Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was a long walk to the ships. Shortly after the first dawn they reached the Mahec, which made navigation extremely simple but increased the risk of detection by enemy cavalry. A few days before, of course, they'd have regarded a chance encounter with the enemy as an opportunity rather than a threat, but attitudes had changed. The main thing now was to get home quickly and safely, without further loss.

'I don't suppose I understand these people any more than you do,' Poldarn said, as they followed the riverbank on the second afternoon. The man he was talking to (he hadn't caught his name) shook his head and smiled, but he persisted. 'No, really,' he said, 'you've got to bear in mind, when I woke up I couldn't remember anything. I've been learning about these people from scratch, just like you.'

The man clicked his tongue. 'There's a difference, for a start,' he said. 'We don't want to learn about them, at least not more than we need to know so we can beat shit out of them. I mean, why bother? It'd be like learning to speak sheep.'

Poldarn let that go by. 'My guess is, though,' he went on, 'they aren't going to bother us any more; I mean, why the hell should they? They'd have to be crazy. They've beaten us once and we're going home. If they fight us again, there's a good chance they'll lose, now they haven't got their military genius any more, and that's the advantage they've gained gone for ever.'

The man wasn't convinced. 'You're assuming they're smart,' he said. 'You can get in a lot of trouble making assumptions like that. No, it's just as likely that they're too dumb to figure out what you just said, and they'll come after us to try and score another victory. Whoever their new commander is, won't he want to prove he's every bit as good as the dead guy?'

Poldarn had to admit that was quite likely from what he'd gathered about the way the empire's mind worked. 'Still,' he went on, 'if they do attack, we'll be ready for them. Last time they only won because they'd had time to plant those damn caltrops.'

His foot didn't hurt nearly as much as it had the previous day, which in turn had been an improvement on the first night. He'd had help, of course; men he didn't know but who seemed to know who he was had taken it in turns to lend him a shoulder; that, combined with the unrelenting pace of the march, had turned the whole business into some kind of deadly serious three-legged race. His arm was a different matter, unfortunately. Someone who seemed to know about such things had announced that the wound had gone bad. He'd known the cure, of course-seven different kinds of poultice, all involving garlic and bread mould, neither of which was available in the middle of nowhere, with the enemy possibly hot on their trail. 'You'll probably be all right, even so,' the man had told him, 'it'll just take longer, that's all.' He'd got the impression the man was trying to be positive rather than tiresomely accurate.

On the third evening they reached a village. For once news of their approach had preceded them, and the place was deserted. All traces of food had been cleared out of the houses, but they found apples on the trees in a big orchard, and several plots of leeks and onions more or less ready to be pulled. That was just as well; they'd had precious little to eat since the battle, though nobody had actually gone hungry. A dog followed them down the street as they left, wagging its tail but keeping a good twenty-five yards clear at all times. Poldarn noticed it, and for some reason realised that he hadn't seen a crow for days, and not many birds of any kind.

On the fourth day he was able to walk on his own, though Halder and Raffen took it in turns to walk on his lame side, keeping perfect step, in case he stumbled. Raffen didn't say anything, but Halder told him more about the farm; how he'd found the site himself when he was twelve, moved there when he was sixteen and built his first house, floating the timbers down the combe stream one at a time. His father had a fine place a day's walk to the east, he explained, but he'd never been comfortable at home; he had three elder brothers and he wanted somewhere of his own, so one day he followed the river until he came to the place where the house now stood. It was a hot day and he felt thirsty, so he lay down to drink. Somehow, when he stood up again, he knew that here was the place he was meant to be. He wasted the rest of the day walking the valley and the combe, and spent the night lying on his back beside the watersmeet, trying to count the stars. He woke up soaked with dew, and by the time he reached home he was running a bad fever that nearly killed him, but as soon as he was fit to be out again he took his father and brothers to see the place and formally laid a claim by raising a stone and cutting his name on it. When his father died, his brothers and their people helped him raise the house, gave him his share of the flock, the herd and the seedcorn, and left him to it. That suited him fine. The next time he left the farm, except to borrow tools or scrounge for iron, was three years later, when he walked down the river for two days to Gynnersford, where he'd been told they had a spare daughter. Her name was Rannway, and some useful stock and a serviceable cart came with her. Their son, Tursten, was born a year later. The day after he was born Halder started planting a pine copse on the rise opposite the farm, the idea being that by the time Tursten was old enough to want a house of his own the trees would be the right age for felling and logging; the copse was called Tursten's Wood, and it was still there, since Tursten never showed the slightest inclination to get married or leave the main house. Nobody had ever got round to thinning the trees out, so they'd grown tall and spindly; there was a rookery on the southern edge, and the birds had an aggravating habit of pitching in when the men fed the calves and robbing the feed from under their noses.

(And when I was a kid, I declared war on those crows, and won a single glorious victory, Yes, I know all about that.)

'How old was my father when he died?' he asked.

Halder counted backwards for a moment. 'Nineteen,' he replied, 'just about to turn twenty.'

Poldarn nodded. 'And how long ago was that?'

Halder looked at him, then realised the point of the question. 'Forty-one years ago,' he replied, 'give or take a month. The woman was ten years older than him, they reckon. When I heard what'd happened, I looked up the men who'd been with him at the time-they were from Colscegsbridge, on the other side of the island-and made them promise to take me there the next year when they went, in case there was anything left to see. We found her there, among the ruins, with the baby. We tried to creep up nice and quiet but she must've heard us. She was in the barn, and there was a hole in the back wall we hadn't spotted. By the time we figured what had happened, she was out back and running, with you tucked under her arm like a parcel. We saw her just in time, and chased after her; I fell behind, but Asley and Turcram, two of the men, were good runners, they were closing in; suddenly she stopped-I saw this myself-and she put you carefully down on the ground, then she ran off, fast as she could.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said.

'Well,' Halder went on, 'Asley carried on after her, Turcram stopped to pick you up. To cut a long stick short, Asley tripped on a molehill and twisted his ankle, she got away, and we were left with you. Of course, soon as I saw you I knew you were Tursten's boy; so I brought you home, and handed you over to Rannway-that's your grandmother-'

'Yes, you told me that,' Poldarn said.

'So I did. Anyway, she died two years later, but there were women at the farm to look after you, you never wanted for anything, and that's all there is to tell. At least, that's all till you were just turned nineteen, old enough to go abroad for the first time.' The old man shook his head. 'Should've known better, of course,' he said, 'but you were wild keen to go, and I couldn't see the harm. Worst thing was, I was laid up that season, I'd fallen out of a pear tree, of all the damn fool things to do, and broken my leg. So I didn't go, and you didn't come back. That's something to think about,' he added. 'There's only been two years since I turned twenty-three that I didn't go abroad; the first time I lost Tursten, the second time I lost you. I guess that's why I'm here now, for fear of what'll happen if I miss another year, because the only one I'd got left to lose by then was me.'

That night they slept in the ruins of a town, long since overgrown. Halder said he had an idea that he'd been with the expedition that burned it, forty-seven or forty-eight years ago, but he couldn't be sure. The wind was coming up from the east, but there were some bits and pieces of wall still standing, enough for most of them to get behind. Poldarn fell asleep as soon as he lay down, and had a dream in which his mother appeared to him and forgave him for something he couldn't remember having done, but she didn't look anything like the old woman from the barn at Vistock, and he couldn't help wondering if the dream had really been meant for somebody else.

The next day, just after mid-afternoon, they reached the coast (which was good), at least half a day south of where they thought they'd come out (which wasn't); the confusion turned out to be the result of following the southern fork of the Mahec at the point at which it split into two. Everybody in the party seemed very upset and disappointed, though nobody blamed anybody else; they seemed to regard it as an omen or a punishment from heaven, and none of them seemed to be in any mood to talk about anything for the rest of the day. They pressed on, apparently hoping they'd be able to force the pace enough to make the ships by nightfall, but they'd underestimated the terrain and ran into complications they didn't appear to have been expecting: boggy ground, woods, places where the path ran along the cliff face and occasionally crumbled away into the sea. Five men left the main party of their own accord and went ahead to scout out a safe route; they hadn't come back by the time the main body decided to stop where they were and wait for morning.

Poldarn lay down and went to sleep lying on a flat rock. When he woke up he realised that the rock sloped downwards at a sharp angle, and was perched on the end of a spur hanging out over the sea.

The next morning they set out early, the consensus of opinion being that they couldn't be more than an hour from the ships, if that. Four or five hours later they still hadn't found any ships, or even any landmarks they recognised, nor had the scouts come back. This didn't make sense, so another five men set off to find the way and see if they could figure out what had happened to the other advance party. They came back soon afterwards and announced that they'd seen the ships, and they weren't far away, but there was a problem. Between the raiders and the ships was the mouth of the main spur of the Mahec River; it was too wide to cross, and there didn't seem to be a ford or a bridge. Rather than muck about and waste time following the river upstream looking for one, they'd come back to report and warn the others, who would doubtless be able to think of some way round the difficulty.

At that point everybody started talking at once, and it wasn't long before Poldarn came to realise that this was a sure sign that nobody had the faintest idea what to do. Of course, he didn't either. If the nearest crossing place was a day's march upstream-well, that was two days wasted, during which time the enemy might show up at any moment. (Did they have ships of their own? Nobody knew. If so, were they patrolling the coast in the hope of finding the beached ships? If so, why hadn't they already done so?) To make matters worse, they'd be kidding themselves if they reckoned they had enough food left for a square meal, so there was a very real prospect of a long detour on an empty stomach. A few enthusiasts started talking about swimming out to the ships and bringing them into the mouth of the river. Others, more sensible, explained why this would be a bad idea. It was the first time Poldarn had seen them disagreeing among themselves, and it struck him that they weren't very good at it, presumably through lack of practice. Nobody particularly wanted to listen to anybody else's views or suggestions, they were too busy shouting out their own, with a degree of vehemence that suggested that fairly soon they'd reach the conclusion that words weren't going to be enough, and start reaching for their backsabres.

Someone asked why they hadn't considered this problem when they beached the ships there in the first place. The explanation seemed to be that they hadn't anticipated coming back that way. It had been assumed, reasonably enough in the light of past experience, that they'd be following the north bank of the main spur of the Mahec, having come down on it from the north about a day out from the sea. The river hadn't been an issue since the trail they'd been planning to follow both going out and coming back sheared off north-east from the river road, and nobody had actually carried on that way far enough to notice any fords, bridges or ferries.

By this point the argument was going round in circles, but there wasn't anybody either willing or able to stop it and bring the discussion to order. Poldarn, who didn't feel he was qualified to join in, wandered away and sat under a thorn tree, one of the few windbreaks on the open moor. He rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes Don't I know you? he thought.

The woman from his previous dream was standing in front of him, while the obligatory crow flew in overhead and pitched in the spindly branches of the tree. Poldarn stayed where he was.

I don't know, the woman replied, do you?

That didn't seem very helpful. The woman was about forty years old, with a thin face, very pale, and a small, sharp nose. This time, apparently, she wasn't his mother.

I'm sorry, he said, but I don't know who you are. Not that that means anything, I don't even know who I am, let alone anybody else.

Well, you should know me by now, the woman replied, I'm your wife.

Oh, Poldarn thought; and he said, I'm sorry, I hadn't realised I'm married.

The woman gave him an unpleasant look and said, Well, you aren't, not any more. Poldarn said, I'm sorry, I don't quite follow. The woman shook her head and said, That's a joke, when you think that it was you who had me killed. Murdered, she amended; you had me murdered, because I'd become a nuisance and you wanted to marry someone else, Prince Tazencius' daughter, who's less than half your age. So you had two of your men push me down a well, and I remember floating there, after I got too weak to swim any more and drowned, and I was listening to you telling everybody that there'd been a dreadful accident, you were bawling and sobbing-I'll bet you managed real tears, somehow or other-and they all believed you, or they put up a bloody good show; and all this time I'd been thinking, at least he remembers, at least his conscience must be ripping into him sometimes, probably in the early hours of the morning, when you wake up and can't get back to sleep again. Now it turns out you've forgotten, and that makes me feel so angry I'm sorry, Poldarn repeated, but I honestly don't remember. I don't know your name, even.

She grinned at him unpleasantly. I like that, she said. My name's Faleris, and we were married for seven years. We have a son, who's five, and a daughter who's just turned three. At least, that's how old they were when I died. You have no way of knowing when that was, and I'm damned if I'm going to tell you. I'll leave you to think about that in the early hours of the morning, that time when you've woken up and you can't seem to be able to get back to sleep. That'll give you something to think about other than wars and fighting and plundering, assuming you're capable of doing that.

He reached out a hand towards her, to see if she was real; but she seemed to melt and soak away into the ground, leaving behind nothing but a noise in his head that was somewhat like her voice. He looked directly overhead, trying to see the crow in the branches that would reassure him it was all just a dream 'I said wake up,' Halder repeated. 'Or we'll go without you.'

He sat up. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I think I fell asleep.'

'You were always doing that,' Halder told him, reaching out a hand and pulling him to his feet. 'Leave you alone for ten minutes, come back and there you'd be, dead to the world. God only knows how anyone could sleep at a time like this, but if anybody could, it'd be you.'

It turned out that they'd decided there was nothing for it but to walk alongside the river and look for somewhere to cross. Nobody was happy about it; the pace of the march dwindled away into a slow trudge, that of weary men with half a day's work still to be done. No one spoke. Poldarn's foot and arm were both hurting, but he felt he couldn't say anything.

Late in the afternoon they came over a blind ridge. For some reason they hadn't sent out scouts (nobody had wanted to go), so the first they knew about the army in the valley was when they cleared the ridge and looked down at them.

'Who the hell are they?' somebody asked.

The soldiers down below were looking up at them, plainly stunned; this wasn't an ambush, Poldarn realised, just a chance meeting that nobody had planned. Of course, there was no reason why they should fight each other.

'Well, just standing here isn't going to do any good,' someone said, and a moment later they were charging down the hill, sabres drawn and swung above the head, ready for the down-stroke. Damn, Poldarn thought, and he started running as well so as not to be left behind. He carried on running until he crashed into something; the something turned out to be a man, one of the enemy, who'd dodged sideways to get out of the way of someone else. Both of them hit the ground and rolled; Poldarn was the first on his feet, and his bad arm screamed with pain as he swung the sabre, a fraction of a second quicker than the man he'd just collided with could snatch his sword up from the damp grass and thrust at him. Poldarn was quicker, but he botched the cut. Instead of connecting with the junction of shoulder and neck, he cut through just above the elbow joint. The man opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It was at that moment that Poldarn recognised him, even recalling his name-Captain Muno, the man he'd rescued from the old women who were robbing the bodies, after the battle by the river; the man he'd carried back to camp, and been given a horse in exchange for.

Captain Muno sank to his knees, his mouth still open, like a fish drowning in air. Poldarn swung again, this time getting the cut in exactly the right place; he felt the jar as the blade hacked into bone, running up his arms and filling him with pain. Muno fell forward, making the backsabre twist; Poldarn yelped and let go, but not before he felt something tearing in his bad arm. Trying to ignore it, he reached down with his other hand and picked up the sword, which wasn't his and therefore couldn't just be abandoned.

He'd been left behind, of course. He tried to run, but could only hobble along behind the great, splendid surge of the raiders' charge, like a very old, grey-nosed dog pottering along behind a cart. More than once he tripped over a dead body or a stone.

Whoever these people were, they were fighting to the last man (ridiculous, Poldarn thought; this is an accident), as if something vital was at stake. A bunch of them had drawn back to guard a line of carts. They'd formed a circle around them, but at least a third of them were facing inwards, as if they were expecting to be attacked from both sides. Prisoners, Poldarn guessed, they've got prisoners in those carts and they daren't let them get away. But he didn't have the mental resources to spare for mere curiosity. The main thing was to get out of the way of this pointless fighting before it ruined everything. He had an unpleasant vision of his newly acquired grandfather coming in a trifle too late with his guard, or failing to notice the man immediately behind him. The way his luck had been running, for himself and everybody he'd been in contact with, he reckoned he had cause to be apprehensive.

But he couldn't see the old man, or Raffen or Scaptey-the-lovable-rogue. They weren't hampered by infuriatingly inconvenient injuries, and had rushed off down the hill and merged in with the rest of the battle scene, flying back towards the trees and dissolving into the mob. For a brief moment they'd been individuals, with names and histories, but now they were part of the wave, and he couldn't make out their faces at this distance, not even to watch them die.

He stumbled on as best he could, but the pain in both his foot and his arm was reaching the point where he couldn't just shove it out of his mind; it was insistent enough to control him, the way a baby's crying controls its mother. Long before he reached the bottom of the slope and the battle, he gave in to it and sat down, letting it sweep through him simply because he couldn't resist it any longer. This isn't right, he thought, being separate, not being in there with them. He felt ashamed, but there was more to it than that. He felt lonely, sitting by himself on the wet ground surrounded by dead bodies; and he thought, Well, that suggests I've come a certain distance from the place where I woke up first. It's probably better to belong somewhere, on balance.

'There you are,' said a voice behind him.

He looked round. How the hell did they manage that trick of sneaking up behind him? 'Eyvind?' he said.

'Are you all right?' Eyvind said.

Poldarn shook his head. 'Did you come back just to look for me?' he asked.

'Sort of,' Eyvind replied. 'Actually, Halder sent me. He couldn't see you, wondered where you'd got to.' He smiled. 'I guess he's scared to let you out of his sight now he's found you again.'

'That's nice of him,' Poldarn said. 'You'll have to help me up, I'm afraid my foot's gone useless again.'

'That's all right,' Eyvind said, pulling him up by his good arm and taking his weight across his shoulders. 'It's pretty well all over anyway. What we can't figure out is why they're making such a big deal about those carts. Must be something worth having in there, which means,' he added with a grin, 'that once we've shooed off those few, we might end up with something nice to take home with us after all. Nearly broke our hearts, having to dump the proceeds of all that hard work.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Don't get your hopes up,' he said. 'I have an idea it's people in the carts, not things. Here, look; can you see the inner ring of soldiers?'

Eyvind looked, then sighed. 'I see what you mean,' he said. 'But that can't be their own people they're guarding.'

'Prisoners,' Poldarn replied. 'Probably they've got it into their heads that we're here to rescue them.'

Eyvind looked thoughtful. 'Think about it,' he said. 'Who would we go out of our way to rescue? Our own, of course. Maybe they've got some of our people down there. Survivors from the battle, maybe.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Unlikely,' he said. 'Why bring them all the way up here, north-west? I'd have thought that if they'd caught any of us, they'd either kill them out of hand or ship them off to Torcea as quickly as possible.'

Eyvind considered that. 'Exactly,' he said. 'Ship them off, by sea. Maybe they've got ships of their own waiting up the coast a way, and that's where they were taking them.'

'Maybe,' Poldarn conceded, though he wasn't convinced. 'Anyway,' he added, 'it won't matter, will it? Like you said, it'll be all over pretty soon. Almost certainly by the time I could get there.'

'Damn.' Eyvind looked troubled. 'That's awkward. I think I should get down there, just in case I was right about them having some of our people, but I promised Halder I'd look after you.' He shrugged. 'Can't be helped,' he said. 'Besides, you and I won't be the only ones who've drawn that particular conclusion. Still, we'll get down there as quickly as we can, I think. Who knows, they may manage to spin the fighting out for long enough.'

It was a painful walk, and Eyvind's impatience didn't make it any easier or noticeably faster. But they got there in the end, just in time to see the circle of soldiers breached and crushed, like the man who draws a little too slowly. After that it was like watching the sea rush in through a hole in the wall: quick, efficient, rather depressing.

'There's Halder, look,' Eyvind called out. That was a relief, though Poldarn hadn't been thinking much about him at that particular moment. He followed the line Eyvind was showing him, and saw the top of the old man's head; beside him he saw Raffen, so that was all right. He couldn't see Scaptey, but he wasn't really bothered about him.

The fighting petered out quite quickly after that; here and there Poldarn could see rapid scuffling movement, an arm upraised for a moment as some leftover enemy was disposed of, but mostly the raiders were standing about or sitting on the ground, resting sociably for a moment or so before moving on to the next job of work that needed to be done. Two men were pulling down the tailgate of the nearest cart. The prisoners, Poldarn thought, assuming there are any, of course.

One of the men took a step backwards and raised his sabre. 'Hold it,' Poldarn called out; the man hesitated and looked round to see who'd spoken. Poldarn hobbled over as quickly as he could.

'There's some more of them in there,' the man explained. 'I saw something move under that pile of old blankets.'

'I thought there might be,' Poldarn replied, and he explained his prisoners theory.

'It's possible,' the man admitted. 'All right, let's shift the blankets and have a look. Though if it was one of us, surely he'd have called out as soon as he heard our voices.'

Nobody else was paying them any attention; mostly they were wandering round the battlefield picking up weapons and pieces of armour, anything made of metal. Poldarn eased in front of the man he'd just been talking to, picked up a spear and used its point to flick away the blankets, revealing a man's head. The face was familiar.

'I know you,' he said. 'You're Tazencius.'

The man under the blankets sneezed, then stood up. Poldarn had been right; it was the same man he'd picked up off the road, on his first trip out for Falx Roisin. He looked very sad; there was dried mud in his hair, and he had a black eye. His left leg was tightly wrapped in cloth, with two splints to keep it straight. 'That's right,' Tazencius replied. 'What happened?'

Poldarn frowned. 'You tell me,' he said.

Tazencius sat down on the edge of the cart, his bad leg stuck out straight in front of him. 'After the battle at Vistock, you mean?' he said. 'I thought you'd have figured that out for yourself. The Amathy house sold me to the imperials; no idea what the price was, I was in no position to ask.' He frowned. 'But you should know that,' he said. 'After all, if you didn't know I'd been captured, how'd you know to rescue me?'

Poldarn grinned. 'What makes you think you've been rescued?' he replied.

'Hey,' asked the man who'd discovered him, 'what are you talking about?'

'It's all right,' Poldarn replied without turning round. 'It so happens that this is a very important man. The emperor's cousin, I think.'

'Quite right,' Tazencius said.

'Doesn't matter,' the raider broke in. 'You know the rules: no survivors, no witnesses. Now, are you going to deal with him, or shall I do it?'

'Just hold your horses, will you?' Poldarn said. 'Or doesn't the concept of ransom mean anything to you?'

'The what?' the man asked, and Poldarn realised that he'd used the imperial word for ransom, since there wasn't an obvious equivalent in his own language. Anyway, that answered the question fairly well.

'I know him,' Poldarn said, not really sure how this was supposed to justify breaking what was presumably a cardinal rule by sparing a witness. 'It's all right,' he added.

'Please yourself.' The man slid his sabre back on to his belt. 'All yours,' he added, then turned away, having apparently lost all interest in the matter. His colleague had already wandered away, and was trying on a dead soldier's boots.

'Thank you,' Tazencius said. 'I couldn't understand what you were saying to that man, but I could guess pretty well.'

'He wanted to kill you,' Poldarn replied.

Tazencius sighed. 'I have an idea that puts him in with the majority of the human race. Are you in charge of these people?'

Poldarn frowned. 'Good God, no. They're taking me along for the ride. Apparently, some of them are my relatives.'

Tazencius was looking at him oddly, as though what he was saying didn't make any sense. 'Whatever you say,' he replied. 'Anyway, I owe you another favour. That makes it twice in a matter of weeks you've saved my skin. It's good to know there's someone on my side.'

'Am I?' Poldarn asked. 'Not that it matters particularly, since I'm getting out of here. Which is what I'd do if I were you,' he added.

Tazencius grinned and patted his broken leg. 'I agree with you,' he said. 'If you could just explain how I'm supposed to go about it-'

'Your problem,' Poldarn replied.

For some reason Tazencius looked as if he'd expected rather more. 'If that's the way you want to play it, fine,' he said. 'Like I said, I owe you my life, and I don't want to make things difficult for you with your friends here. The fact remains, if I'm left hobbling about the place, there's a better than even chance I'll get picked up by the imperials pretty quickly-or the Amathy house, which amounts to the same thing, apparently-and then everything we've both been working for these past few years'll have been a waste of time and energy. I really don't want to be a burden to you, but it's in your interests just as much as mine. And there's Lysalis to consider, just in case you'd forgotten. We've had our differences, sure, but I don't suppose she'd be pleased if she found out you'd left her dear old dad out on the battlefield to die.'

Poldarn thought for a moment; then he hauled himself up on to the cart and sat down opposite Tazencius. 'I haven't got a lot of time,' he said. 'They'll be wanting to move out soon and I don't want to be left behind. Do you know who I am?'

Tazencius scowled at him. 'What's the matter with you?' he said. 'It's all right, there's nobody watching. And even if there was, they can't understand what we're saying. Can they?'

Poldarn leaned forward quickly and grabbed Tazencius by the throat before he could get out of the way. 'That name you just said.'

'What? Oh, you mean Lysalis. My daughter. Your wife.'

'My wife,' Poldarn repeated. 'Prove to me that she's my wife. Prove she even exists.'

'But I don't need to. You know…' Tazencius tried to shake himself free, but Poldarn was too strong for him. 'Look,' he said, 'what the hell's come over you? Everything was going so well. First you led these people of yours into an ambush, just as we'd planned, so I'd have my victory. Then you managed to catch Cronan and kill him-and I'm really grateful to you for that, you don't know how much it means to me. And now you've saved me again, just like you did that other time; it's like having my own personal guardian angel, it's wonderful. Best thing I ever did, letting you marry Lysalis. And now you're acting like you've gone mad. What's got into you?'

'Don't you understand?' Poldarn said. 'I've forgotten everything. I can't even remember who I am. I only know who you are because I heard someone mention your name-'

He stopped. Tazencius was grinning. 'Is that right?' he said. 'You know, I believe you. What, you can't remember anything? Anything at all?'

'No. For God's sake, you've got to tell me.'

Tazencius was laughing. 'I don't think so,' he replied. 'My God, talk about a stroke of luck,' and as he spoke he leaned back a little, picked up a long knife that was lying on the bed of the cart, and poked Poldarn quite hard in the ribs with it. It was very quickly and neatly done. 'Now let go,' he said. 'Gently, that's right. Thank you. Now I suggest that you find a way to get me out of here. Otherwise, we'll die together.'

Quickly, Poldarn assessed the position. One very slight movement, and he'd be dead; it doesn't take much to push a sharp, thin knife up under the ribcage and into the heart. 'Why won't you tell me who I am?' he asked.

Tazencius smiled maliciously. 'Mostly,' he said, 'because I don't like you very much. To be perfectly honest-and there's no reason why I shouldn't be, not any more-I never could stand the sight of you; the thought of you with my daughter, it's enough to make me sick. Actually, I'm doing you a favour, because if I was you, I really wouldn't want to know who I was, if you see what I mean. Ignorance is bliss, as the poet says. So what happened? Bash on the head, was it?'

'What harm have I ever done you?'

'What harm? Do me a favour.' Tazencius shook his head. 'Just associating with you, it's like wallowing in blood and shit. Did you just say you're going away?'

'Yes.'

'Wonderful. With the savages?'

'Yes.'

'Absolutely splendid. Give it a week or so, you'll have them all at each other's throats, with any luck they'll wipe themselves out and leave us all in peace. You know, this is quite extraordinary. In a way, it's even better than killing you.'

'You want to kill me?'

Tazencius shrugged. 'Who doesn't? In fact,' he went on, 'about the only person I can think of who wouldn't want to kill you on sight is my poor besotted child-and that, my dear son-in-law, is the one thing I'll never be able to forgive you for. Oh sure, I was the one who sold my poor innocent lamb to the most evil man in the world, just so as to get his help in stealing the empire; the very thought of what I did disgusts me so much I can't bear to think about it. But that she should go and fall in love with you-you, for God's sake-that was my punishment, of course, that was divine retribution, as cruel and vicious as they could make it. It means I can't kill you-here we are, you and me and a nice sharp knife, and the pointed end actually facing in the right direction, and I can't rid the world of you. Isn't that something?' He sighed. 'No, instead you'll help me escape, I'll let you live-I'll owe my life to you. Again. That's my punishment too. You know what? You're like spilt honey; the more I try and clean up the mess, the stickier I get. You're all over me. Because of you, in everything I do, evil sticks to me and I can't wipe it off. Well.' He smiled. 'Now, just possibly, things are about to get better. You're going away. You don't know who you are. You don't know what we've done together, so you can't hold it over me. And when I'm emperor-and I will be, you can count on it, God help me-when I'm emperor you won't be there to torment me any more, because you won't know who you are. It's priceless, really it is. You know, for the first time in years I'm actually feeling optimistic.'

Poldarn tried to move, but he couldn't; the knife point was precisely in position, leaving him room to breathe and nothing more. Out of the corner of his eye he could see his people harvesting steel from the dead, working steadily, cheerfully; they wouldn't be able to help him, they couldn't see that anything was wrong. 'Please,' he said, 'I promise you, I'm going away, you'll never see me again. At least tell me my name.'

Tazencius smirked at him. 'All right,' he said. 'Your name's Ciartan. But that's only the name you came with, not the one everybody here knows you by. And if you think everybody's an exaggeration, you're wrong. There can't be anyone-well, certainly this side of the bay-who hasn't heard of you. And if I said your name and asked, "Who's he?" you know what they'd all say? "The most evil man in the world," that's what. And they don't know half of what you've actually done…'

Poldarn breathed in and out, slowly. 'What do you want me to do?' he asked.

'Easy. Get me out of here.'

'How can I? I can't move.'

'Think of something. Didn't I mention, you're the most brilliantly innovative strategist the world has ever seen? Something like that, anyway. Just don't try and get away from me, not till I tell you. The only way I'll trust you is if I know I can kill you with a flick of the wrist; and if I'm going to die, one thing I'll make sure of is taking you with me.'

'What if I told you I didn't care?' Poldarn said.

Tazencius shook his head. 'I wouldn't believe you,' he said. 'I know you too well. You'll do anything to stay alive.'

Poldarn thought about that and realised it was true. He didn't want to die. 'If you kill me,' he said, 'they'll tear you to pieces. You realise that, don't you?'

Tazencius shrugged. 'It won't come to that,' he said. 'You're going to save me. Like I said just now, you're my guardian angel.' He put a tiny amount of additional pressure on the knife handle, just enough to hurt. 'You're afraid,' he said. 'That much pain's enough to make you afraid of dying. Am I right?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied.

'Another thing I can't forgive, by the way, is that you really do love my daughter. You have the capacity for love, you see; I think that's obscene. It devalues everything. Have you thought of something yet?'

Poldarn nodded. 'I'm going to ask one of my-of these people to hitch up the horses to this cart,' he said. 'I'll explain that I can't do it myself because of my bad arm. I'll say that you're my friend, you were kind to me when I got stranded here, and I said I'd make sure you got out all right, I'll vouch for you. If I say it just right, casually enough, it ought to work; you don't know these people but they're like that, they trust each other.'

Tazencius raised an eyebrow. 'You like them, don't you?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied, 'I do.'

'That figures. They're monsters, and so are you. I'm not sure I like this idea. I won't be able to understand a word you're saying; you could tell them something quite different, like the fact that I'm sticking a knife in your ribs, please help-'

'I won't,' Poldarn replied. 'It'd be too much of a risk.'

'I think so too,' Tazencius said, 'I just wanted to be sure you did. All right; once the cart's moving, I suppose I'll let you get down. What's to stop you sending your friends after me? The moment I stop prodding you with this knife-'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I don't wish you any harm,' he said. 'I mean that. All I want is for you to tell me my name.'

Tazencius nodded. 'And I won't be able to do that if I'm dead, of course. All right, I don't see how I've got any choice; but remember, if you mess me about, I will kill you.'

Much to Poldarn's surprise and relief, it all worked out as he'd hoped. A man he'd never seen before (but who seemed to know him, as they all did) hitched up the team with a cheerful smile, and stopped to wave as the cart started to roll. Nobody else seemed interested.

'Can I get down now, please?' Poldarn said.

Tazencius frowned. He was managing the reins with one hand, holding the knife with the other. 'Not yet,' he replied. 'I want a bit more space between them and me before I give up my only advantage. Of course, if I was in your shoes, I'd be thinking about the fact that once this cart's out of sight of your friends there's nothing to stop me killing you and shoving your body off the cart and down into the ditch. In fact, bearing in mind my position here, it'd make much more sense for me to kill you than let you go. Have you considered that?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied. 'But it's not as though I've got a lot of choice in the matter.'

'You haven't. Just think,' he went on, 'after a lifetime of making choices for other people-Do I like living in this city? Why should I live at all? Would I be better off dead?-now here you are, with no choices whatsoever, no responsibilities, no indecision, nothing. How do you feel?'

'Frightened,' Poldarn replied. 'And alone. I don't like either of them much.'

'You'd better get used to it,' Tazencius said, 'if you're really going to go and live among the savages. Imagine what it'll be like, the only human being, surrounded by two-legged wolves. Though I can't think of a better place for you, at that.'

The cart rolled on. One wheel was squeaking. Poldarn thought of Copis, but he was having difficulty remembering what she looked like. Besides, apparently he had a wife. Children, too? It would probably not be a good idea to ask.

It was a long time before the cart was out of sight of the battlefield; when the moment came, Tazencius looked at him and frowned. 'Here we are, then,' he said. 'Well, I suppose you could say you've done your good deed for the day.' Something about that remark seemed to amuse Tazencius; he grinned suddenly. 'I don't know if it counts, since you weren't acting of your own free will. But then, that'd go for most of us, most of the time. Still, I don't mind thanking you for saving my life, again. If I don't, nobody else will, that's for sure.'

'Don't worry about it,' Poldarn replied.

'Oh, I'm not worried,' Tazencius replied. 'You should be, of course. You do realise that by letting me live, helping me get away, you'll be directly responsible for thousands of deaths, tens of thousands, probably. A whole civil war. You see? Even when you do something good, it turns into evil. Your fault. Like everything.'

'Everything,' Poldarn repeated. 'Well, I wouldn't know about that.'

'Your good luck,' Tazencius said, 'at least for now. You know that? The day will come when you do find out, and I'd like to be there, to see your face. I'll be the one sitting on a big cedar-wood chair, my feet level with your head, while a beefy sergeant sharpens a sword on a stone. Till then, you can sweat it out.'

He squirmed sideways, raised his left foot and kicked hard against Poldarn's thigh, shooting him off the box. Poldarn landed on his bad arm and yelled, and then the cartwheel rolled over the ankle of his good leg. He heard the crack a fraction of a second before he felt the pain rush up through his body, flooding it, like a river in spate. From a long way off, he heard Tazencius whooping with delight-'Yes! Neat trick, huh?'-and then his eyes closed.

When he woke up, the first thing he noticed was movement. It felt familiar.

He opened his eyes, and saw Halder's face, looking down at him. 'Grandad?' he said.

'I'm here,' Halder said.

Are we on the ship?' Poldarn asked; then he added, 'The Long Dragon. Are we on the Long Dragon?'

Halder smiled, genuinely warm, like a good fire in the hearth. 'No, son,' he said, 'the Dragon was sawed up for floorboards fifteen years ago; this is the Raven. But you remembered the name.'

Poldarn nodded. 'I helped you build the Dragon,' he said. 'We sawed the timbers together; me up top, you down in the pit. I was fourteen. The big saw broke, and you had Ginlaugh weld it at the forge.'

Halder nodded. 'Ginlaugh passed on the summer before last, rest his soul,' he said. 'Now then, can you tell me who'd have the forge now?'

Poldarn thought for a moment, looking past his grandfather's face at the soft white clouds against a rich blue sky. Although the sun was bright, he was comfortable in the shade cast by the broad grey sail. He could hear voices, and although he couldn't quite make out what they were saying, he recognised the tone and pitch; familiar voices, his own people talking to pass the time. The smell of the sea made him want to sing. 'Asburn,' he said, the name slotting into place like a tenon into a well-shaped mortice. 'Asburn, his sister's boy. My age, or a few years younger. Is that right?'

The old man nodded. 'Welcome back,' he said. 'God, I wish I had a mirror handy, I'd like for you to see your face. You've got that look you always had when you were a kid. First time I've seen it since we found you again.'

Poldarn laughed. 'It's all right,' he said. 'I can remember. I can remember all sorts of things, right up to-' He frowned. 'Leaving home,' he said. 'On the Dragon, and you stayed home, after you fell out of the pear tree. And that's all.'

Halder shifted a little; he was sitting on a pile of empty sacks, with his back to the mast. 'That's all you need to remember,' he said, 'for where we're going. Anything that happened back there-' he made a vague gesture, presumably in the direction of land, 'all that, it doesn't matter any more, whatever it was. Where we're going, it's all different.'

There was something about the way he'd said that. 'Grandad,' Poldarn said (and for the first time he knew that his name really was Ciartan, and that he was going home), 'do I talk in my sleep?'

Halder looked away. 'Always did,' he replied. 'Bloody nuisance it was, too. Still, nobody's perfect.'

'Have I been talking just now?' He knew the answer from the way the old man didn't look at him. 'Have I been saying things about-?'

Halder shook his head. 'Nothing that made any sense,' he said. He was lying. 'Just a load of nonsense, not even in our language. Doesn't matter.'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'If you do know,' he said, 'or if you ever find out, will you promise not to tell me? I have a feeling I'd be better off not knowing. Probably we'd all be better off.'

'I promise,' Halder said. High overhead, Poldarn could see two seagulls riding the warm air currents. 'We won't talk about it any more.'

'Thank you,' Poldarn said. 'Where's Raffen, by the way? And Scaptey?'

Halder looked past him again. 'Scaptey's dead,' he said. 'He didn't make it through that last battle. Raffen's here, it's his shift on the tiller.'

'I'm sorry,' Poldarn said. 'About Scaptey, I mean.'

Halder shrugged. 'It's been a bad business all round,' he said. 'Just on half of us aren't coming back. Never been anything like it in my time, or my father's, that I can remember. In fact, I'd say finding you again's about the only good part of it. And you know what? Far as I'm concerned, it's worth it. I thought I'd die alone, you see. Never could bear the idea of that.'

Poldarn looked at him, and saw fear in his eyes: fear of that loneliness, which no longer threatened him; fear of what he'd done-in those eyes, Poldarn could see a reflection, the crazy old woman from Vistock at the moment when the backsabre started to come down. All that was to be expected, it belonged there and was all quite right and proper. Beyond that he could see another fear, dividing the two of them like a wall of ice. Halder was afraid of him.

'You won't,' he said, 'I promise you.' He started to reach out, to put a hand on the old man's shoulder. Halder evaded his touch, with a small, subtle movement. Somewhere behind them, someone was singing. Poldarn couldn't catch the words, but he knew them already: Old crow sitting in the tall mast-tree, Old crow sitting in the tall mast-tree, Old crow sitting in the tall mast-tree, Of the ship that carried Dodger home across the sea.

'It's all right,' Poldarn said, nevertheless. 'Everything's going to be fine now, you'll see.'