by K. J. Parker
After a long pause the strangers stood up, all but one of them. He folded his arms across his chest and said, ‘I’m not budging from here till you tell us what you’ve done with the horses.’
His companions shifted uneasily, and one of them gestured to him to get up. He ignored the signals and pulled a face that was presumably intended to express irresistible resolve, though Poldarn reckoned it just looked silly.
‘Come on, Terfin,’ one of the other strangers said. ‘Let Eyvind deal with these clowns – it’s not worth it.’
‘Screw you,’ Terfin said angrily.
Poldarn was trying not to laugh; but suddenly Boarci darted forwards, grabbed Terfin’s arm, twisted it savagely behind his back until he screamed, and hauled him to his feet. ‘Ciartan told you to leave,’ he said quietly. ‘Are you deaf as well as stupid?’
‘Boarci, let him go, for God’s sake,’ Poldarn shouted; but Boarci was grinning. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘he’s just leaving, him and his pals. And if I ever see them round here again, they’ll be going home on their backs. You got that?’ One of the other strangers started to move, but Boarci twisted Terfin’s arm a little further, making him howl like a cat.
Poldarn closed his eyes. ‘Boarci,’ he said, ‘you let that man go or you’ll need somewhere else to live. Whatever it is you think you’re doing, it isn’t helping.’
Boarci laughed, and pushed Terfin across the room. He hit the wall and fell down. ‘I’m not afraid of any little turd like that,’ he said.
‘No,’ Poldarn said, ‘but I am, and I don’t give a shit who knows it. You,’ he said to the strangers, ‘get out now, before this gets any worse. And you,’ he went on, turning to Boarci, ‘I’ll forgive you this once, because of how you saved me from the bear. But if you ever do anything like that again, I’ll throw you out of here so fast your head’ll spin.’
Boarci grinned; the strangers left without a word, and a moment or so later Poldarn could hear them mounting up in the yard. He sighed, and rested his head on his elbows. Nobody spoke for a long time.
‘Well,’ Elja said, ‘that could have gone better.’
‘You think so?’ Boarci yawned. ‘I’d say we handled it pretty well, considering.’
For a moment Poldarn wanted to hit him, but he was too tired. ‘I meant what I said,’ he told him. ‘One more stunt like that and you’re out. Do you understand me?’ But Boarci only grinned, and asked what was for dinner.
‘Well, there’s the pheasant,’ Elja said, ‘and those revolting looking fungus things. Or there’s the last pickings off that hare from the day before yesterday. Or I suppose I could fix up some soup.’
Raffen looked up. ‘What kind of soup?’ he said.
‘No particular kind,’ Elja replied. ‘Just soup.’
‘In that case,’ Raffen replied, ‘I suggest you make it the pheasant. What’re you groaning at?’ he added, as Asburn let out a long sigh. ‘Got the guts-ache or something?’
Asburn shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘I was just thinking of all that salt beef we got off that up-country type. What I wouldn’t give for a plate of that right now.’
Boarci made a show of being offended. ‘What, better than fresh roast venison?’ he growled. ‘Some people are just plain ignorant.’
‘I like salt beef,’ Asburn replied plaintively. ‘All this wildlife stuff’s all very well, I guess, but it’s not what you’d call proper food. Salt beef, some good strong cheese and a big fat chunk of new bread; now that’s what I call food.’
Boarci shook his head sadly. ‘You’ll just have to dream,’ he said. ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘I know where I can get you a nice neck fillet of horse—’
‘That’s very funny, Boarci,’ Poldarn said. ‘You could die laughing at a joke like that. All right,’ he went on, ‘let’s have the pheasant and the poison mushrooms, and then for God’s sake let’s go to bed and get some sleep.’
Later, when they were lying alone together in the dark, Elja asked him: ‘What do you suppose Eyvind’ll do now?’
Poldarn stared up at the roof. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘From what I know of him, he’d be prepared to leave the business with the horses. Whether he believes us or not, he’s got more sense than to pick a fight over something trivial. And he’s got all my horses, those and his own are more than he needs. It’s not in his nature to quarrel with his own kind, even with a freak like me.’
‘Ah,’ Elja said drowsily. ‘So that’s all right, then.’
But Poldarn shook his head. ‘It’s not the horses I’m worried about,’ he said. ‘It’s Boarci starting a fight with that man. You can be sure they’ll tell Eyvind all about that; they’ll want to make a big deal about it so he won’t think too much about them coming home empty-handed. If they make it sound like we slung them out, Eyvind won’t take that well, it’ll offend his sense of what’s right. It’s us freaks beating up on regular folks, it’ll get him worried and angry. The point is, he’s afraid of me. He thinks I made the mountain blow up.’
‘He’s an idiot,’ Elja mumbled.
‘Maybe.’ Poldarn sighed. ‘But he feels responsible, because he brought me here, and ever since then, nothing’s been the way it ought to be. First the mountain blew up, then I was telling people what to do, and now I’m stealing horses and beating up his men when he asks for them back. If I was going out of my way to make him afraid of me, I couldn’t have done a better job.’
‘Then it’s your own silly fault,’ Elja said. ‘Next time, think carefully before you go setting off any volcanoes.’
Poldarn shifted, but he couldn’t get comfortable. The blanket felt hot and heavy. ‘I wish I understood him better,’ he said. ‘It’s like I can see one half of him but not the other. This is all going wrong, just when I thought I was making some sense of it.’
Elja yawned, and pulled the blanket over to her side of the bed. ‘Shut up and go to sleep,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
A week went by, and every day Poldarn did his arithmetic – a day and a half for them to get back to Ciartanstead, two at the most; a day for Eyvind to get his people organised; a day and a half to ride over here, two at the most – and every morning he adjusted the variables like a good actuary, allowing half a day here for a house meeting, a day there for making weapons or other such preparations, a day lost because of a stream in spate or a blocked ford. By the end of the week he was convinced that Eyvind was either coming with a fully equipped army, or he wasn’t coming at all.
Eight days, and no sign of him. Nine days, and Poldarn allowed himself to tip the balance ever so slightly in favour of the second hypothesis. Ten days, and he found that he needed to exercise considerable ingenuity to stay worried. A fortnight, and he’d have been able to dismiss the whole incident from his mind – if Boarci hadn’t gone missing.
He’d set off one morning, early, before anybody else had been awake, and they’d assumed that he was out killing things, as usual. At dinner time, Raffen said that Boarci had probably decided to sleep out on a trail so as to catch a particularly large and juicy buck on its way to its morning feed. At noon the next day, Asburn wondered if Boarci had fallen down somewhere on the mountain and damaged his leg. That night, nobody mentioned him at all, and conversation was generally subdued.
‘It’s just the sort of solution Eyvind would go for,’ Poldarn told Elja, as they got ready for bed. ‘Rather than pick a quarrel with all of us because of what Boarci did to that man, he’s decided to make it a personal thing, himself and Boarci. It’s quite clever thinking, actually, because after all, Boarci’s the outsider, we wouldn’t be under any real obligation to take the matter further. Eyvind knows he’s got to do something, but he’s giving us a way out of having to hit back.’
Elja nodded. ‘Or maybe Boarci’s slipped on loose shale and twisted his ankle,’ she said. ‘Or he’s got bored with being in the one place for so long and gone off somewhere else. He’s a drifter, it’s what they do.’
‘He wouldn’t just go, without saying a word.’
‘You reckon?’ Elja shook her head. ‘I think it’s exactly what he’d do. And even if I’m wrong, there’s another way of looking at it. Suppose he got to worrying about what he’d started, and he figured that the best thing he could do is clear out. That way, Eyvind can’t touch him, because he can’t find him; and Eyvind won’t bother us, because we can say it was all Boarci’s fault, nothing to do with us. Solves the problem neatly, don’t you think?’
Poldarn hadn’t thought of that. ‘That’s not like him at all,’ he said. ‘His idea of sorting out the mess would be going over there and planting an axe between Eyvind’s eyebrows.’ He paused. ‘God,’ he said, ‘let’s just pray he hasn’t, or we really are in trouble.’
He slept badly that night, and was woken up out of a mystifying dream by the sound of horses in the yard outside. He jumped up and groped in the dark for the axe he’d put beside the bed the previous evening. Instead, he caught hold of Elja’s toe, and got sworn at.
‘Shut up,’ he hissed, ‘they’re here. Horses, in the yard. Can’t you hear?’
That woke her up. ‘Maybe it’s the missing horses,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe they found their own way home.’
Poldarn didn’t answer. He felt his way along the wall with his hands, looking for the door. It took him far too long to find it; by then, the rest of the household was awake. He could hear someone unbolting the door, calling out, ‘Who’s there?’ Not a sound tactical move, he thought.
‘It’s all right,’ replied a familiar voice. ‘It’s only me.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Poldarn whispered under his breath. Then he found the door and pushed through it.
‘Boarci,’ he shouted, ‘for crying out loud. Where have you been?’
Someone had managed to get a lamp lit. It was only a little one, squidged out of stream-bed clay and fitted with a rush wick, but it gave just enough light to show Boarci’s face, grinning. ‘Ciartanstead,’ he said. ‘And I’ve brought you all a present. Anybody going to help me get it in from the cart, or have I got to do every damn thing myself?’
‘What cart?’ Poldarn asked, but nobody was listening to him. A moment or so later, they were all helping him to haul a big, fat, strangely familiar barrel in through the doorway.
‘Is that . . .?’ Asburn said, in a voice quiet with wonder.
‘Yes,’ Boarci replied. ‘And don’t say I never do anything for you.’
It was one of Hart’s salt-beef barrels. There was a rope tied round the top and another round the base. It hadn’t been opened, though one of the staves was cracked, and the pickle was seeping through.
‘Well, don’t all thank me at once,’ Boarci said.
Poldarn found that extreme anger made him talk softly. ‘Where did you get that from?’ he asked.
‘From Ciartanstead,’ Boarci replied. ‘Where else?’
‘I see.’ Poldarn nodded. ‘I thought for a moment you might have run into Hart and traded it for something. So you went over there and stole it.’
Raffen laughed. ‘Wasn’t stealing,’ he said. ‘It’s our salt beef ’ Then he caught Poldarn’s eye and shut up rapidly.
‘Yes,’ Boarci said. ‘After they had the nerve to come over here, saying we were telling lies about their fucking horses. Also, Asburn said he fancied some salt beef.’
‘Fine,’ Poldarn said. ‘Now, what’s this about a cart? Where did it come from?’
‘Same place,’ Boarci said. ‘Actually, it’s not a cart, just the old trap.’
‘So as well as stealing the beef,’ Poldarn purred, ‘you stole the trap and the horses.’
Boarci grinned. ‘I found the trap out on the mountain road,’ he said. ‘Wheel’d come off, they’d ditched it. In open ground. I call that salvage, not stealing.’
‘Actually, he’s right,’ Rook put in; then he shut up, as well.
‘I found it,’ Boarci went on, ‘and I put the wheel back on – bloody fools don’t know how to fix a busted cotter-pin out of an old nail, don’t deserve to have a decent trap. The rule is, if you find something that’s been ditched and you fix it up, it’s yours to hang on to and use till the owner squares up with you for your time and trouble. Always been that way, hasn’t it?’
The rest of the household seemed to agree, but they did so in dead silence. The only person who didn’t seem to feel the tension was Boarci himself.
‘So you fixed the cart,’ Poldarn said. ‘Then you went down to the farm and stole the horses, and then you used them to steal the barrel.’
Boarci shook his head. ‘Catch me being so obvious,’ he replied. ‘Can’t go stealing horses, they’d miss ’em and get upset. Different, of course, if you just happen to find a string of horses wandering about on the hill. Same rules as the trap, you see.’
‘You found the horses—’ Poldarn stopped abruptly and stood with his mouth open for a heartbeat or so, until his composure returned. ‘All that time those men were here, and you knew where the bloody things were.’
‘Don’t talk soft,’ Boarci replied cheerfully. ‘It was after they’d pissed off home I found the horses. I was right, you see, they had been down in the combes there. That’s why I went back, to see if I could pick up the trail. One of you lot must’ve walked right past it, I could see a man’s trail clear as anything. So I followed it up, right onto the mountain, and there the buggers were, in a little fold beside the small rill.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘But you didn’t bring them back,’ he said. ‘You decided you’d steal them instead.’
‘No, actually.’ Boarci perched on the corner of the table. ‘I thought, I’ll take them back to Ciartanstead and that’ll clear everything up. So I set off, and next thing I found was the trap, like I told you. Well, that was too good to miss, so I fixed it and carried on; and when I got there – it was just before dawn, nobody about, the idle bastards – I suddenly thought, I wonder if that barrel of beef’s still there; you know,’ he added, looking at Poldarn, ‘the one you stashed away from the rest of us, in the back shed.’
This time, everyone looked at Poldarn. He was tempted to explain, because they were giving him those kind of looks and he’d hoped he’d seen the last of them; but he decided against it.
‘So I thought,’ Boarci went on, ‘it’s a dead certainty they don’t know it’s there; after all, nobody knew about it except you and Hart, and me because I just happened to see you sneaking it in there, all furtive. Well, it was still there, so I got some rope and some timbers and made up a sort of rough block-and-tackle; and here we are. And the joy of it is, they don’t even know they’ve been robbed. Now we can take the horses back, and the trap too, and say, excuse me but we think these belong to you, all innocent and virtuous, and that’ll put that right; and meanwhile, we’re up a barrel of beef, just when it’ll do us the most good. Now, is that neat, or what?’
Poldarn didn’t know what to say. Inside, he knew what he had to do. He had to tell Boarci to leave the house and never come back. But why? Boarci had done a stupid thing, put all their lives at risk, but he’d done his stupid thing in such a clever way that it seemed pretty well certain that he’d got away with it, and all for their sakes; there was the barrel, crammed with Hart’s exceedingly fine salt beef, at a time when they desperately needed it. It wasn’t as though Boarci had acted selfishly; he’d been putting food on the table for them ever since they’d got there, and now he’d done it again, in style, as well as finding the wretched, elusive horses and given Poldarn a wonderful opportunity to snatch back the moral upper hand. It was a daring exploit, not a bloody stupid thing to do; at least, that was how everybody else in the house was taking it. Everybody except himself.
But Poldarn knew what he ought to do; not because of the risk, but because he’d told Boarci not to pull any more stunts after his fight with Terfen, and Boarci had disobeyed him. That was unforgivable, an abomination; things like that didn’t happen here, because the hands didn’t disobey orders, because h
eads of households didn’t give orders for them to break. God, Poldarn thought, I’m starting to think like Eyvind. As if that’s a bad thing, in this country.
‘Well,’ Elja said, ‘what’re you going to do? We can’t give it back, if that’s what you’re thinking. If we give it back, we’ve got to tell them we stole it. And anyhow,’ she said, ‘what were you doing hiding it away in the first place?’
‘It was for you,’ Poldarn said at once. ‘I could see you were sick to death of porridge and leeks. And the salt beef was getting eaten so fast, I wanted to make sure there’d be some left for you by the time you got back.’
‘Oh.’ Elja looked at him, and shrugged. ‘Well, next time I’ll thank you not to make me your accomplice without asking me first. Anyway, all’s well that ends well: we’re a barrel of beef to the good, thanks to Boarci. Now, I suggest we let the matter drop and go back to bed.’
No, Poldarn thought, we can’t do that, it’s far too serious. If we just forget about it, there’ll be big trouble in the end. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s do that. Only, please,’ he added, grabbing Boarci by the arm as he passed, ‘I want you to give me your word that you won’t do any more stuff like that. We got away with it this time, but we won’t be so lucky again.’
‘Sure,’ Boarci replied with a grin. ‘Whatever you say.’
A few hours later, they were up and about again, and they had to choose who was going to take the horses and the trap back to Ciartanstead. Much to Poldarn’s annoyance, Boarci claimed the right, since he’d found them. ‘I want to see the look on their faces,’ he explained, and apparently everyone apart from Poldarn reckoned that was fair enough.
‘All right,’ Poldarn said. ‘But in that case I’m going with you, just to make sure you don’t get tempted to play any more games while you’re there. Is that all right with you?’
Boarci shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he replied. ‘Just us two? Or do you want anybody else along?’