sight, and marching at top speed whenever they had no alternative but to cross open ground. They never seemed to get tired, either.

'After all that,' said one of them, coming back from a cautious glimpse over the top of a ridge, 'we're early.'

'Typical,' said another. 'They must've stopped for a rest, or picked a fight somewhere. That's the trouble with the Green River boys, they won't take these things seriously.'

Poldarn didn't need to look over the ridge to know where he was. On the other side of the hill was Deymeson, and the raiders were here to attack it. He hadn't needed to be told that, either.

'You're not going to be much use with nothing but sweat in the palm of your hand,' one of them said to him. 'Here, try this for size.' He reached over his shoulder and wriggled out of a strap, from which hung a cloth bundle about as long as Poldarn's arm. Under the cloth was a backsabre.

'Belonged to my cousin Bearci,' the man went on, 'but he didn't make it this far. I'll have it back when you've finished with it.'

It would have been rude to refuse outright, and he couldn't explain-I'd rather not, thanks; you see, as soon as I can get away from you people, I'm going to run to Deymeson as fast as I can go and warn them you 're coming. 'Thank you very much,' he said. 'I'll try and take good care of it.'

'Oh, it's nothing special, not old or anything. Fits you nicely, though.' He was looking at Poldarn's hands. 'Lucky to find one your weight.'

Poldarn realised that, without thinking, he'd been doing back flips, letting the sword flop backwards through his fingers and then bringing it back up again with a sharp snap of the wrist. He frowned and tried the other way, the widdershins flip (harder to control and flashier). He was very good at it, a fact that wasn't lost on the man who'd just lent him the sword.

'That's hours of practice, that is,' the man said. 'I couldn't do that, even when I was a kid.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn replied. 'Obviously there was a stage in my life when I had way too much time on my hands.'

The man wasn't quite sure what to make of that. 'My name's Sitrych,' he said. 'From Anniswood, in Blackdale. Do you know those parts at all?'

'Anything's possible,' Poldarn replied, 'apparently.'

Sitrych gave him a strange look, part concern and part amusement, as if he'd encountered a two-headed mouse. 'Well,' he said, 'best of luck with it. Watch out, it's sharp.'

'Poldarn wasn't sure whether that was some ancient customary joke or well-meaning advice to a presumed idiot. 'Thanks,' he said, 'I'll be careful with it. Don't want to do anybody an injury.'

Sitrych frowned, shook his head and walked away. The raiders were doing something, though it wasn't immediately apparent what it was; they were falling into groups-not hurrying so you'd notice, but in a few minutes they'd all found their places and formed ranks and files-and they were all looking up at the ridge, preparing their minds. They stopped talking without anybody telling them to; in fact, Poldarn realised, he hadn't heard anybody give any orders, and he had no idea who their leader was, assuming they had one.

Then they started to move. It wasn't walking or running; they seemed to flow, like an incoming wave on the beach that's lapping round your ankles before you realise, and by the time Poldarn had figured out what was going on, they were over the ridge and vanishing out of sight. 'Come on,' someone said cheerfully behind him-not someone he'd spoken to-and he felt a broad hand in the small of his back pushing him forward. Whoever it was didn't seem to be running, but Poldarn had to run to keep up with him.

Over the ridge; and he saw Deymeson in the valley below, the gate in the invisible wall and the town rearing up out of the plain like a shying horse. The rest of the raiders were definitely running now, with the gradient to help them; they were covering the ground ridiculously fast, moving easily and gracefully, like deer. Not running away, Poldarn thought, running toward; here were people who knew exactly what they were doing and why. He wondered what that must feel like.

The man who'd encouraged him over the ridge was right behind his shoulder, keeping perfect pace with him, unobtrusively deliberate on the extreme edge of his circle. There was no possibility whatsoever of getting away, he was committed to these people and their course of action; they'd swallowed him up and absorbed him as easily as the incoming tide absorbs a rockpool. That was disconcerting; right up to the moment when they'd cleared the ridge he'd been reassuring himself that as soon as an opportunity presented itself he'd sneak away and warn the monks-his people-and help them fight, as he was morally obliged to do (after all, these were the raiders he'd heard so much about, the common enemy, the forces of evil). But something had happened, so subtle that he hadn't noticed it happening, and now that was out of the question. He was committed, he'd already taken sides (without knowing it, apparently) and here he was, part of the unstoppable onset of darkness (Except that, if he allowed his concentration to slip for a moment, he could already see himself thinking of these people as his friends, his people, his own; it was as if he'd slotted into place, suddenly and in the dark, or as if he'd been wandering in circles in a blinding fog on the moors and finally stumbled on a house, and only discovered when he pushed the door open that it was his own.)

Academic, in any case, since even if he managed to outrun the man behind him and the rest of the raiders, all of whom were faster than he was, and got to the abbey gates and raised the alarm, it'd only be a matter of moments before the raiders caught up with him, and what could the sword-monks do to save themselves in that time? Besides, if he had enough time to achieve anything he wouldn't spend it warning the abbot, he'd waste it looking for Copis (waste it, because he was sure she was dead, or too heavily guarded to be rescued).

There was nothing he could do for the monks. Unless they could outfight the raiders, they were already dead. In fact, he could see them now, their bodies draped and dumped and piled and dropped in the streets and over and behind walls, under tables and beds where they'd tried to hide, heaped up in stairwells or at the foot of towers they'd fallen or been pushed from. He could see the dust and dirt forming a skin over pools of their blood, the caked and clotted blood masking the tremendous backsabre cuts, from the side of the neck to the middle of the chest; quite vividly, like a man recalling some traumatic memory, he saw them, most dead, a few still dying, painfully dragging breath into punctured lungs, dribbling blood from their mouths like old men or children trying to drink soup. He saw Torcuat, the monk who'd arrested him when he tried to run, lying on his back on the dorter steps, his head lolling at an impossible angle to his shoulders, his eyes wide open. He saw the abbot himself, only just visible under a pile of arms and legs and trunks and heads, all haphazard and confused, like the scrap in Sansory market; a cut had split his face on a diagonal running from the right eye socket to the left corner of his mouth, though the stroke that killed him had been a stab just under the ribcage, with the palm-wide point of a backsabre. He saw Copis, still alive, one leg severed at the knee, her back broken over the side of a cart That'd be right, he thought; I can't remember the past, only the future.

The raiders were at the invisible wall already. The guard at the gatehouse took one look at them and ran, but the foremost raider caught up with him before he reached the bottom of the hill, grabbed him by the left shoulder, spun him round and ripped him open with a short, quick flick of the wrist. As usual, the street leading up the hill was empty; the raider who'd just killed the guard didn't stop or even break stride, but started to run up the hill, hardly slowing down in spite of the gradient. Meanwhile, five other columns of raiders had appeared out of nowhere and were streaming across the open ground; Poldarn was sure there were others that he couldn't see, approaching the hill from the north, west and east. He could almost see them, or at least he remembered seeing them pouring into the abbey courtyard, like floodwater overwhelming a house. At some point he'd quickened his pace so that he was almost keeping up. It hadn't been a conscious decision, but he found he didn't feel tired or short of breath, it was as if he was drawing on a shared strength that came from the others all around him. He saw Sitrych, the man who'd lent him the sword, dodging round the side of the gatehouse and lengthening his stride as he approached the hill, and another man he'd spoken to on the way there-Engfar, his name was-only a pace or two behind him, and gaining. If he'd had the breath, he'd have been tempted to cheer them on, as if he had money on the outcome.

By the time he reached the bottom of the hill he could just hear the sound of something going on at the top over the pounding of his own heart. He kept running, without knowing how; he was a boat on the back of a big wave, arching its back like a cat before jumping on its prey. At one point he had to jump over the dead body of a monk to keep himself from tripping and sprawling. Someone was screaming somewhere, but he had no way of knowing what it was about.

The next monk he met was definitely still on his feet, a lay brother who stepped out of a house a yard or so in front of him holding a short pike. Yesterday he'd have stopped and taken guard, knowing how difficult it is for a swordsman to get the better of a spearman in a one-to-one fight. Today he swerved round him, slashing wildly as he went past to ward off any thrust the man might make-no intention of killing anybody, just defence. He didn't feel any shock of contact run up his arm from the sword blade, and he didn't have time to look round. The lay brother was dead anyway, he'd already seen it, so there didn't seem to be much point.

His magic strength evaporated, suddenly and completely, about fifty yards from the top of the hill. Without warning his knees folded under him, and once he'd stopped he felt a pain in his chest so severe that nothing else could possibly matter. When he could at last see again he watched the raiders engulfing a couple of lone sword-monks who'd stood and waited for them instead of running away. When the raiders had passed them by, they were still there, but broken and cut up, ground into the dirt until their shapes ceased to be human.

(So this is how the raiders win all their battles, he decided; the deadly secret of their success. What would General Cronan have thought of it, he wondered; would he have realised that there was nothing at all to be done about it, this ability to run past and through their enemies as if they weren't really there? He dismissed the thought abruptly.)

'Dawdling again.' His self-appointed shadow, directly behind him. 'What's the matter, stone in your shoe?'

'Worn out,' Poldarn replied. 'All this running about is too bloody energetic for me.'

The voice laughed. 'You need to get yourself in shape,' it said. 'You'll miss out on the good bit if you aren't careful.'

'There's a good bit?'

'Oh yes,' the voice replied, 'there's a good bit.'

Poldarn found the good bit soon afterwards, after he'd dragged himself up the rest of the slope and into the abbey proper. The porters hadn't had time to close the gates; the raiders had streamed past them, cutting them down as they went almost as an afterthought. The monks were spilling out into the yard singly or in groups of two or three, apparently not realising what was going on-many of them weren't wearing their swords-and the raiders were surging up round them, six or seven to one. That was beyond the limits of religion; even the most advanced forms, practised by the upper ten per cent of the order, only envisaged facing four opponents at once. Faced with such blatant violation of the rules, such an abomination, the monks weren't even trying to draw, and those that did found their cuts parried with moves that weren't on the syllabus, while illegally placed enemies stepped up behind them and severed their necks. True, a group of about twenty monks were crowded together in the doorway of a janitor's hut and were standing shoulder to shoulder, their drawn swords forming an impenetrable fence; but the raiders were standing off fifteen yards or so and pelting them with bricks from a pile left over from some minor building works. Poldarn watched, fascinated; for the first dozen seconds or so, the monks managed to bat the bricks out of the air with their swords (those lovingly nursed cutting edges, sharpened with a steel instead of a stone and lightly anointed with camellia oil every night and every morning), but then there was one brick too many, and it cracked a monk just about the right eyebrow and he grunted and folded up; one gap compromised the wall, and five seconds later the raiders rushed in to chop up the fallen. They're overwhelming the monks, Poldarn thought, just as they overwhelmed me. They don't fight, they simply prevail. Like gods.

A monk came running straight at him. He recognised him: Torcuat, who'd presided over his defeat and humiliation, back when he'd tried to escape. Torcuat's face was distorted into a mask of sheer hatred; it was the masterpiece of a great artist who'd spend his entire life trying to paint the pure essence of an emotion. His sword was drawn and he was holding it in both hands over his head as he ran. Poldarn turned to face him and flipped the backsabre over the back of his hand-showing off, and he didn't know why, it had just happened-and just as the monk edged against the outer limit of his circle, like a runner breasting the finishing rope, he stuck out his hand with the sabre in it, a very short, mundane little movement, the sort of thing a novice would do from pure instinct on his first day in the schools. Torcuat's momentum drove the broad point deep into his stomach until it jarred against bone, whereupon the shock of contact shot up Poldarn's arm to his elbow, making him let go. Torcuat fell forward on to the sabre hilt, and as he landed, the sword-point burst through his back like a crocus.

I didn't do anything, really, Poldarn thought, as he rolled the dead monk on to his side with his boot. He had to stand on Torcuat's chest to get enough purchase to haul the sword out again (but he couldn't just abandon it, it didn't belong to him). I suppose that counts as revenge, but I wasn't really all that fussed. I didn't blame him, personally.

'Nicely,' said the voice behind his shoulder. 'These freaks, they think they know it all, but when it comes to a real fight, they haven't got a clue.'

Poldarn straightened his back. 'No,' he said, 'they haven't.'

'Goes to show,' the voice went on. 'If you'd been one of them, I expect you'd have tried to have a fencing match. But you sorted him out just like I'd have done, so I guess you're one of us after all. So that's all right.'

'Good,' Poldarn said. Part of him seemed to mean it.

'Right,' the voice went on, 'now that I've seen you kill one of 'em, not much point in me hanging round you any more. You carry on, and have a good time. Any idea where they keep the small, valuable stuff?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'You could try the abbot's lodgings,' he said. 'I saw some nice inkwells and candlesticks and small silver lamps.'

'Sounds good to me,' the voice said, and someone brushed past Poldarn's left shoulder. He got a glimpse of the man's back as he strode away.

This, then, was the good bit. Judging by the number of bodies scattered round the main yard, most of the monks must already be dead; certainly, their numbers had to have fallen below the critical point where they could no longer mount any kind of meaningful resistance. Poldarn guessed that there would now be a short interval for looting, after which they'd burn the place down and be on their way-down the hill into the town, maybe, or perhaps their schedule wouldn't allow it. Over at the coach-house, they were backing out carts ready to be loaded up with good things (harvest festival, bringing home the fruits of hard work and divine favour). And for his own part, he was on his own, with nobody watching. Copis, he thought.

Of course, he had no way of knowing whether she was still alive, or still in the abbey, let alone where to find her, but instinct had served him well this far, and he had nothing else to do. If she was still alive, chances were she'd be in whatever the monks used as a prison or dungeon. From what he'd seen of the order, he figured it was a safe bet they had something of the sort.

A live monk would be able to tell him where to find the dungeons, but there didn't seem to be any of them left. Poldarn looked round, wishing he knew what a dungeon looked like, and suddenly felt an urge to try a small door at the back of what he'd assumed was some kind of store, because it only had two small, barred windows high up in the wall. Divine intuition, he muttered to himself, and walked quickly across the yard, stepping over the dead where necessary.

The door was open. There was a monk in the small outer room; he was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, both hands pressed to his stomach. When he tried to stand up, his knees buckled and he flopped down on his face. Poldarn put a foot on the back of his neck and stabbed him once through the ear, after which he stopped moving. Then he frowned and flipped the backsabre over a couple of times, wondering if there was something familiar about the monk's face. Probably just his imagination.

Whoever I used to be, I know who I am now, and that's all that matters.

He liked the sound of that; it was simple, and positive. He saw another door in front of him, and kicked it open.

It wasn't a dungeon, it was a store. The wall opposite the door was covered from floor to ceiling with shelves, lined with thousands of neatly folded blankets. Against the wall to the right there stood five enormous wooden bins, heaped almost to overflow point with charcoal. To his left was a large pile of kindling, tied up in small bundles, enough to light one regulation fire. Standing in front of the kindling was Copis, and she was holding a sword in both hands.

'Stay away from me,' she said. 'Or I'll kill you.'

Poldarn hadn't been expecting that. 'Copis, it's me,' he said. 'I've come to rescue you,' he added, feeling extremely foolish.

'Go away,' she said, then her face relaxed just a little. 'You bloody fool, haven't you worked it out yet?'

Poldarn shook his head.

'Then you're even more stupid than you look,' she snapped. She looked embarrassed, as if he'd caught her stealing from the cashbox. 'You don't still think we came here by accident, do you?'

'Accident,' he repeated. 'What are you talking about?'

She sighed, as if he was a small child being deliberately obtuse. 'I brought you here,' she said. 'You still don't get it? I'm your keeper.'

She wasn't making any sense. No, he didn't want what she'd just said to make sense. 'You knew?' he asked.

'All right.' She lowered the sword, but he recognised the position of the blade as a hidden guard. 'I'll spell it out for you, shall I? I serve the order. Do you want me to go on?'

'Yes,' he said.

Copis scowled. 'If you insist,' she said. 'I was assigned to you. Mostly just to keep an eye on what you were doing and report back, but if necessary I'd be there to protect you from being assassinated, or kill you myself if that's what they wanted me to do. When your escort was attacked beside the river-by these people, damn it, the raiders-I admit I panicked and stayed out of it; actually it wasn't me so much as that waste of space they'd paired me with, the man you killed-'

'Hold on,' Poldarn said. 'You're talking about the first time we met, just after I woke up-'

'Of course I am,' Copis replied. 'What else did you think I meant?'

'So you knew all along.' Suddenly he couldn't breathe, but there were more important things than breathing. 'You know who I am. You can tell me-'

Copis shook her head. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'But I have no orders to give you that information.' Her words were stilted, out of character; she was quoting from some general order. 'I'm sorry,' she said again.

'Copis, for God's sake.' He started to move towards her; the sword swung up and pointed at his heart. 'Don't you understand?' he said desperately. 'The Order's gone, they've been wiped out. Look out the door if you don't believe me. We've killed them all, so it doesn't matter any more.'

She gave him a look that was as cold as ice, or a dead man's face. 'Not all,' she said. 'For a start, there's me. Or are you going to kill me too, you barbarian?'

She spat the word at him, and behind it he could feel the weight of months of hatred, repressed and hidden away in a part of her mind that even she hadn't been able to get into until now. It wasn't just hate, it was contempt and disgust, the unappeasable loathing of complete opposites. He took a step back, as if afraid of getting burned.

'Besides,' she said, 'I wouldn't tell you even if I was allowed.' She was looking at the backsabre, and the red smear. 'I should have killed you when I had the chance.'

Poldarn stared at her, his mouth open. 'Why?' he asked.

She laughed. 'You'd like to know, I bet. That way, you'd have a clue, you'd finally be able to figure out who you are. Sorry, no chance, but I'll tell you this much. This is an imperfect world, and most people are partly bad. Sometimes, depending on the way things happen, they find themselves in circumstances where the bad part of them comes to the top and they do terrible things, because they have to, or because it's safer or easier. You can't really blame them, because you can imagine circumstances where you'd do the same yourself, they're a mirror you can see yourself in, and all you can do is hope that you'll never end up in their shoes, do the things they found themselves doing. But you aren't like that. You're a core of evil with a few layers of flesh and skin, just for show. Everything you did you did because you wanted to, and that's where I can't even begin to understand you, because you didn't stop at greed or ambition or advantage, you just kept on going, like you wanted to be the end of the world.' She caught her breath, and laughed shrilly. 'That's why I decided you had to be the god in the cart, Poldarn the Destroyer. It seemed so appropriate at the time, and even when you'd lost your memory and suddenly you'd stopped being yourself, everywhere you went there was killing and burning and things falling down. And now,' she added, letting the sword drop to her side, 'here you are. Why am I not surprised?'

Poldarn took a deep breath, like someone waiting for a wave to break all round him and drag him under. 'Whoever I used to be, I know who I am now, and that's all that matters,' he said. 'And if you stay here, they'll kill you.'

'We'll kill you, you mean.'

'They'll kill you,' Poldarn repeated. 'I came here to rescue you, because-'

She laughed. 'Yes,' she said, 'quite. So, if you really love me, hold still while I cut your head off. Will you do this one small thing for me?'

He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

'Well?' she said. 'Is that too much to ask?'

'No,' he replied.

She took a step forward, into his circle. He stayed perfectly still, either because he didn't care if she killed him or not, or because it was too early to assess where her attack was going to come from, so that choosing a guard now would prejudice his defence. 'It's one of those dreams we all have,' she was saying. 'You die, but you rid the world of an unspeakable monster, so it's all right really. Something like that would give your whole life some degree of meaning. Seven-eighths of humanity would love to be where I am now.'

'Go on, then,' he said. 'If it's what you really want.'

She swung the sword over her head, taking a step forward. Poldarn read the move just in time, stepped back and to the right with his right foot and angled his sword down to deflect the cut. She recovered well and threw a backhand side cut at his neck. He'd read that too, and went back out of the way, reverting to a plain forward guard. She glared at him, her expression almost comical, then swung a looping cut that started out aimed at his face but curved in at his hands. He dropped his guard just in time and the tip of the cutting edge glided past his knuckles, missing them by the width of a coin. She took two steps back and resumed her guard.

'Your money,' she said, 'the gold you found in those ruins. I tried to tell myself it wasn't dirty, you'd just found it, I could give it to the Order where it could do some good. But I couldn't, so I threw it down a well. At least you'll never have it now.'

He didn't answer; instead he started walking backwards towards the door. 'No you don't,' she yelled, and came at him again, this time feinting high and pulling the cut back in to bring it down at his knees. He parried instinctively, and whatever it was he did, it worked. 'Please,' he said. 'Stop it. I can get you out of here alive.'

'I wouldn't take my life from you,' she replied. 'It wouldn't be worth having. And for God's sake fight back.'

He realised. 'You can't read me,' he said. 'You don't know how to fight someone who only defends and won't attack. Those moves aren't in any of the forms you learned.'

She scowled. 'Congratulations,' she said. 'You've just attained the fifteenth grade, summed up in the maxim, The best fight is not to fight. I never got further than the twelfth grade myself, but I'm just a woman, I was lucky to get that far. The depressing thing is, you worked it out for yourself. You never went any higher than the tenth grade.'

She swung at him, a cut that started waist high but changed into an uppercut to the chin as she turned her wrists. He parried it without thinking and took a step closer to the door. 'I don't want to leave you,' he said, 'but I will. I don't want to die today.'

'Tough.' She attacked again, a rather clumsy lunge that told him she was losing her temper and her patience. 'So many others didn't have the choice, because of you. And now-'

He saw the moment and took it. As she drew back from the lunge he hopped sideways and slashed hard, turning the sabre at the last moment so that the back of the blade cracked her across the knuckles. She dropped the sword; he jumped forward and kicked it away. She spat at him, but he dodged easily.

'Last chance,' he said.

'Go to hell,' she replied, and before she could move he slammed the lower horn of the hilt across her jaw. In retrospect he realised he'd hit much too hard; he felt the jawbone break, the moment of yielding transmitted through the steel into his hand. Apart from that, it worked fine; she was out cold, and he caught her before she hit the ground.

Outside, he ran into Sitrych.

'Bloody hell,' Sitrych said, looking at the unconscious woman in his arms. 'Where'd you find one of them in a place like this?'

He smiled. 'Just a matter of knowing where to look, I guess,' he replied.

Sitrych pulled a face. 'Jammy bastard,' he said. 'All I've found is a few pairs of old boots and a set of fire irons. Though,' he added, peering past Poldarn's elbow at her bruised, swollen face, 'maybe I haven't done so badly after all.'

'I'm not swapping, if that's what you mean,' Poldarn said.

Sitrych shrugged. 'Worth a try,' he said. 'Anyway, you'd better stash her somewhere safe, we've got to burn this place down now. God knows how, it's all stone and slate and tiles.'

Poldarn looked up at the sky. He remembered a dream he'd had, involving a captured woman and a village that wouldn't burn. 'At least it isn't raining,' he said.