by K. J. Parker
For some reason, Poldarn wasn’t surprised. But it was a pleasant change to have someone to talk to – talk in an almost normal way, as opposed to the strange bouts of communication he went through back at the farm, with people for whom speech wasn’t the usual method. ‘It was very impressive,’ he said, ‘the way you were able to get up close to the bear without being noticed. You must be good at stalking.’
Boarci laughed. ‘And even if I was,’ he said, ‘it’d be a joke with all this black shit all over the ground, crunching under your feet like a thousand men eating celery. Truth is, if you hadn’t gotten his attention, I wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting that close, in daylight and in the open like that.’
‘Glad I could help,’ Poldarn muttered.
Boarci chuckled. ‘You weren’t planning on helping me,’ he said, ‘and I wasn’t planning on saving you. Just kind of turned out that way, like a happy accident. Which is good. But don’t go getting the idea I’m the sort of man who’d pick a fight with a fucking big bear just to stop some stranger from getting all chewed up. That’s not my style, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ve only got your word for that,’ Poldarn said politely. ‘For all I know, you could spend your whole life going round helping people, and just pretending to be a homeless drifter because you can’t stand being made a fuss of.’
‘Sure.’ Boarci laughed again. ‘That’s me exactly, how did you guess?’
‘Good judge of character, presumably.’
It was hard enough at the best of times to find the valley in which Colscegsford nestled. With nothing to see except black ash, the job proved to be too hard for Poldarn, distracted as he was by the unaccustomed luxury of talking to someone. It was only when they stopped to look down into the next valley along and found no house or buildings there that Poldarn paused to think and get his bearings.
‘Of course,’ said Boarci, ‘the house not being there could be because it burned down or got buried, and the ruins are just under the cinders somewhere.’
They turned back and retraced their steps. Still no sign of Colsceg’s farm. ‘We could spend our lives doing this,’ Poldarn grumbled. ‘Damn it, the miserable place must be somewhere, whole farms don’t just melt into the ash or vanish.’
‘They do if it’s the end of the world,’ Boarci pointed out. ‘Leastways, that’s what my grandmother taught me. Didn’t say anything about fire-breathing mountains, but the rest of it, the old lady wasn’t so far off the mark.’
In the end, they found what they were looking for, after they’d walked past it three times. It was only a thin ribbon of light blue smoke briefly visible against the skyline that betrayed the farm’s secret.
From the head of the combe, there was nothing much to see apart from a few chimney pots and the central ridge of one roof (and you had to be looking for them specifically). A river ran down the middle of the combe, fast and quite deep as it gathered momentum from the steepening gradient. They followed its course – Boarci pointing out that if the place was called Colscegsford, there was probably a ford there, so the river might be a good place to start their search – until they came to a sharp bend, almost a right angle, where the valley suddenly saw fit to drop away at an alarming angle. The river, though, switched over to the side of the combe, forced to follow the rather less precipitous western slope by a long knife-backed ridge that pulled it away like a deliberately built dam. The ridge petered out into a flat plain at the bottom of the combe, where the river slumped into a series of lazy S-bends, in the angle of one of which they found the farm. It wouldn’t take much, Poldarn could see, to flood the plain completely; but the farm itself was built on a steeply banked platform between the river bank and the soaring bare rock of the western escarpment. If the river did slip out of its channel, the farm would be an island; but it would take a sea to fill up the valley enough to threaten its inhabitants.
‘Good place to build,’ Boarci said. ‘Only it must get bloody tiresome having to carry all your water up that steep slope every day.’
Poldarn wasn’t surprised to find a welcoming party waiting for them as they struggled up the hillside. He recognised Colsceg and Egil (who looked at him with a mixture of hatred and terror that must surely have rattled the brains of all the mind-readers in the district) and the gatepost-stolid Barn; Elja wasn’t there, but what business was it of hers? She was only the girl he was engaged to, after all. Also included in the party were five or six chunky-looking men with expressionless faces poking out through impressive beards.
‘Hello,’ Colsceg said to him; then he turned slightly to face Boarci. ‘We could certainly use the meat,’ he said, ‘but there’s no work for you here. I’m sorry.’
Can mind-readers lie? Poldarn asked himself. Apparently they could – the yard was two-thirds buried in cinders, and one of the barns had only a few charred rafters for a roof – but not convincingly. It didn’t take a mind-reader to see that Colsceg knew perfectly well that Boarci didn’t believe him, and furthermore wasn’t too bothered about it.
‘This is Boarci,’ Poldarn said. ‘He saved my life by killing the bear, just as it was about to kill me. He’s coming back with me to Haldersness as soon as I’m through here. I hope you don’t mind if he stays here in the meanwhile.’
‘That’ll be fine,’ Colsceg replied. ‘Any friend of Haldersness is always welcome here.’
Definitely not convincingly, Poldarn thought. Still, that’s their business. In any event, Boarci didn’t seem unduly put out; he just grinned and kept his face shut.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Is Elja at home? I’d like to see her, if that’s all right.’
The request seemed to puzzle Colsceg, but he nodded, and one of the bushy-faced men walked away, presumably to fetch her. The others started to unload the bear. ‘That’ll do nicely for tonight’s dinner,’ Colsceg said, and somehow Poldarn got the impression that dinner would’ve been considerably more sparse if they hadn’t shown up when they did. The burned-out barn probably had something to do with that.
‘You lost a building, then,’ he said.
Colsceg nodded. ‘The main storehouse,’ he grunted. ‘Flour, bacon, dried fish, apples, onions – couldn’t save any of it. Won’t be long before we’re slaughtering the stock just to put food on the table. Not that we can pasture them anyhow; they’re eating this winter’s hay already, and God only knows what we’ll do when that’s gone. Terrible business, and we haven’t got a clue what needs to be done. How about at your place?’
Poldarn shrugged. ‘We’re not much better off,’ he said, ‘except we’ve still got our stores, of course. But we decided to send our stock away up country; at least there’s grazing for them there. Meanwhile, we’re trying to scrape the ash off the ploughed land so the crop won’t rot. There’s a difference of opinion about whether that’s a good idea or not; some of us reckon that as soon as there’s any heavy rain, it’ll wash all this stuff away for us, save us the bother.’
‘We were wondering that,’ Barn interrupted. ‘They had rain over at Lyatsbridge.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘From what I gather, getting rid of the ash was the least of their problems.’
‘That’s true,’ Colsceg said. ‘But we’re all right on that score – we’re high up, so mudslides won’t be a problem.’
‘Unless they come straight down off the mountainside at you,’ Poldarn pointed out. ‘But I expect you’ve considered that.’
Colsceg frowned. ‘We’re trying not to scare ourselves to death thinking of every bloody thing,’ he replied. ‘It’s bad enough as it is without dreaming up new ways we could all get killed.’
That seemed to close that topic of discussion. ‘I’m sure Halder will want to send you anything we can spare,’ Poldarn said. ‘I’ll talk to him about it when I get home.’
Nobody seemed very impressed by what Poldarn reckoned was a very generous offer, not to mention a distinctly reckless one. He had a feeling that as far as the Haldersness people were concerned, charity began at hom
e and stayed there. In fact, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
Chapter Nine
‘Ilove organised religion,’ said the old man with the long grey hair, wiping brains off the blade of his sword with the hem of his coat. ‘I love its pomp and pageantry, its traditions, its stabilising influence on society.’ He kicked a dead body just to make sure before pulling a ring off its finger. ‘I just wish there was more of it. There don’t seem to be nearly as many monasteries as there used to be when I was your age.’
The younger man (I know him; I’m sure I’ve seen him before, somewhere or in something) laughed. ‘Too right,’ he said. ‘But you’ve burned down most of them. You can’t have your cake and eat it, you know.’
(The crows were already beginning to circle. He couldn’t see them, but he could hear their voices, as if they were calling out to him, trying to tell him something – a warning, maybe, or just vulgar abuse because he was in the way. He felt that he ought to be able to understand what they were saying, but either they were just too far away for him to make out the words, or else it was one of the arcane rules of the dream.)
The older man shrugged the point away. ‘So what?’ he said. ‘If these people were really serious about religion, they’d rebuild them. Bigger and more splendid—’ The ring didn’t want to come off, so he knelt down, put the finger in his mouth and sucked. ‘Useful trick, that,’ he said, ‘just the sort of thing you’re here to learn.’ He spat the ring out into his hand. ‘Where was I?’
‘Bigger and more splendid.’
‘Absolutely.’ The older man held out his arm, so that he could be helped up. ‘Seems to me,’ he went on, ‘that if my country was being assailed by ruthless bands of wandering pirates—’
‘It is.’
‘—Then I’d do everything I possibly could to woo the favour of the gods,’ the older man went on, grunting as he straightened his back, ‘especially building monasteries and endowing them with fine silverware. Gods hate cheapskates, it’s a well-known fact.’ He frowned, drawing together his monstrous ruglike eyebrows. ‘You aren’t just going to leave that perfectly good pair of boots, are you?’
Of course, the older man was showing off (I know him, too; you couldn’t forget someone like that) in front of his dazzled and devoted apprentice. He was usually like this after a massacre, clowning and cracking jokes to vent the stress and the anger and the self-loathing from his system. ‘Sorry,’ the younger man replied meekly, stooping and dragging off the dead man’s left boot. ‘I don’t know what I could’ve been thinking of.’
Feron Amathy; the old man’s name is Feron Amathy. I wonder if I’ll remember that when I wake up. ‘Hurry up, will you?’ Amathy said, ‘we’ve got a lot to get done. Oh, for pity’s sake,’ he added, as the younger man struggled with a tangled bootlace, ‘just cut it and be done with it.’
The young man did as he was told. In fact, they weren’t particularly good boots; the uppers were immaculately polished, but the soles were rough and thin. But Feron Amathy had to make his point.
Across the courtyard, a bunch of soldiers were making a long job of setting light to the thatched eaves of the stables; the thatch was still soaking wet after the morning’s rain. ‘Look at them, will you?’ Feron Amathy sighed. ‘No more idea than my old mother’s parrot. What they want to do is get a pair of bellows – there’s bound to be one in the kitchens or the smithy – and get some air behind it, otherwise we’ll be here all day, till the sun comes out. If there’s one thing I can’t be doing with, it’s sloppy workmanship.’
The younger man smiled dutifully. It pleases him, he thought, to play up this burlesque of what he actually is, as though it’ll somehow diminish the offence. He’s a fool to do that, the young man realised, it weakens him. Really, there’s no need to be guilty or ashamed, this is just a perfectly natural transaction, in the order of things; if you leave valuable stuff lying about without proper security measures, you’re asking for someone to come along and kill you for it. Good and evil have got nothing to do with it. ‘So what’s left to do?’ he asked, in a businesslike tone of voice. ‘We’ve done the chapel and the main building. How about the library?’
Feron Amathy pursed his lips. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘here’s a test for you. In this library –’ he pointed with his sword at the rather grand and over-ornate square building in the opposite corner of the quadrangle ‘– is a collection of very rare and precious books, many of them unique. What should we do?’
The young man thought for a moment. ‘Books are heavy and bulky and a pain in the arse to handle,’ he said, ‘but if you can find the right market, they’re worth a fortune. Rich people’ll pay ridiculous amounts of money for rare old books.’ He looked round. ‘We could use those carts over there,’ he said. ‘It’s a straight road over the hill, and we can store them in the big cave under the long escarpment.’
But Feron Amathy sighed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you ever listen to a word I say,’ he said. ‘Right; where do you propose getting rid of them?’
This time the younger man felt confident about his reply. ‘Mael Bohec,’ he replied. ‘I happen to know there’s a special book market there, behind the filler’s yard in the old town. Our best bet’d be to sell them off to a trader, get a price for the whole lot, because—’
‘Idiot,’ said Feron Amathy. ‘What did I say about the books?’
‘Rare and precious, many of them unique,’ the younger man said. ‘Which surely means they must be worth—’
‘A collection of rare and unique books,’ Feron Amathy repeated. ‘And since this is a monastery, what kind of books d’you think you’ll find here? History? Poetry anthologies? Practical advice to farmers and craftsmen, profusely illustrated with several hundred line drawings?’
‘Well, religious books, obviously. But they’re the most valuable of all, someone told me, because—’
‘Precisely.’ Another piece of gold jewellery caught his eye, and he swooped like a jay. ‘A magnificent, world-famous library of religious texts, many of them unique. For generations, monks have come here from all over the empire, because this library has the only copy of many crucial scriptural texts. Have you got any idea at all what I’m driving at?’
The young man nodded remorsefully. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘If there’s only one copy and it suddenly shows up on a market stall, everyone’ll know it came from here—’
‘Which is impossible,’ Feron Amathy went on, ‘because everybody’s been led to believe this town was razed to the ground by the pirates—’
‘Who burn and kill everything and then disappear back across the sea to where they came from.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means they don’t sell the stuff they’ve stolen through the usual fences. All right, I got that one wrong. I’m sorry.’
Feron Amathy sighed. ‘That’s all very well. But the day’ll come when I’m not here to be apologised to, let alone save you from making incredibly dangerous mistakes. And then your head will end up on a spike over some gateway somewhere, and all this invaluable trade knowledge I’m passing on to you will have been wasted. So, all right then. What do we do with the books?’
‘Burn them,’ the young man said.
Feron Amathy sighed with exaggerated relief. ‘Finally we’re there. All right, you get the job as a reward for your performance in the test. Round up a dozen men and get on with it. We really haven’t got all day.’
(And that, he realised as he watched, was one of the crucial moments, the turning points, the places where it could so easily have gone either way. I wish I knew how, precisely, he thought.)
The younger man nodded and trudged across the yard. It didn’t take him long to assemble a working party – they weren’t happy about being dragged away from looting the place and made to do hard, hot, unprofitable work, but they didn’t hesitate or make excuses. Amathy house discipline was stronger and better than in any regular imperial unit.
Buoyed up by their confidence and hig
h spirits, the younger man managed to kick in the library door, though he felt sure he’d broken a small bone in his foot after he missed the door itself and drove his boot hard against the metalwork. As a result, he was hobbling as he walked inside.
It was dark inside the library; the windows were shuttered, to prevent (he remembered) the light from fading the exquisitely illuminated capitals of the books set out on display on the great brass lecterns that stood in front of the rows of shelves. He drew his sword and held it out in front of him – no point in stubbing his toe on a lectern or a bench – and edged his way across the floor until he came to the nearest bookshelf. He located a book by feel, grabbed a handful of pages and tugged. But the book was best-quality parchment, far too tough to tear, so he dumped it on the ground, knelt beside it and groped in his coat pocket for his tinderbox.
This would be the hard part.
Everybody else in the world, right down to tottering old women and village idiots, could work a tinderbox. Little children who’d never been taught, who’d been expressly forbidden to play with fire, could have a merry blaze crackling away in the dry moss within a few heartbeats. Any bloody fool could do it, with one exception.
Painfully aware that his men were waiting for him, he teased out the moss, making sure it was dry. He felt the edge of the flint, which was good and crisp. All he had to do was turn the little brass crank (he had a very fine, genuine Torcean tinderbox, formerly the property of an Imperial courier, state of the art and beautifully finished and engraved) and by rights he’d have a little red glow in no time. He cranked. He cranked slowly and fast, smoothly and abruptly, with and without little wristy spurts. He blew into the moss pan, soft as a summer breeze, hard as a tornado. He stopped, slackened off the clamp and fitted a brand new flint. He turned the moss over. Nothing.
‘You all right in there?’ one of the men called out from the doorway.
‘Fine,’ he called back. ‘Just lighting a fire.’
Needless to say, any one of them could have done it. The requirements for joining the Amathy house weren’t exactly stringent – you had to be taller than a short dwarf and have at least one arm – there certainly weren’t any tests of practical everyday skills before you were allowed to sign on. But any one of Feron Amathy’s men could have lit a tinderbox, not excluding the two or three old stagers who no longer quite met the at-least-one-arm criterion. The only man in the whole house who couldn’t was the man entrusted with starting a fire. Bloody comical, that was what it was.