Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Five

'For the very last time,' said the body lying in the water, 'go away. I won't tell you again.'

'Oh sure,' sneered the reflection. 'Wasn't it going to be the very last time the last time you tried to get rid of me? And the time before that?'

He was in the air, feeling the crisp breeze in his wings and against the feathers of his belly. He was happy now that he'd rejoined his people, been allowed back into their mind, and would soon be flying home. Meanwhile, he spared a moment to look down at the body lying in the water (but it was still alive, so no joy) and its reflection, which was apparently talking to it.

'I'm not going to listen to you any more,' said the body to its reflection. 'I can't hear a word you're saying.'

'Oh, please,' said the reflection, scornfully. 'Try and act like a grown-up.'

'Anyway,' the body went on, 'fairly soon I'll be rid of you once and for all. I'm going home.'

'Home?' The reflection laughed. 'No such place.'

'Yes there is. I've found my family and I'm going home over the sea, where you can't follow me.'

'Want to bet?'

'You can't follow me,' the body repeated, 'and even if you could, you'll never find me there, not just one among so many. It'd be like trying to find a leaf in a forest.'

'I'll find you,' said the reflection, 'bet on it.'

'You can try,' replied the body. 'I expect you will, it's just the sort of nasty, obsessive behaviour I've come to expect from you. But you'll fail.'

Silence, just for a moment.

'You don't need to do that,' said the reflection. 'Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. And anyway, it's not what you really want.'

'How the hell would you know?'

'I know everything about you. I know everything from the moment you were born. Before that, even. Every single thing there is to know about you, I've got it in here. Safe, where you can't lose it or get rid of it. It's my duty,' it added, 'as your better half.'

'You've never known me,' said the body, furiously angry, 'you don't know the first thing about me. All you know about or care about is you. All these years you think you know me, but all you can see is your own smug grin in a mirror. You think I'm just a polished surface you can shine in. Well, that's all over. I'm leaving. And without me-' Great pleasure in the voice, suddenly. 'Without me, you'll be dead. You'll just stop existing and fade away.'

'You really believe that? God, you're stupid.'

'All right, we'll see who's left once I've gone, and taken the baby with me. Back home-'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Back home, to his family, where he belongs.'

When Poldarn woke up, he panicked: God help me, he thought, where am I, who am I, God damn it, I can't even remember my own name…

He lifted his head and looked round. He'd been lying in blood-soaked mud beside a river, and all around him lay the bodies of dead men; some dressed one way, some another. A crow glanced up from its meal and smirked at him, one professional acknowledging another.

It's all right, he told himself, as the mist cleared in his mind, you're home. Very much home, you were born here (in that barn over there, in fact), and in a few minutes Copis will be along with the cart and you'll be off about your missionary work; unless, of course, the world ended while you were asleep, and this is the brave new world -Same as the old one, only more painful. The last time he'd been here, at this point of departure, he hadn't had a pair of three-inch spikes stuck through his foot and his arm. This time the blood in the mud was his own, which at least afforded him a sense of belonging, almost equivalent to citizenship.

Must've missed the major veins, he rationalised, or I'd be dead. Unless I am dead, and this is heaven; or unless I'm a god, in which case they could drain all the blood out of me to make sausages, and it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference.

It would have been nice, he thought, if there'd been someone he could have asked; he was tired of having to rebuild the world from scratch practically every time he opened his eyes, it was a scandalous waste of mental energy that could have been used for more positive, constructive purposes.

He shifted a little, wondering how he was going to get the caltrops out without making everything worse. It was a highly intriguing combination-left foot and right arm-likely to present a worthwhile challenge to even the most ingenious (as if he'd gone up a grade since last time, and had been set a fittingly ingenious puzzle as a reward).

Come on, Copis, you're late. No, she wouldn't be along this time. He remembered about her now; he'd dragged her out of the store room at Deymeson, splashed water from the stable trough on her face until she'd woken up; before that he'd found a horse nobody seemed to want and he shunted her up on to it; she was still dizzy and confused, unable to talk because of her smashed jaw; he'd put the reins in her hand and led the horse by the bridle out of the abbey gate, given it a hard slap to make it walk on. She hadn't looked back at him as the horse carried her away down the hill. He'd made sure there was some food in the saddlebags, and six gross-quarters he'd found in a dead monk's sleeve. Then he'd gone back inside, before he was missed, and helped out with the looting and burning.

And now here he was, and she wouldn't be coming to rescue him from the field of battle; there was no guarantee that she was even still alive, and if she was, the only reason she'd come looking for him would be to kill him (and he could do without that kind of rescue, even now). He tried to think practically, one stage at a time. First grade: get the caltrops out. Second grade: crawl off the battlefield and find some cover. Third grade: find some food and something to drink. Fourth grade: don't bother your head with fourth grade until you've passed first, second and third.

He tried five or six times, but he couldn't reach the caltrop in his foot, and that was the one that mattered, because he couldn't crawl away from there until he'd got rid of it. The one in his arm was far less important; once he was off the field and inside the barn over there, he could attend to it at his leisure, if only he could find some way of getting this other one out of his foot… He considered trying to kick one of the other spikes into the ground, anchoring the caltrop firmly enough so that he'd be able to draw his foot clear (like a man drawing a sword from a scabbard, given that he would be the scabbard). The pain caused by one gentle, tentative attempt was enough to convince him to forget about that idea. He let go, sinking back into the mud.

What had happened, he wondered, in the battle? Who'd won? When he left it, the raiders (his side?) appeared to be losing or about to lose, but they were the raiders, the invincible, nearly supernatural enemy he'd heard so much about; it was almost impossible to believe that they'd choose this one occasion to go against the grain and fail for the very first time. Besides, he'd only seen one small part of the battle, and his impressions could therefore have been entirely misleading. In any event, the battle was over, or it had moved a long way away. Perhaps each side had wiped out the other, down to the very last man, leaving him as the sole survivor.

If that was the case, he didn't want to know.

Didn't matter in any event. The battle, the war didn't mean anything to him, and he belonged to neither side, or both. True, he had a strong intuitive feeling that the raiders were his people, but it wasn't very long at all since he'd had exactly the same feeling about the sword-monks. They couldn't both be his people, since the raiders had hated the order so much they'd frittered away time and energy wiping them out; how could there be any common ground between two such deadly enemies?

Since he couldn't see anything but mud, he closed his eyes for a while and tried not to think about the pain (which only made it worse; he could feel every nerve in his body each time his heart beat). It was some time before he realised there was someone else moving about.

He kept perfectly still. Helpless as he was, there was nothing he could do to save himself if whoever it was turned out to be the enemy, or even just some scavenger from a nearby farm, picking through the dead for scrap. On the other hand, if it was a friend and he kept still and quiet, he could escape notice and miss out on his only hope of being rescued. He thought about that; if nobody rescued him, he was probably going to die here, and it would take a long time and be unpleasant. Since the worst that could happen was going to happen anyway, why the hell bother with caution?

He tried to sit up, but it hurt so badly that he cried out at the pain. That, however, was all that was needed; a moment later he found himself staring at the toes of a boot.

'Is that you?' someone asked.

– Which was a very good question, given his circumstances. But the voice was, once again, familiar.

'Eyvind?' he asked.

'Yes, I thought it was.' The voice was much closer; whoever it was, he was kneeling down. 'God almighty, look what happened to you. Here, hold still. I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I expect we'll soon find out.'

It was annoying and illogical that he'd hardly felt the caltrop spike go in, but the pain as it left his foot was almost enough to stop his heart. 'Damn,' said the voice he believed was Eyvind, 'it's started bleeding. I don't know; do I leave the other one where it is, or do I pull it out? Well?'

He realised that the voice had asked him for a decision, a choice between options. That hardly seemed fair, to his way of thinking. 'Haven't a clue,' he said. 'I have a feeling that if you make the wrong decision I'll probably die, but that's about as helpful as I can be. Sorry.'

There was definitely an edge to the voice as it replied, 'All I wanted was a straight answer to a civil question. Damn it, I suppose I'd better leave it in there for now. Seems to me that if you've lived this long with it in, a few more minutes won't kill you. We'll see.'

He thought about the implications of that. 'Who won the battle?' he asked.

'Quiet a moment, I'm going to try and get you up on your feet.'

He saw two hands passing in front of his face, then he felt them each gathering a fistful of his shirt and he was lifted up off the ground like a sack. Eyvind was apparently stronger than he'd looked.

The pain as he tried to put weight on his pierced foot was enough to make him squeal, but a hand grabbed his left arm and draped it round a pair of broad, thin shoulders, and he was able to lift his foot off the ground and still stay upright. He opened his eyes, which he'd instinctively closed when the pain started.

'Right,' Eyvind said, 'that was probably the difficult part, we'll see. Gently now, there's no need to rush.'

Behind the barn was a cart. Needless to say, a crow was perching on the box; he was sure that given time he'd be able to remember its name. It flew away as they approached, ploughing a weary line across the broad sky.

'They did,' Eyvind said, dumping him down on the box and scrambling up beside him. 'It was a massacre.'

'Oh,' he said.

Eyvind picked up the reins. 'We don't even know how many of us made it,' he went on, urging the horses into a brisk walk. 'We haven't had time for a head count. Best guess at the moment is that half of us got killed. It was a nightmare.'

He nodded. 'What happened?'

'They decoyed us into the trap, basically,' Eyvind said with a sigh that was more disgust and disappointment than anything else. 'We were suckered in; those bloody spike things were what did it. After they'd got us bottled up, they pushed us back to the river, at the deepest point, needless to say, where we couldn't get across. That was a mistake on their part,' he went on, 'because we managed to pull ourselves together, counterattack. We were so badly outnumbered by that stage that it should've gone the other way, but they lost their nerve when we started cutting them about; we punched a hole right through their centre and started to pull out, which was when the horsemen started carving us up; we lost it and started running, and of course that was the worst thing we could've done. End result was, by the time they realised they'd gone too far and called off the pursuit, we were scattered all over the place in fives and tens or just one man out on his own, no chance of regrouping or anything like that. They gave it up and went back towards the big town; we've been blundering about trying to find each other ever since. The idea is to get back in some sort of order and follow a straight line back to the ships, assuming they're still there.' He scowled ferociously; his expression was almost comic. 'Since our so-called best friend knows where the ships are, that's by no means guaranteed. All we can hope for is that he wants us to get away, since he won't want it coming out that it was him who set all this up in the first place.'

Poldarn nodded again. 'You mean the Amathy house,' he said. 'They changed sides, didn't they?'

'Is that what they're called? I can't seem to remember these foreign names. Yes, that's exactly what they did. Of course, it's our own damn silly fault for being so trusting. I've said it before, these people aren't like us, you can't believe a single word they say.'

Poldarn thought about the monks of Deymeson, and Copis. 'Are we any better?' he asked.

'Of course,' Eyvind replied. 'We don't even lie to our enemies. Not that we ever need to, of course; if you don't talk to them, you can't lie to them. Saves a lot of trouble in the long run.'

'I suppose it would,' Poldarn said. 'Where are we headed?'

'Over there.' Eyvind indicated the direction with a vague dip of his head. 'There's a little combe, well hidden, you wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it. Mercifully we happened to find it on our way up here, and after they'd stopped chasing us we all had the wit to head for it. The general idea is to hang about there till it gets dark and then sneak back up the way we came, past that religious place we took out, and find the north-west road in the morning. If we keep going after that, we ought to have a clear run to the coast, provided they don't figure out what we're up to and cut us off. But I doubt they will, they aren't organised enough. Probably be back to fighting among themselves in a day or so,' he added contemptuously. 'They always seem to be doing that, and what it is they're actually fighting over, God only knows. I don't suppose they do.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'It's complicated, certainly,' he said. 'While I think of it, I never did get to ask you what happened to you after that first time we met-'

Eyvind laughed. 'Amazing stroke of luck,' he said. 'The day after we ran into each other I walked straight into a scouting party-they'd have killed me, only I recognised one of them from back home and yelled out his name. It's like some providence is looking out for me,' he went on. 'And the same with you, I reckon; if I hadn't happened to see you there when we attacked that column of horsemen you were with-well, you'd be feeding the crows right now, no question about that. And again just now; pure luck I found that cart, just standing there empty on the road with the horses still between the shafts. And I didn't set out to look for survivors, I just happened to look in your direction and there you were, so I went to see if you were still breathing. No idea why I did it, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I reckon you've got someone up there looking out for you, in which case I'm going to stick close to you, hope some of it rubs off on me. That's what they say, isn't it? Stay close to a lucky man.'

'That makes sense, I suppose,' Poldarn replied. He hadn't thought of himself as unusually lucky before, but he could see Eyvind's point. And there are several different kinds of luck, some more desirable than others. He thought for a moment, then asked, 'When you get back to the ships, can I come with you?'

Eyvind gave him a curious look, then laughed. 'What a strange question,' he said. 'Yes, of course you're coming with us, you're one of us. All right, so you may have lost your memory; doesn't alter the fact that you're clearly one of our own. We wouldn't dream of abandoning you here.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Thank you,' he said. 'So what'll I do when I get to your country? Our country,' he amended.

Eyvind shrugged. 'My guess is, either you'll remember who you are and where you live, or somebody'll recognise you soon enough. Failing that, you'll come and stay at our place for as long as you like. Trust me, as soon as you're home in the islands, it'll all come flooding back. I mean, think about it. The only reason why you'd lose your memory for so long is because you're in the middle of this totally foreign, alien country, among all these people who're nothing at all like us, so naturally nothing's familiar, there's nothing to jog your memory, break the ice. I can see that clearly enough after being lost and alone in this country myself; I tell you, there were times when I reckoned I was having trouble remembering who I was and where I came from; when I closed my eyes and tried to think of home there was just this vague blurry picture, like seeing it all through autumn fog. Bloody disconcerting that was, I can tell you, scared the life out of me. What it's been like for you, after several months of it-makes my blood run cold thinking about it.'

It wasn't far to the combe Eyvind had been talking about, and he'd been right; it was so well hidden that they were rolling down the sheep track into it almost before he realised it was there. It was much larger than he'd imagined, and nearly full of people, most of them lying or sitting on the ground, talking to their neighbours or dozing or playing dice or knucklebones, as if they were at some kind of festival or outing. He wondered what it would take to make these people act miserable (Kill half of them? No, that didn't work. Kill the other half, maybe? No, then they'd just be cheerfully dead. Are I really seriously contemplating going to live in a place where everybody's cheerful all the bloody time? If I'm not mad now, I soon will be…)

Someone looked up and called out, 'Eyvind, over here.' Eyvind stopped the cart-a couple of men stood up and started seeing to the horses; nobody had told or even asked them to-and jumped out. 'This way,' he said. 'I want you to meet my uncle Sigfus.'

There was something bizarre, almost dreamlike, about the overwhelming wholesomeness of it all; Eyvind didn't say, 'Uncle, this is my new best friend,' but the genial smile and the firm handshake were straight out of some daydream of the bright, impossible Better Place where everybody's learned to get along just by being nice to each other… On the edge of a battlefield, with a caltrop stuck through his arm, he wasn't sure whether he could cope with it.

Eyvind was asking his uncle what he reckoned; and Uncle Sigfus was saying that pulling it out now might easily set off a lot of heavy bleeding, but on the other hand it had to come out eventually and the longer it stayed in there the worse it would probably get. He made it sound like a bad tooth. 'Uncle Sigfus knows all there is to know about wounds and serious injuries,' Eyvind told him. 'He'll have you fixed up in no time flat.'

Uncle Sigfus reached his decision quickly and very abruptly, suddenly plucking the caltrop out of Poldarn's arm like a man picking an apple. 'Bloody things,' he said, frowning as he held the caltrop up and examined it, 'that's no way to fight a war.' Poldarn was still reeling from the pain. 'Quick,' Sigfus went on, 'run and find something we can use for a bandage. It may hurt for a while,' he told Poldarn, 'but you'll just have to put up with that, I'm afraid.' (If he calls me a brave little soldier, Poldarn decided, I'll have no option but to cut his throat. You can't just let something like that go by.)

Then he felt painfully weak, and Eyvind and Sigfus took his arms and carefully lowered him to the ground, as if he was a slightly cracked jar. 'You stay put and get some rest, now,' Sigfus told him. 'There's still a couple of hours before sunset, and closing your eyes for a bit will do you the world of good.'

But Poldarn didn't want to close his eyes or sleep; in fact, it was out of the question 'Well,' said the crow, 'here we are again.'

Poldarn looked up, and round. His instincts shrieked at him to run or hide, but he discovered that he couldn't move. 'Dream?' he asked.

'Are there many talking crows where you come from?' the crow asked patiently. 'Well, then. At least you can be fairly sure you're awake. Whether this is strictly speaking a dream or a vision, I can't tell you, I never did go to college. A sword-monk would know, if you should chance to see one anywhere.'

That was presumably a pointed reference to his part in the attack on Deymeson, so he decided to ignore it. 'What's going on here, anyway?' he asked.

The crow hopped through forty-five degrees. 'Over there,' he said, 'is the destruction of Sansory. You'll observe that they broke through at the Southgate-'

'Who did?' Poldarn asked.

'-Which,' the crow went on, 'is a fine example of the old military adage about attacking your enemy's strengths, not his weaknesses. Over here-' It hopped round another twenty degrees. 'Over here, we have the riots in Mael, just before the rebels open the gates to the enemy-'

'Who are the enemy?'

'-A bad mistake on their part, since once the enemy get inside they kill everybody they can find regardless of which side they're on and set fire to the place, thereby making the civil war supremely irrelevant. Next to that-' Another fifteen degrees. 'Next to that, there's the razing of the walls of Boc Bohec; just beyond that, if you look closely, you can see the smoke from the fires of Torcea, right off on the other side of the bay, which goes to show what a big fire it is. All those thatched roofs, you see, and all those old wooden buildings in the shanty towns round the base of the walls; any fool could've told you it was a disaster waiting to happen, but of course nobody ever wants to hear uncomfortable stuff like that. Finally,' the crow added, hopping round to within a few degrees of where it started from, 'smaller but just as significant as far as you're concerned, the burning at Turcramstead-there, you can just make out the people trying to get out through the hole in the roof, and the enemy with their long poles pushing them back in again. Which brings us back to Sansory, of course.'

Poldarn turned round slowly, studying the patterns of destruction by fire, the constants and the variables. 'It looks like the end of the world,' he said.

'Very good,' replied the crow. 'And all your fault, of course; all directly your fault. I want you to be sure and remember this moment, later, when all this happens.'

Poldarn looked round again, taking careful note of various details-a building collapsing in a shower of sparks, a mob of soldiers dragging a woman out of her house, dragging the baby from her arms and tossing it like a log of firewood into the flames, noteworthy items that would jog his memory when he came to witness them. 'What do you mean, my fault?' he asked. 'Is this to do with who I was, or what I'm going to become?'

The crow looked past him. 'Same difference,' it said. 'You'll be who you always were; wiping our your memory hasn't changed who you are, all it's done is rearrange the schedule a little, added a few refinements, tinkered a little with a few of the causality chains. I mean,' it went on, 'you haven't really changed a bit, in spite of this wonderful fresh start you were given, this chance to stop being you. You've acted differently, mostly because you haven't been in much of a position to do harm deliberately, but you still have the same mind, the same temperament.'

'I see,' Poldarn said. 'Well, if you can show me the future, can you show me my past as well? I'd like to be able to see that.'

The crow didn't move, but everything else changed around it; now they were standing in a prison cell, lit by one window very high up in the wall. Through it Poldarn could just make out the legs and feet of passers-by. He found that he was sitting in the middle of the floor, secured with chains to the point where he could hardly move, let alone accomplish anything. 'That's the essential you,' said the crow, 'trapped in a prison in your own mind; and you know why? Prisons can be ambiguous things, you know; maybe this one isn't what you assume. The man in the middle there is you. Some prisons aren't built to keep the inmates from getting out, you see, they're to keep everybody else from getting in, with a rope and a chair, to deal with you as you deserve.'

'Who are you?' Poldarn asked.

'That,' the crow answered, 'is a very good question. You ought to ask him that,' it added, opening its wings and pitching on the chained man's shoulder. 'He could tell you that, if only you could reach him. But you can't, because deep down-as far below the surface as this prison is-you don't want to find out, because you already know. Oh sure, not a name or any memories, but you can feel the sort of man you are, and really, you don't want to go back. Understandable, God only knows, but it isn't going to do you any good.'

The crow suddenly vanished, in less time than it'd take a sword-monk to draw, and where the chained man had been Poldarn saw a sword-monk. He was in a bad way, with blood on his face and seeping through the cloth of his shirt. 'Who are you?' Poldarn asked.

'You know, I can't seem to remember,' the monk replied. 'But lately, I've been using the name Monach. It's just the word for monk where I came from originally.'

'Monach, then,' Poldarn said. 'All right, do you know who I am?'

The monk laughed. 'Of course I do,' he said. 'You're the evil bastard who did this to me. At least,' he added, 'I think you are. Your face is different, but I can see you very clearly hiding behind its eyes.'

'I don't understand,' Poldarn said.

The monk shrugged. 'Doesn't matter,' he said, 'it's what you've done that matters. Would you like to see that? Some of it, anyway, there isn't time to show you more than a few examples.'

Before Poldarn could reply, the monk vanished. Poldarn looked round to see where he'd gone to, and realised that he was flying, a long way up above the ground. All around him were columns of smoke, and when he looked down he saw that they were billowing up out of cities.

'Not bad,' said a voice that seemed to be coming from between his shoulder blades. It sounded like the monk he'd just been talking to. 'Considering that when you first arrived in this country you had nothing but the clothes you stood up in and a backsabre bashed out of an old beanhook, it represents a fairly impressive achievement. There's Culhan Bohec, look-of course, you've never heard of Culhan Bohec. Not many people have, these days. And there's Sirouesse, that used to be on the north-west coast, where the Mahec meets the sea; your first major work, and there's many as reckon it's still your best. Oh, and there's Josequin. I guess you could call that your posthumous masterpiece, since strictly speaking it happened after your death-of-memory. But even though you weren't there in person, it was definitely all yours, conceived, planned, realised and produced by you, got your signature all over it. And another thing you've got to bear in mind is how quickly you achieved all this. Twelve years; dammit, if you'd stayed a monk, like me, what would you have accomplished in those twelve years? Maybe, if you'd practised really hard and brown-nosed your way round the faculty, you might just have gone from ninth to twelfth grade, to the point where you'd be allowed to learn how to fight three imaginary enemies at the same time.' The voice sighed wistfully. 'Amazing, isn't it, the different ways our lives turned out. You went on and made something of yourself, out here in the world: burned cities, killed thousands-make that tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands even-made and overthrew emperors, played knucklebones and bouncing-bunny with the destinies of millions. I stayed in the abbey, cutting neat slices of empty air, to the point where I was allowed to go outside and kill-what, two dozen? Three? Can't actually remember offhand, but it can't have been more than five dozen, and that's including guards, witnesses and other dross. As for making a difference and diverting the course of history's river, forget it; all right, I may have wasted a few big-noses here and there, but I never had the faintest idea who they were or why they were important, so I really can't claim any of the credit.' The voice made a tut-tutting noise. 'Got to face facts,' it said. 'If there's a life after death and we all meet up in some sulphur-pit for a class reunion, no prizes for guessing who'll get the lifetime achievement award. I mean, who else in our year went on to become a god? No, I wouldn't do that if I were you,' the voice added, as Poldarn felt himself losing height, swooping down on wide, scraggy black wings towards the burning roofs of Josequin. 'No offence, but you don't want to go there. Might prove bad for your health, if you see what I mean.'

'I can't help it,' Poldarn replied. 'I can't seem to climb.'

'Oh,' said the monk. 'Oh, that is a pity. My weight, probably, forcing you down. Never mind, it'll probably be quick, if that's any consolation. Of course, if you could see your way to waking up at this point, you'd save us both a lot of bother.'

'I can't,' Poldarn said.

'Damn. The closer we get, you see, the sharper the focus gets; they stop being tiny little scurrying dots and start turning into people. Hey, look at that, will you? That's really recent. Today, in fact. Look!'

A gust of wind caught hold of him and dragged him down; beating his wings didn't help, and he couldn't turn into the wind to slow down. On the rapidly approaching ground below him he could see the derelict barn at Vistock, the crazy old woman who sold bones, and four men dragging her out into the light. He saw a fifth man: bald, with a brown, liver-spotted head, clearly not a day less than eighty years old but still tall, upright, imposing; he was absent-mindedly doing backflips with a mirror-burnished backsabre as he waited for the old woman to be brought to him and crushed down to her knees by skilful pressure on the joints of her outstretched arms; she was cursing and screaming in a language he didn't understand; she was in the middle of a sentence when the old man swung the backsabre smartly back to gather blade-speed and cut off her head in one fluid, graceful movement.

'Got to admire that style,' said the monk approvingly. 'Never had a day's formal tuition in his life, I don't suppose, but did you see that inswing? Damned if I could do that, even with a proper sword, not one of those overgrown hedge-trimmers. I guess that's what they mean when they talk about the true skill being no skill, only instinct.' One of the men had stooped down, picked up the head by its hair. 'Well,' the voice went on, 'you wanted to find out more about your family.'

They'd fetched a stick, a clothes prop. One of them was sharpening the end with a little knife.

'Do you remember,' the voice continued (and the ground kept on getting bigger and closer), 'how you used to stake out the dead crows, with a sharpened stick shoved up through the underside of the jaw, to keep the head up and make the decoy look lifelike? Maybe that's where he got the idea from.'

'Who are those people?' Poldarn asked; any moment now they were going to crash into the ground, but although he could feel the speed and momentum gathering they didn't seem to be moving 'One of the paradoxes of religion,' the monk explained. 'Best exemplified in the moment of the draw, but it's a fundamental rule of how we view the universe. The fastest movement is no movement at all-like, for example, the movement of the hand to the sword hilt, so fast it doesn't actually happen, that moment never exists. What would it be like, we speculate, if somehow one found oneself trapped in that not-moment for ever? Maybe, we speculate further, that's what it means to be a god. Of course,' he added, as they hung still and the rest of the world raced past them, 'it's only a theory. Absolutely no means of proving it, one way or the other.'

They'd stuck the old woman's head on the pole; one of them had knelt down, holding the head neck uppermost on the ground, while the other had stabbed the clothes prop into the stub of the windpipe. Now they were hoisting it up and planting it in the ground.

'You see?' the monk said, as Poldarn finally managed to bank into the wind, and felt the shock of the air in his wings, cutting his speed enough that he could put his wings back and glide in to pitch. 'This decoying method of yours, it works every time.'

He woke up with a start, sitting forward and raising his hand to guard his face. Someone leaned over him and pushed him gently back.

'It's all right,' the voice said, 'you were having a bad dream, that's all.'

The sky was overhead again, back where it should be; but he could feel the memory of the dream rushing past him, as if he was falling out of it. A man was looking down at him, a worried look on his face. He was old, at least eighty, with a bald, wind-tanned head and huge shoulders.

'Is he going to be all right?' the man said.

'I should think so.' That sounded like Eyvind's uncle Sigfus. 'Just tired out, I think. God only knows when he last had anything to eat, either.'

The man stared at him for a few moments, then said, 'Do you recognise me?'

'No,' Poldarn said, then, 'Yes, you were in a dream I was having. You cut off an old woman's head.'

The man nodded. 'That's right,' he said. 'How did you know that?'

'Who are you?' Poldarn asked.

The old man's voice was very deep, and his eyes were sunk right back into his skull. 'My name is Halder,' he said quietly. 'I'm your grandfather.'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'Are you sure?' he said.

This time the old man smiled, just a little twitch at the side of the mouth, but his eyes glowed warmly. 'Yes,' he said. 'Do you know who you are?'

'No,' Poldarn said.

The old man nodded. 'You're called Ciartan,' he said, 'after my father; so your full name is Tursten's Ciartan, of Haldersholt. Tursten was my son,' the old man went on. 'He died before you were born; oddly enough, not twenty yards from this very spot.'

Poldarn breathed in slowly, then out again. 'The old woman-' he said.

'Yes,' the old man said. 'She killed my son. Not that I blame her, but things have to be done. I'm just sorry it took so long.'

Poldarn thought about that, and he remembered what the old woman had said, about selling the old bones that lay in the ashes to the Potto house, to make buttons from. 'It doesn't matter to me,' he said, 'at least, at the moment it doesn't, I can't remember anything.'

The old man straightened up a little and rubbed the small of his back. 'So I gather,' he said. 'Strange business, that, but I've heard of cases like it over the years. Well,' he went on, 'here's something, I must say. Never thought I'd see you again after nigh on twenty-five years.'

I must know this man, Poldarn thought, because although there's no expression in his voice or his face, I know him well enough to recognise joy when I see it. Something in his eyes, and the set of his lips. He's telling the truth.

(And then a door opened in his mind, only a crack between door and frame, through which he could see a small part of the landscape behind: a high, square-cut hedge running down a steeply sloping hill, an old man trimming back the hedge with a brush-hook while the boy raked up the spoil; winter, nothing else to do around the farm, so time to tidy up, impose a few straight lines and square edges on the curved and rounded forms of nature; the old man was all straight lines and square edges, he remembered. Of course, he hadn't really been old then, Poldarn realised, he couldn't have been much more than twelve years older than I am now, but to me he was as strong and stern and remote and timeless as a god, undisputed master of two enormous valleys, and everybody else around the place called him the boss, or the owner. He's hardly changed at all in thirty-odd years, but the boy-that's me, I recognise that old green shirt-something must've happened to him between then and now, some great sorrow or trial, or an unwanted apotheosis.)

'I think I remember you,' Poldarn said. 'You had a grey felt hat with a very wide brim. I borrowed it once and left it out in the rain, and it was ruined.'

The old man laughed, a brittle, unhappy sound. 'You were a terror for taking things without asking,' he said, 'and then you'd bust them and pretend it wasn't you. God, how we used to argue about that; you'd never listen, it was like I was talking to myself.'

(That's right, we were never close, never really comfortable with each other. Nothing that mattered to me was ever important to you, and you never even tried to understand me. I was always the next best thing, the grudged and meagre compensation for your fine, dead son. I remember we rode together once in the cart from our farm to somewhere two days' ride away, and we never said a word to each other the whole way.)

'That sounds familiar,' Poldarn said. 'But the name-Ciartan, you said; that doesn't really mean anything to me.'

The old man shrugged. 'Figures,' he said. 'Don't suppose anybody ever called you that above once or twice a year. Mostly you were boy, or you there; son, maybe, when I forgot or I was trying to be nice. Don't remember you ever calling me anything, now I come to think of it. You never did talk much, anyhow.' He sighed. 'But you were a good worker, I'll say that for you, and a quick study, when you could be bothered. God help us, what've you been doing all these years?'

'Well,' Eyvind interrupted (Poldarn had forgotten he was there), 'obviously you two'll have a lot to talk about, so we'll leave you to it. Remember, we're pulling out as soon as it gets dark.' He turned and walked away, grabbing his uncle Sigfus firmly by the elbow as he did so. Uncle Sigfus didn't look like he wanted to go, but he didn't have much choice.

'I don't know,' Poldarn said. 'Sorry, I thought Eyvind had explained. You see, I got bashed on the head and lost my memory-'

'Yes, I heard about that,' the old man interrupted, 'I mentioned it a few minutes ago, or weren't you listening? But you must be able to remember something.'

'No. Well,' Poldarn qualified, 'almost nothing. Just now I remembered a few things about when I was a kid. But they were just scraps, bits and pieces, pictures. I can't remember names of people or places, or anything useful like that.'

'Not much help, then, is it?' The old man shook his head. 'It'll be different once we're home. Soon as you set eyes on Haldersdale and the farm, it'll all come right back, you'll see. You always were mighty fond of the valleys.'

It was starting to get cold, and Poldarn had nothing except what he was wearing. He considered asking the old man if there was a spare coat or blanket, but he decided against it. Showing weakness at this stage of their relationship would probably lead to repercussions later-the old man didn't look like the sort of person who'd forget something like that in a hurry. 'Tell me something about myself, then,' he went on, 'see if that works.'

The old man considered this for a moment, said, 'Very well,' and squatted down on the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet as if he was expecting to have to jump up and fight at any moment. That made him wonder what kind of place this Haldersdale was.

'Well,' the old man said, 'when you came to me you were just a baby; no use to anybody. Had you doing chores round the yard when you were five and old enough to hold a rake; the sort of thing that needs doing, but it's a waste to set a grown man on the job. You were doing things like scraping the yard, turning the apples, fetching the stock in and out of the pens. And that was it, really, till earlier this year. Winds were bad, see, we had to launch the ships early if we were going to get out at all. Same as the year you were born, come to think of it; we left early that year, too, and that was another time everything went wrong. A judgement on us, I guess, for being in such a damn hurry all the time.'

'What about my father?' Poldarn asked quietly.

'Tursten, his name was,' the old man said, looking down at the ground between his knees. 'He was a good boy, Tursten, and just shaping up to be a good farmer. Only his second year out,' he went on, 'and that bitch murdered him. There was no call for her to go doing that.'

My mother, Poldarn thought. Who died today, the day I found my people and family again. Best not to dwell on any of that. He looked up, wondering how the old man would look now that he'd faced that particular issue. To his surprise there was no perceptible difference. Not so strange, at that, he rationalised, since I only met her the once and I couldn't get away from there, here, fast enough. Or maybe I'm just naturally callous. That's possible, too.

'Are there any more of us?' he asked. 'Family, I mean.'

The old man nodded. 'Cousins,' he said. 'My brother Turcram's boy, almost exactly the same age as your father, and he's got four sons-Cari, Stearcad, Healti and Oser. Then there's Eplph's son Turliff, he's got two girls, Renvyck and Seun; and there's the other cousins, over at Colsness. It's not a big family or particularly close, but it's better than being alone.'

'That's good,' Poldarn said, wondering what it must be like to know someone all your life. Very strange, he decided, like being part of a herd of animals or a flock of birds. 'I'll look forward to meeting them,' he added. For once, he seemed to have said the right thing.

'They'll be surprised as all hell to see you again,' the old man said, and this time there was just a little warmth in his grin. 'Which is just as well,' he added, 'it'll take their minds off all this. There won't be a family on the island except ours that won't have lost someone. And we'll be one stronger, instead of two or three less,' he went on, looking over Poldarn's head at the gradually setting sun. 'Well, they say even in the worst times there's always one good thing to every half-dozen bad. Reckon someone must be looking after us, the way things've spun out.'

It was getting noticeably darker, and some of the men were getting to their feet, picking up their things, tightening their bootstraps and hanging the straps of their luggage round their necks. I wonder, Poldarn thought, what it'll feel like, flying back towards the trees and rejoining the mob. Will I still be an individual, or just part of the family? Of course, nobody else in the world but me would ever ask a question like that.

'Is it far to the ships?' he asked.

The old man shook his head. 'Couple of days, day and a half; if we can cover some ground tonight, so much the better. It's their damn horsemen we've got to worry about. One of these days they'll build ships so we can bring our horses with us when we come over, and then we'll show them something, I'm telling you. But you can never find horses in this damn country; probably the government takes all the useful ones for their army.'

They were starting to move out. Nobody gave a signal or blew a horn, nobody specified a direction. 'You dropped this,' the old man said, producing the borrowed backsabre. 'You may need it before we're done.'

Poldarn stood up. 'Tell me about the farm,' he said.

That pleased the old man. 'Haldersholt,' he said. 'It's not a big spread, but it's plenty for us. There's a small river runs down the middle of Haldersdale; that's about a thousand-' The old man said some unit of measurement; it meant nothing to Poldarn, of course. '-And at the end of the valley there's a deep old combe, more or less at right angles; all wooded on the north side, with a little stream in the bottom, good pasture up the other side, but steep. The farmhouses are where the combe stream meets the river. We've usually got a couple of hundred sheep, a hundred beef stock, thirty-odd milch cows, a few dozen horses; west side of the dale's in plough, we switch ends around every year, plough and fallow. Wheat never comes to much, barley's all right, and there's gardens for greens and stuff out back of the houses; orchards too, and a hop garden. Got our own quarry on the patch, which is a blessing, and a little mill on the combe stream. There's always a few goats and pigs and chickens about the place, but the women see to all that. We had grapevines on the south side of the combe when I was a boy; my father grubbed them up one year in a bad season, but they'd probably take again. There's a few deer in the wood, birds in the season; used to be a salmon weir at the south end of the dale, but we haven't bothered with it in years, not since the Barnsriver people built theirs and fished the river out. Still, we haven't had to trade for anything outside the farm for sixty years, to my certain knowledge-got everything we need, and what we don't need we do without. And that's not much, either.'

'I like the sound of that,' Poldarn said. 'You must have a fair few men working for you.'

The old man gave him a strange look, then shrugged. 'Really have lost your memory, haven't you?' he said. 'That's not how it is back home; I'll explain it to you later, when there's time. But there's, what, fifty or sixty of us at the farm, maybe another half-dozen up at the hill station or the coal pits; like I said, it's not big but it's big enough. You want to meet some of the hands? Left most of 'em behind this time, thank God-so far, we only lost one, back there in the battle. Here,' he went on, lengthening his stride; Poldarn had to trot to keep up, like a little boy. Suddenly the old man stopped, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Two men ahead of them in the group turned their heads and looked round; the old man waved at them to come over.

'This is Raffen,' the old man said. 'You may just remember him; no? Shame. You used to play together when you were kids.'

The man called Raffen was very tall and broad-shouldered, bigger even than the old man. He was bald as well, with a springy ruff of greying black hair ringing his head from ear to ear, and a short, neatly trimmed beard. He didn't say anything, but he nodded, and his eyes said that he recognised Poldarn after all this time, was even glad to see him again. 'Raffen's the head shepherd,' the old man went on, as the two hands started to walk alongside them. 'Only the second time he's been off the farm in his life; figuring it'll be the last, aren't you?'

Raffen nodded again, and pulled a wry face. Poldarn wondered if he was capable of talking.

'The other one's name is Scaptey,' the old man went on, and the tone of his voice changed a little; disapproving and indulgent at the same time, implying that Scaptey was some kind of tolerated rogue, put up with for the sake of some special skill or quality. He was very short for a raider, with bushy fair hair, bright blue eyes and creased brown skin, and he almost seemed to bounce along as he walked. 'Scaptey's a pain in the backside most of the time,' the old man went on, 'but only because he knows he can get away with it. Isn't that right, Scap?'

The little man shrugged. 'Whatever you say,' he replied. 'You know me, never one to argue.'

'When he's not being a pain in the backside,' the old man continued, 'he's a half-decent carpenter, general mender and fixer. Which is to say, he built a new barn last winter and it hasn't fallen down yet. Oh yes, and he's your cousin, two or three times back; he's the grandson of my aunt Ranvay, who married out on the north coast, at Locksriver. I figure we only took him in because it's not right that one of ours should be living with foreigners.'

Poldarn decided that must be some kind of old, familiar joke or taunt between them, because Scaptey pulled a face and even Raffen smiled. For some reason Poldarn felt vaguely annoyed at being left out.

They were setting a brisk pace; he could feel his knees and the calves of his legs aching already (too much riding around in carts, not enough walking… The voice in his mind that said that sort of thing to him was already starting to sound like the old man, like his grandfather. Very briefly, he thought he heard the voice of the god of crows, welcoming him). It was already too dark to see clearly, but he could make out the head of the man in front of him, who seemed to know where he was going, so he followed that. Soon, there was nothing left to see at all, but somehow he knew where the man in front was; the technique worked, he didn't trip over or put his foot down a rabbit hole, and after a while he stopped feeling the pain in his legs as the rhythm of the pace took over.

When they stopped, he stopped, not knowing why or even how he knew to hold still and stay quiet. Something was going on, somewhere up ahead. He closed his eyes and tried to catch some sounds, but he couldn't even hear breathing.

They've run up against something, we've run up against something, so we're sending out our scouts. When they get back, we'll know what it is and decide what to do. He concentrated on standing perfectly still; naturally, the harder he concentrated, the greater was the urge to shift his feet and fidget, so he tried to think of something else instead. He thought about the farm. There was already a picture of it in his mind, but it was flat and artificial, like the paintings on the wall of the inn at Sansory. There was the river, there was the stream, medium blue for water; overhead the sky was bright light blue, and the grass was a uniform fresh green, inlaid at appropriate intervals with fluffy white sheep. He tried thinking about the two men, Raffen and Scaptey; God help me, he thought, I'm about to get on a ship and sail away to the Land of the Archetypes, where everybody's either a strong, silent, faithful retainer or a lovable rogue. He thought about the old man, but somehow his mind skidded off the surface of that thought, like a file on a hardened steel edge. He tried to remember something about home, but he didn't like to get too close to the pictures that came into his mind, for fear that the paint was still wet and might smudge.

Suddenly there was some movement, and up ahead, shouting and thumping. Something fell over with a bump he could feel through the soles of his feet; somebody yelled in pain, at which point he started to walk forward, his hand tight on the sabre hilt, feeling a hard edge where the wood had shrunk a little away from the tang. Someone had lit a torch, several torches, forming a circle of light around a dozen men, and a cart.

'Talk about a slice of luck,' someone was saying, in our language. 'Anybody know who these clowns could be? They look important enough.'

Eyvind's voice: 'Here, somebody find Tursten's Ciartan.' Who? Poldarn realised with a jolt that that name meant him. 'He knows their language, he can translate.'

It was as if someone had put a hand between his shoulder blades and pushed him forward. Men got out of his way without looking round (so how did they know he was coming through?). When he reached the edge of the circle (reached it but hadn't violated it, he was still just about in the dark) he called out, 'I'm here.'

'Splendid,' Eyvind's voice said (Was Eyvind in command? He didn't think so. At least, he hadn't been in command before, but now here he was, deciding what was to be done. Poldarn made a slight effort and adjusted his mind. Eyvind was in command now, for this particular job. When it was over, he'd be subsumed back into the group, the mob, the melt. Apparently, that was the way we do things.)

'Splendid,' Eyvind's voice said. 'All right, I'll say the question, you translate it into their language, then tell me what they say. Ready? Right, here goes. Who are you?'

Poldarn had to think this time, he couldn't just put his hand to his side and draw the words instinctively. 'Who are you?' he said.

No reply. His first instinct was that he hadn't translated it properly, then he realised they'd understood just fine, but they were refusing to say anything back. That struck him as downright rude. He improvised. 'Unless you tell us,' he said, 'we'll take that tall man on the extreme left and cut his hands off. Now, who are you?'

He already knew part of the answer; they were soldiers, probably imperial rather than Amathy house: eight cavalry troopers, four men who looked like officers. One of us was standing up in the cart; he called out, 'Hey, there's another one in here, but he looks like he's sick.'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'You in the cart,' he called out, 'who are you?'

'That,' replied a weak, ragged voice, 'is actually a rather complicated question. But my name's Monach.'

One of the troopers tried to get up into the cart, presumably to shut the voice up. One of us grabbed him by the shoulder and compressed him to his knees, apparently with no effort at all.

'Monach,' Poldarn said. 'Are you a soldier too? I can't see you.'

'Me? No, I'm a civilian.' There was something about the voice; it was telling the truth, but it was telling it for a reason of its own, probably not fear of death or torture. It was up to something.

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'So who are these people you're with, and what are you doing with them?'

'Why the hell should I tell you that?'

Poldarn had to search his minds for the right words. 'Because if you don't, we'll kill you. Is that a good enough reason?'

The voice laughed, and the laugh broke up into a cough. 'Not really,' it replied. 'Why don't you come over here where I can see you?'

Why indeed? For some reason, Poldarn felt apprehensive about stepping into the light. 'I can talk to you perfectly well from here,' he replied.

'Please yourself. Your voice sounds a little bit familiar, that's all.'

'Yours, too, come to that.' Poldarn frowned. This wasn't helping, and he could feel Eyvind frowning at him. 'Answer the damn question,' he said. 'Who are these people?'

There was a brief silence, then the voice said, 'The medium tall one in the middle is General Cronan.' Two of the troopers twitched, as if they'd been meaning to have a go at rushing the cart, and their nerve had failed at the last moment. 'I don't know the names of the other three, but they're senior staff officers. Congratulations, whoever you are, you've thrown a double nine. I think that means you get a free go.'

Poldarn assumed he knew what that meant. 'What about you?' he said.

'If you must know,' the voice said, 'I'm a monk of the abbey of Deymeson. Possibly even the last one, I don't know; not that it matters, I'll be dead fairly soon.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'So why should I believe you're telling the truth?'

'You can if you like; I suppose it's like religion, a matter of faith. But if you want to know why I'm betraying the general, truth is I'm following orders. The abbot sent me to kill him, you see. Well, I haven't had the chance up till now.'

The man who was supposed to be General Cronan turned his head and swore at the man in the cart; one of us stepped forward and punched the back of his head, dropping him sprawled on the ground.

'Wouldn't have been right before the battle, anyhow,' the voice called Monach went on. 'We needed him, you see, to deal with you. But he's done that now.' The voice sounded very tired, but it was still clear and audible. 'Don't suppose any of this'll mean anything to you, but I'd like to tell someone how clever I've been. You want me to explain?'

'If you like,' Poldarn replied.

'How gracious of you. Right, then. I needed Cronan to beat you, because nobody else could and you had to be stopped. But now he's done that, he's definitely got to be killed; the only man to fight and defeat the raiders, that makes him the most terrible threat to the safety of the empire. He'd only have to say the word, and the whole imperial army would go over to him without a moment's hesitation. So we take him out of the picture, who does that leave? Tazencius is a nonentity, nobody's going to trust Feron Amathy; the government troops have fallen back on Sansory, which means the Amathy house can't sack it like they were planning to do. It's all turned out pretty well, if you ask me.'

Poldarn wasn't sure if any of that made sense, but it was none of his business anyhow. He turned his head in the direction that Eyvind's voice had come from. 'This is a slice of luck,' he said in our language. 'Seems like we've tripped over the enemy general, the one responsible for what happened. The other three are his advisers, and the man in the cart's a traitor. I think he's telling the truth.'

'Dear God,' Eyvind said. 'Well, things are looking up. What do you want to do with the traitor?'

Poldarn considered the matter. 'He reckons he's going to die anyway,' he said. 'Leave him be, I would.'

'Why not?' Eyvind replied, and while he was still speaking a backsabre chewed through General Cronan's neck. The sound carried a long way in the dark. One of the other staff officers tried to say something, but he wasn't fast enough. All the rest of them died in silence.

'Thank you,' said the voice from the cart. 'It's just like they said, everybody who rides with me gets killed, sooner or later. The unsettling thing is, what if I've averted the end of the world? I don't think I was supposed to do that.'

For some reason Poldarn knew it was safe to enter the circle now. He walked up to the cart and peered in. There was just enough light to see the man's face.

'Excuse me,' Poldarn said, 'but does the name Poldarn mean anything to you?'

The man looked back at him. 'Are you trying to be funny?' he said; then his face crumpled up with pain, and he passed out.