Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Four

'We found this in the muster yard,' reported the duty officer, signalling to the guards with a nod of his head. 'Fell off his horse at us while we were on our way to the mess tent.'

The guards brought forward a mess of clothing, mud and blood and let it slide gently to the ground. The general looked up from his map and sighed. 'Can't you deal with it?' he said. 'I'm rather busy.'

The duty officer shook his head. 'I think you'd rather talk to this one yourself,' he said.

From experience, the general trusted the duty officer's judgement. 'If you say so,' he said. 'Well, come on, find him a chair or something. I can't very well interrogate a heap on the floor.'

They fetched a folding chair and loaded the prisoner into it. They were surprisingly gentle, for soldiers.

'All right,' the general said, putting down his ruler and compasses. 'Who are you?'

The prisoner lifted his head. Most of his face was an open wound, with soil and dust ground into it. 'My God,' the general said, 'what happened to you?'

It was more in the nature of a rhetorical question, since he couldn't believe that someone so badly smashed up would still be able to talk. In fact, the man's voice was calm and steady, if a little weak. 'Like the man said, 'he replied, 'I fell off my horse. Almost fell off,' he added, moving the corner of his mouth into what would have been a smile, 'except for one foot, which I carelessly left in the stirrup. Wouldn't have been so bad, only these idiots were chasing the poor brute all round the square.'

The general, who had seen more slaughter than most men, couldn't help shuddering a little. 'Get the doctor,' he said. 'This man needs attention.'

'Later.' The prisoner could still raise his voice. 'I've got to ask you something. Who are you?'

There was a brief silence.

'Banged his head, probably,' muttered the duty officer. 'You, get the surgeon.'

A guard hurried away, while the general looked at the prisoner. 'My name is Cronan Sulivois,' he said. 'Are you telling me you didn't know that?'

The prisoner tried to laugh, but couldn't. 'Well, there you go,' he said. 'I've been looking all over for you. My name's-' He hesitated. 'My name's Monach,' he said. 'I represent the order of Deymeson. Would you like to know why I'm here?'

General Cronan frowned. 'Where's that doctor got to?' he said. 'This man's off his head.'

'No,' the prisoner replied. 'And you didn't answer my question. Would you like to know-?'

'Yes,' General Cronan interrupted. 'Since you seem determined to tell me, yes, I would.'

The prisoner let his head slump forward. 'I was sent to kill you,' he said.

General Cronan looked up. 'Were you really?' he said. 'Well, I don't think you'll be up to killing anybody for a while. I hope that's not a problem.'

'It's all right,' Monach said, 'there's been a change of plan. You need to go to Sansory, immediately.'

'Do I?' Cronan sighed. 'And why would I want to do that?'

Monach grabbed the sides of the chair with his tattered hands and pulled himself up straight. He managed to hold himself there for a second or two before his strength gave way and he slid back. For some reason Cronan found the gesture impressive. 'Because,' Monach said, 'Feron Amathy and the raiders are going to burn it down if you don't. Do you understand me?'

Cronan leaned forward. 'What makes you say that?' he said.

'Because he told me so himself. I was holding a knife under his chin at the time. I'm inclined to believe him.'

Outside a sergeant was shouting at his platoon about something or other. 'You got close enough to Feron Amathy to hold a knife on him?'

Monach shrugged. 'Yes,' he said, then he winced and raised a hand to his right eye, slid it back past his ear to the nape of his neck. Just as the duty officer realised what he was doing, he thrust his arm straight up in the air and snapped it down through ninety degrees; the knife missed Cronan's head by the width of a thumb and split the headrest of his chair.

'No,' Cronan shouted, as the duty officer started to draw his sword, 'leave him alone. He just got my undivided attention.'

Monach smiled, and the duty officer took a step back, his hand still resting on the pommel of his sword. Cronan turned round in his chair and tried to pull out the knife, but it was too deep. Also, his hands were shaking.

'The same knife you held up Feron Amathy with?' he asked, in a rather awkward voice.

Monach was kneading the tendons of his forearm. 'Yes,' he replied. 'And before you ask, it's the only one I had on me. I'm a priest, not a cutlery stall. Keep it,' he went on, 'I've decided you can carry on living. But you've got to move now if you're going to stand a chance of reaching Sansory in time.'

Cronan stood up, and motioned to a guard to get the knife out of his chair. 'Admit it,' he said, 'you just missed. That's fair enough; you're obviously not at your best right now.'

Monach smiled. 'Sansory,' he said.

'How do I know you aren't leading me into an ambush?'

This time Monach managed to laugh, though the sound was more like the shrieking of crows. 'I suggest you follow your instincts,' he said. 'Or you could pray for divine guidance. Tell me, do you ever dream about crows?'

Cronan frowned. 'No,' he said. 'At least, I don't think so.' He nodded to the duty officer. 'General muster,' he said, 'quick as you like. Then I'd better see the captains of division, and you can get me the bigger map of the Bohec valley, the old one with the cart tracks on it. And get a messenger off to Sansory, tell them to shut the gates.' He turned back to face Monach, who'd slumped back in the chair. He looked like a sack of old junk dumped carelessly in the corner of a room. 'You're really a sword-monk?' he asked.

Monach laughed. 'What's left of one,' he replied. 'It'd be nearer the mark to say that you could make up a whole sword-monk out of me and a dozen yards of bandage.'

'Fascinating,' Cronan said. 'I've never met a sword-monk before, at least not to talk to; I've seen a few of your lot strutting about in the background at big receptions and temple services, but that's all. Were you really sent here to kill me?'

'Yes.'

'Oh. Why?'

Monach shrugged. 'There was a reason. Probably. Will you settle for God moving in a mysterious way?'

'No,' Cronan replied, 'but if you don't know, you don't know, and there's no point badgering you about it.'

Monach nodded. 'You believe me, then. That's good.'

'I haven't got the time or the energy not to believe you,' Cronan replied. 'If I wasn't so busy, maybe I'd have the guards beat the truth out of you with big sticks, but the secret of being a good general is keeping your priorities straight. What made you change your mind about killing me?'

'Who said I changed my mind? But first I've got to save Sansory.'

'You've got to save Sansory?' Cronan smiled gently.

'That's right. And I've got to use you to do it, since I can't think of any other way of going about it. I'm allowed a certain degree of discretion, as a senior field officer and honorary deacon.'

'Interesting,' Cronan said. 'You remind me of me. Do you think I'd have made a good sword-monk?'

'No,' Monach replied. 'You're a bit too tall, and you'd have difficulty with the theoretical side. The secret of being a good sword-monk is the ability to concentrate on meaningless tiny details at the expense of the main issue.'

Then the doctor arrived, with four orderlies and a stretcher; they lifted Monach out of the chair and laid him on his back. 'Thank you,' he said, just as they were about to carry him away.

'My pleasure,' General Cronan replied.

The cavalry went on ahead. Not that they'd be any use against the raiders, or much good against the specialist horsemen of the Amathy house (who paid better and weren't so fussy about rules of engagement and plunder), but they could find out what was going on and report back, which was rather more important.

General Cronan's coach had shed a wheel the previous day, and the wheelwrights hadn't got round to fixing it, so he rode at the head of the baggage train, in the same cart as the wounded monk. For some reason the monk found this highly amusing, though he also seemed to feel that no good would come of it. Two large crows followed them all the way.

A scouting party from the main cavalry unit reported in, saying that they'd ridden past Sansory (which was still there, and yes, they'd sent a detachment to check the gates were shut, and they were) and carried on east towards Deymeson; about four miles short of the town, they'd seen columns of smoke in the sky directly above where the abbey should have been. No, they hadn't had sight of the raiders, but on the other hand their orders had been not to engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary, and they didn't want to risk disobeying those orders by going any further… The main body of the cavalry had fallen back to guard the east-west road, with skirmishers out deep on either side, given the raiders' apparent tendency to come across country whenever they could.

Cronan spread out the map on his knees-the wind tried to tug it away, but a couple of guards jumped up and held the corners down-then sent word down the line that they'd be missing out Sansory and heading for-he glanced down to read the name-Vistock, a village roughly halfway between Sansory and Deymeson. 'We won't bother looking for them,' he explained, 'they'll come looking for us. Or they'll just vanish into thin air and turn up somewhere else next month. At any rate, they won't attack the city with us at their backs.'

It hadn't taken long for word to spread through the army that they were on their way to fight the raiders, and the sergeants were having to shout and call time to keep up the usual pace. That was understandable enough, but annoying, and the general's temper started to fray. This was unusual enough to provoke further doleful commentary up and down the column, until the sergeants had to order silence in the ranks, which didn't do much for morale. At this point some captain or other thought it might be a good idea to get the men singing, to cheer them up and quicken the pace. He didn't take the trouble to check with the general first, assuming he wouldn't want to be bothered with such trivia. The men were in no mood to sing, but they couldn't disobey a direct order; so they sang: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, He'll make his dinner of you and me.

'For God's sake,' Cronan shouted, standing up on the box, 'tell them to stop making that bloody awful noise.'

The monk, who'd been asleep for some time, opened his eyes. 'Now there's a tune I haven't heard in a long time,' he said.

Cronan looked down at him. 'You know it then, do you?'

The monk nodded. 'Used to hear it a lot when I was a boy. It's a very old song, I believe.'

'Really,' Cronan said. 'How would you know that?'

The monk coughed painfully. 'I'm a scholar, don't forget,' he said. 'First recorded as a marching song in the reign of Tercennius, which I hardly need tell you is over four hundred years ago, and the text implies it was an old song then. A commentator from the reign of Cadentius-a mere two centuries back, which makes it slightly suspect, but he could well have been drawing on earlier sources-says that it refers to the defeat of Sclerus Acasto by the south-eastern nomads, which would put it back nearly six hundred years; far-fetched, perhaps, but by no means impossible, since another popular marching-song, "Lady With the White Felt Hat", can reliably be dated to the accession of Loriscus, nearly seven hundred and fifty years ago. Which goes to show, soldiers like the old tunes best.' He closed his eyes again. 'Amazing, isn't it, the garbage that makes it down the centuries intact. Did the doctor happen to say how he rated my chances?'

Cronan looked away. 'Not good, I'm afraid,' he said. 'But not hopeless either. There's some internal bleeding-'

The monk shook his head. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'I knew I'd be too late to save the order. Even if I hadn't been, you'd never have risked your army for us. I expect you're glad we're out of the way.'

'Well, they did send you to kill me. A man can take offence at that sort of thing.'

'There was a very good reason for it,' Monach replied, 'though of course they didn't explain it to me. We act in the best interests of the empire. Always.'

'Really.'

Monach nodded. 'Properly speaking, the best interests of religion, but the one includes the other. The idea was, since we're free agents and dedicated to the greater good, we can do the difficult, unpopular things that emperors and governors and generals daren't do. It's a privilege and a responsibility. We're well aware of the implications.' He started coughing again. 'At least, we were,' he said. 'But then the god in the cart showed up, and here we are, the end of the world. Arguably, that's why I had to kill you, to make sure the world came to an end. I mean,' he went on, turning his head a little, 'it'd be ridiculous if the armies of darkness were defeated, just because the dying empire happened to throw up an unusually talented general. It'd make a mockery of religion; what my old tutor used to call an abomination. How being destroyed would be good for the empire I couldn't rightly say, but I don't suppose I have all the facts at my disposal.'

Cronan grunted and went back to his work. The soldiers had stopped singing and were trudging along even more slowly than before. The monk went back to sleep, and muttered from time to time about something or other.

A squadron of cavalry brought in a further report. No sign of the raiders, they said, but when they'd ridden up to Vistock Beacon, the highest point for miles around, they'd seen what looked like a big mob of armoured horsemen riding in from the north-west. They were seven, perhaps eight hours away, assuming the Visk was still fordable at North Hey.

'The Amathy house,' Cronan said, frowning, searching the map. It didn't show a River Visk, let alone a ford or a village called North Hey. It was a new map from the cartographer royal's office in Torcea.

'Could be,' said one of his staff. 'Or it could be Tazencius, coming from that direction.'

'More likely to be Feron Amathy, if they're cavalry,' Cronan pointed out. 'In any event it's bad news.'

'What do you think he's planning to do?' someone else asked.

'Either join with the raiders and make us fight on two fronts-tactically his best option, but he may have another agenda besides mere victory. Otherwise, he could hold off while we fight the raiders, and then attack whoever's left standing.'

One of the senior officers frowned. 'I can see why he'd attack us,' he said, 'but why pick a fight with them? I thought they were in this together.'

Cronan shook his head. 'Only as far as it suits him,' he replied. 'No, if he can step in after we've been wiped out and drive the raiders back into the sea…'

'I follow you,' the other man said. 'The long-term view. You think this may be what he had in mind all along?'

'Possibly' Cronan shrugged. 'I think he's more of an opportunist than that. For one thing, I don't know how he's planning to handle that idiot Tazencius. He'll be glad of a few more infantry regiments, and it could be that he's planning to set up Tazencius as a puppet emperor, at least in the short term-you know, to make his coup look more legitimate. Or maybe he isn't bothered about that, in which case he'll probably send Tazencius and his people in first to get chewed up, and finish off the rest of them along with the rest of us. Or the raiders, depending on who wins the main battle.' Cronan yawned, and stretched his arms. 'The likeliest bet is that he's keeping all these options open, and he'll make his final choice as late as possible. The one thing I do know about Feron Amathy, he loves having as many choices as possible.'

'So what are you going to do?' someone asked.

Cronan smiled. 'I haven't got any choices at all,' he said ruefully. 'I've got to press on to Vistock and take on the raiders, stop them getting to Sansory. Of course, while I'm doing that, Feron Amathy may stave off boredom while he's waiting by sacking the city and burning it to the ground, something else to blame on the raiders. It depends on what's most important to him: giving his people a good time, to keep them happy for the next stage of the plan, or being the saviour of Sansory and the last, best hope of the empire. At the moment I'd be inclined to favour the latter, except that Sansory's small but rich, which makes it eminently suitable for feeding to his dogs. There's plenty of other cities he can save, after all, whereas sacking, say, Mael or one of the other Guild towns would be a bigger job with a lower return per man hour expended. So I really don't know. Anyway,' he went on, 'there's nothing much we can do about that, so it's best not to think about it. After all, our chances of still being on our feet after we've picked a fight with the raiders are small enough, God knows.'

That wasn't the sort of thing they wanted to hear; mostly because Cronan had a reputation for telling the truth, even when it wasn't the wisest thing to do. 'What about Tazencius?' someone said, after a long silence. 'I know it's a long shot, but he can't be completely stupid, he must realise that playing along with Feron Amathy's a wonderful way of getting killed before your time. Could we talk to him, do you think?'

Cronan shook his head. 'Highly unlikely,' he said. 'He doesn't like me very much, you see. And he's just cocky enough to think he can finesse his way past Feron Amathy when the time comes. Of course, his plans may be seriously adrift by now; supposing he was banking on our sleeping friend here having done his job-get rid of me, and there's no reason why he shouldn't desert the Amathy house and change sides, thereby making himself the champion of legitimate government and his imperial cousins' new best friend-it's reasonable to expect a sword-monk to be able to pull off a simple assassination after all. If my guess is right, he talked the order into believing that killing me was the only way to save the empire. His bad luck, I suppose; you can't really say he was stupid for gambling on what should've been a certainty.' Cronan smiled, and held up his thumb and forefinger, three-quarters of an inch apart. 'He came this close,' he added, 'assuming the monk really did miss.'

Only one or two of the staff knew what he was talking about; the others didn't ask. 'So we can't expect any help from Tazencius,' someone said. 'Even if we beat the raiders, we'll have the Amathy house and Tazencius' infantry at our backs. No disrespect, but it's not sensible to stake the future of the empire on your tactical ability. You may be able to pull off a miracle, but then again you may not.'

'Very tactful,' Cronan sighed. 'I put our chances at something less than a hundred to one.'

'Fine,' said an officer. 'You're as good as saying you're resigned to this army getting wiped out, Sansory falling, and Feron Amathy with nothing between him and Torcea but a handful of third-string garrisons.' He hesitated, then went on, 'There is an alternative, you know.'

Cronan nodded, looking away. 'Sure,' he said. 'We simply withdraw, refuse to play. Sansory falls-but it'd have fallen anyway, in all probability; Feron Amathy doesn't get an opportunity to stab the raiders in the back, he doesn't get rid of Tazencius; the raiders get as much loot as they can carry and go home. Feron Amathy's campaign loses momentum, giving us time to pick off Tazencius, maybe patch up a pardon so he can go home, and then deal with the Amathy house once and for all. Apart from Sansory getting burned to the ground, it's a good result. And, as you say, our chances of saving the city even if we do press on and fight are next to nothing, so to all intents and purposes they're already dead, we can't save them.' He picked at a thread on the knee of his trousers. 'Also, true courage and service don't lie in making the heroic gesture; fighting and dying here would be the easy way out. The truly brave and loyal thing to do would be to walk away. Did I leave anything out?'

'I think that covers it,' someone murmured, 'more or less.'

'Splendid,' Cronan replied. 'Well, we'd better be getting along. If this pathetic excuse for a map's anything to go by, it's still nearly two hours to Vistock.'

Just over two hours later they came to a ford over a small, inoffensive river.

'North Hey?' Cronan asked the captain of pioneers, who claimed to know the area.

The captain shook his head. 'Vistock,' he replied.

The first thing they could make out was the shell of a mill-house, with a wrecked and moss-grown wheel sunk in the water. There was only one other structure still standing: half a barn (the other half had fallen in a long time ago, there were still signs of fire on the rounded ends of the rafters), surrounded on two sides by an overgrown wall. Outside the ramshackle doorway someone had driven a stake into the ground and stuck on it the head of an old woman with long, matted grey hair. The blood running down the stake was still wet. The body was nowhere to be seen.

'Raiders,' someone said.

'Or Feron Amathy,' someone else suggested, 'pretending to be the raiders. Not that it matters, I suppose.'

Cronan stopped the cart and climbed out to take a look. He didn't seem shocked or revolted, just curious. 'Actually,' he said, 'it doesn't look like either of them to me. I guess we may just have tripped over a good old-fashioned private murder, nothing to do with the destiny of nations and none of our business.' He knelt down and stared up at the base of the neck. 'It's a clean cut,' he said. 'Just one cut; which could mean a backsabre, I suppose. Or a sword-monk; they're supposed to be able to chop off heads with one mighty blow, in fact I think it's on the syllabus. Or it could just be some lunatic loose with a felling axe.' He stood up and looked round. 'This is Vistock? The map says it's a medium-sized town.'

'Raiders,' the pioneer captain told him. 'Forty-odd years ago.' Something caught his eye and he stooped to pick it up: a single bone button. 'Let me see that map of yours a minute.'

Cronan reached up into the cart for it and handed it over. 'And some of you bury that,' he said, pointing to the head, 'before the crows get at it. I don't know about you people, but I find this place depressing.'

He walked over to the barn and told a couple of his guards to help him on to the roof, where the rafters were bare and he could hold on and look around. From there he could see a fair way up and down the road. The obvious point was the ford, but he wasn't convinced, so he called down to some scouts and told them to look for crossing places a couple of miles in each direction. If not the ford, then what? He'd been assuming there would be a town: houses, walls, gates, a wide variety of obstacles to break up a charge, cover behind which he could hide reserves. Instead he'd committed himself to fighting on a level plain, with nothing to play with except a river that he suspected wasn't deep enough to slow down a determined advance, let alone block it. His suspicion proved to be correct.

'Wonderful,' he said. 'All right, if there's nothing here, we'll have to make something of our own. Somebody help me down, there's a lot to get done.'

They weren't finished by nightfall, so Cronan called for big fires and all the available lamps and torches. The men weren't in the mood, not after a long march, and it was fairly obvious they didn't have any faith in what Cronan was doing. He couldn't really blame them; he was being thorough and workmanlike but unimaginative; there was nothing in his plans that another general couldn't have thought of and carried out just as well. If he was going to be the first man in the history of the empire to beat the raiders in a pitched battle, he was going to have to come up with something better than that. Unfortunately he couldn't think of anything; and besides, they were running out of time.

'You look awful,' someone told him. 'You want to get your head down and sleep for a few hours, or you'll be no good to anybody when they do show up.'

'Yes, Mother,' Cronan grunted, but he couldn't think of anything else to do, and he was very tired. They offered to pitch his tent for him but he told them he couldn't be bothered; he'd just lie down in the cart for a while and go over the maps one last time, in case he'd missed something. When they came back with the lantern he'd asked for, he was fast asleep.

Monach woke up with a start, and wondered if he was dead. He was feeling much better, almost no pain-entirely consistent with death, from what he'd read about it, rather less likely if he was still alive, considering the gravity of his injuries.

But he was alive. He was also alone, in a cart, about four hundred yards away from a great deal of noise and movement. They'd started the battle while he was still asleep, and nobody had thought to wake him up. Bastards!

It hurt a lot when he raised himself on one elbow, to where he had a view of what was going on, but it was worth it. He could only see about a third of the action, because the units in the centre of the battle were blocking his view of both wings to some extent; however, not only was the imperial centre still there, it was moving forward at a calm, brisk walk, and the bodies being stepped over weren't all imperial soldiers, by any means.

Intriguing development. He resolved to make the effort, and dragged himself up on to the box of the cart. That really did hurt, and for a moment or so he thought it'd be the death of him, since breathing became almost more trouble than it was worth. But that passed, and he found that he was looking at a fairly straightforward three-sides-of-a-square envelopment procedure, with the raiders penned in the middle, a massive central block of infantry herding them back, and two hedges of cavalry on either side doing the killing and the wounding Cavalry. Far more cavalry than General Cronan had had at his disposal on the way here. Another, more careful look at the backs of the infantry in front of him confirmed it; at least a quarter of the centre weren't wearing Cronan's arms or livery. He squinted (the sun was inconveniently placed) until he recognised the flamboyant outfits of the Amathy house, and old-fashioned imperial patterns, which could only be the foot soldiers from Tazencius' garrisons.

Very strange indeed, he thought; Feron Amathy and Prince Tazencius were fighting with General Cronan against the raiders. How on earth had that happened?

There hadn't been one single factor that turned the tide, simply the cumulative effect of small, common-sense precautions and preparations, combined with a certain amount of flair in the leading and handling of troops.

It was, of course, pure Cronan, all of it. His basic idea was to fool the raiders into thinking that he was planning to defend the ford. They'd know perfectly well that the river could be crossed in at least two other places, and they'd split into two units and make a rush for them, with the aim of getting across the river and round behind Cronan's infantry before he could withdraw or react. They'd meet brief, futile resistance from the cavalry on the wings; they'd charge through them, scattering them, and rush down on the infantry-only to find that the cavalry had deliberately given up too easily and were coming back to take the raiders in flank and rear, while the heavy centre unfolded to receive them with prejudice. That was good tactical thinking; the part that might almost qualify as genius was the caltrops.

('Caltrops?' the colonel of engineers had said, when he got his orders. 'Oh, you mean those little three-legged wire things about the size of your fist, with spikes sticking out, the ones you hide in long grass or something, and when the enemy treads on them-yes, I suppose we could, if we had enough wire.' Cronan had, of course, seen to it that there was plenty of wire suitable for improvising caltrops out of in the field, using only basic tools.)

Genius, because Cronan had guessed that what gave the raiders the edge was their unstoppable charge, the impetus that carried them on, through and over any obstacle, no matter how dense or determined. Unstoppable, he'd said to himself, but supposing they wanted to stop. Could they?

In the event, it turned out that they couldn't. As the dozen or so men in the lead suddenly collapsed to the ground, screaming with pain, the main body of the raiders guessed something wasn't right. But they were committed to the charge and couldn't stop; they ploughed on into the caltrop field, driving the finger-long tines of the caltrops clean through bootsole and foot, and fell to the ground like ripe corn under the thin slice of a sharp scythe. When they fell, they landed on more caltrops, which stabbed them in the stomach and the chest and the face, and the boots of the men behind them landing on their backs and necks drove the tines in further still. As the charge continued to falter and pile up, still a dozen yards or so short of the enemy line, the cavalry crashed into the rear of the mob, stampeding them, and now the great wave of the raiders was smashing into the sea wall and disintegrating into fine spray, vaporised by its own impetus. Cronan saw that and muttered a quick prayer under his breath, to Poldarn the Destroyer; at the heart of all inspirational tactics lurks a small kernel of poetic justice, of the strong undone by their own strength. Then he looked up and saw the Amathy house, heading straight at him.

Oh well, he thought, it was a moral victory, I suppose. But the Amathy house cavalry swung further than he'd anticipated they would when he saw them line out; instead of charging his squadrons, they wheeled and crunched into the raiders' flanks, stoving them in like rocks crushing the side of a ship. Not far behind came Tazencius' infantry, with the Amathy foot soldiers bringing up the rear; they moved in to reinforce his own troops as if they'd been practising the move as a drill for a year. They'd figured out about the caltrops for themselves and stayed clear of the few patches where the spikes hadn't been clogged and rendered safe with a mat of dead raiders.

It was at this point that Cronan finally realised how few of the enemy there actually were. Spaced out in open order in the full flight of the charge (like a flock of birds flying) was one thing; crowded together in a narrow space (like the same flock roosting in a few tall trees) was quite another. And, of course, the best part was still to come Poldarn didn't get to fight in the battle. One moment he was running forward, the backsabre held over his head in both hands; the next he was lying on his side, his whole body ringing with some terrible shock that hadn't yet started to melt into pain, but that paralysed him nonetheless. He only just had time to locate the source of the trauma-the spike of a caltrop poking up through the top of his right foot like a crocus, the feel of something pricking his ribs through his upper arm-before heavy bodies thumped down on top of him, squashing his face down among the heather stems and blotting out the light. The last thing he saw was a huge flock of crows congealing in the sky directly overhead -And they were talking to him, one voice coming together out of the multitude, announcing itself as the god whose name he'd borrowed or stolen. He wished he could see, but that was apparently out of the question.

To be certain, he asked: Who are you?

The voice answered: Oh, you know us, you've known us ever since you were a boy. We've been enemies for years.

He didn't like the sound of that. Have I actually done you any harm? he asked.

The voice answered: It depends on how you define harm. You've killed hundreds of us, possibly thousands, but that's all right, you can't hurt me; not on your own, there's simply too many of us for you to make a perceptible difference. Don't worry about it; I forgave you years ago.

A window opened in his mind, and through it he could see a level field, muddy, with small pools of rain standing on the surface here and there. From a distance it was brown with a faint sheen; as he grew closer he saw that it was covered with ranks and files of tiny green spearheads, driven up through the mud like caltrop spikes. He saw a gate, and beyond that the stump of an old dead tree in the hedge, where someone had built a very fine hide out of green branches and briars. Fifteen yards out from the hide, four or five crows were hopping round in small, furious circles; looking closer he could see that each of them was tethered by one leg to a stick driven into the mud. From time to time each captive bird would open its wings and manage to rise a single wingbeat off the ground before flopping back down again and continuing its small, circular dance. Further out, scattered at random within a twenty-yard radius, he could see a couple of dozen more crows, but when he looked closer he saw they were dead and pegged out, a slender thorn twig stuck through their lower jaws and into the dirt to keep their heads up and make them look as if they were contentedly feeding.

He asked: Am I doing this?

The voice replied: This is who you are, it's the answer to your question. The boy in the hide is you. Now look up and to your left.

He did as he was told and saw a stand of seven tall, thin ash trees, leafless. In the branches sat a dozen fat black crows, and as he watched one of them got up and flew straight towards him, gradually getting lower in the sky as it battled against the stiff wind. It gained a little height as it flew over the decoys, turned a tight circle and came in against the wind, wings back. As it pitched, an arrow with a thick blunt tip shot out of the hide and knocked the bird over in a tangle of outstretched wings, then the bird scrambled up and hopped towards the trees, one wing trailing. Meanwhile the rest of the crows in the trees got up and sailed over; two of them pitched straight away, and an arrow flew out and knocked it down, while the others veered sharply and rode the wind back to their trees.

The voice said: That's how clever you are; you noticed how, when you put one of us down, the others didn't see the arrow, they only saw one of their own dropping in and staying down. I saw that and thought that must mean it was safe, which is why the others came over too. Because you're patient as well as clever, you were able to kill scores of me in a single day, until eventually I realised what you were doing and learned to avoid you.

He said: I'm sorry.

The voice said: I told you, don't worry about it. I admire intelligence. Consider this: you're the only human ever to defeat the great army of the crows, just as Cronan is the only general who's ever beaten the raiders. Consider this: if you hadn't won your famous victory against me, I'd have stripped this field bare-that's your grandfather's spring barley, which he can't afford to lose if he's to feed you and the rest of the farm. Compare General Cronan again: if he hadn't won his famous victory against the raiders, they'd have burned Sansory and killed everybody inside. Does the morality bother you, now that you've decided to become a crow?

He replied: I suppose not. There's a sort of poetic justice to it.

The voice replied: A great man once said that there's a kernel of poetic justice inside every famous victory. Consider this: you and Cronan are the only men in history to have defeated the divine Poldarn. Who do you think you are, the boy or the crows?

He said: Didn't you just say I'm the boy in the hide?

The voice replied: Consider this -And he was sitting in the hide watching the crows flying slow, cautious circuits around the trees. After a while, one crow peeled off from the mob and flew straight towards him, heavy and straight, like his own blunt-headed arrows (as if the crows were shooting at him, not the other way round). He watched the crow come within seventy-five yards, then suddenly shear off screaming and fly back the way it had just come.

The voice said: Consider-before I assemble to feed, I send out a scout (the scout is also me, of course) to see if it's safe, to lead the way. Ask yourself this-when the divine Poldarn manifests himself as the god in the cart, leading the way, scouting ahead for the end of the world, are you the crow or the boy in the hide?

He thought before replying: Perhaps you could tell me, he said; does the crow that leads the way know it's a part of you, or when it leaves the trees and the rest of the mob does it think of itself as an individual?

The voice laughed, and said: Think about this -And he was standing on the top of a cliff watching a sail ship slip away into the interstice between sea and sky; when it had gone, he turned and walked across the downs towards the lights of a town in the distance; and he was repeating to himself his new name, his new history, the details of his new persona The voice said: There's your answer; you're the crow flying away from the trees, the spy sent out to find a good place to feed. When you leave the trees and the rest of the mob, do you think of yourself as an individual? And if so, which one?

He said: I don't know. The person I'm about to become is a stranger to me.

The voice said: When the divine Poldarn manifests himself as the god in the cart, leaving the mob and flying away from the trees, does he know he's me or does he think he's just an individual whose mind happens to be empty of memories because of some accident?

He thought hard before answering: Do you just send out one spy at a time, he asked, or are there many of us?

The voice became hard and cold, as if it was angry at having been tricked into giving away too much. Consider this, it said -And he saw his mother as a young girl, standing up with the knife in her hand, her skirt wet and filthy falling back down to her knees, as his father tried to breathe but couldn't, his throat having been cut; and he saw her as an old woman, coming out of the barn because she'd heard voices and assumed it was the bone cart from Sansory (she wasn't afraid of a man in a cart rolling up to her door) and hardly seeing the backsabre before it severed the veins and tendons of her neck and bit into and through the bone, and the last thing she heard was an old man talking about his dead son.

The voice said: Consider this, since you're so clever: Copis is carrying your child, he'll be born in just over seven months. When he's born, you'll be a long way away, or dead. As he leaves the mob and flies away from the trees, will he think of himself as an individual or merely a part of the pattern?

He replied: What'll happen to her? Will she be all right?

The voice laughed, and said: Consider the five dozen crows you killed when you won your famous victory, when you pegged out all of me that was in that place, so that the roosting trees were empty and the nests were deserted. Consider the one crow that didn't fly into the decoys, and so survived, when all the rest of me was dead. Do you think she considered herself still to be part of the mob, or an individual?

He replied: But she's not the last survivor of the order. There are others, scattered about.

The voice replied: On the day you won your famous victory over the divine Poldarn you killed all but one of me that were in that place, but there were others of me, hundreds of millions, scattered about. Do you think she considered herself still to be part of them, or an individual?

He said: I don't know. But I never meant her any harm. I'd never do anything to hurt her.

The voice said: Consider this -And he saw himself standing on the cart on the road to Laise Bohec, facing Eyvind, the last survivor of his party. And he saw himself standing up out of the mud and staring at the two dozen dead men, not knowing who they were or who he was.

He said: I think that the scout believes it's an individual, but it's wrong. It's still part of the mob.

Thank you, the voice replied, that's better. Is there anything else you'd like me to tell you, or shall I send you back to the battle?

He shouted, Yes; but the sky exploded into light, and he saw the heel of a boot come down and skin his cheek, shearing away the skin. The sky was bright and empty. Another boot crashed into the back of his head, and everything went away.