by K. J. Parker
‘You found everything you wanted?’ Asburn asked. His voice was low and strained – part of it was fear, part of it something uncommonly like embarrassment, as if he felt awkward talking to someone who was in disgrace with the rest of the group.
‘Ready and packed,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Now it’s just a matter of waiting for the mountain to do its part.’
‘And how long do you figure that’ll be?’ someone asked; he couldn’t be sure who it was, in the growing dark. One of the offcomers.
‘Difficult to say,’ he answered. Though in his own mind he was quite sure: the fire-stream would reach Haldersness on the morning of the fourth day from tomorrow, but the evacuation would be fully complete by nightfall on the third day. Since the schedule was in his mind and so, presumably, visible to them all, he didn’t bother to say anything else out loud, and nobody asked.
‘You think that’s the best way to go.’ Elja wasn’t asking him to reconsider or anything; it was a statement, not a question. He confirmed it with a slight nod of his head. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I think we should be able to go back to the house in the morning, so long as we leave someone up here to keep an eye out, just in case Eyvind does come. But I don’t believe he will.’
‘I agree,’ Poldarn said. ‘Still, the very worst famous last words a man can utter are I was sure he wasn’t going to do that.’
In the morning they went down to the house, feeling stiff, bad-tempered and rather foolish for having spent the night on a damp earth floor when they hadn’t had to. Nobody seemed to have any work to do; they sat around on the porch or pottered about, not talking, not even looking at each other. Sullen was the best word to describe it; they were like children ordered to go on a treat they didn’t fancy. Poldarn spent most of the day watching the mountain. He couldn’t see the progress of the fire-stream, of course; he tried to deduce what he could from the direction of the smoke and ash, but mostly he knew he was fooling himself. It was frustrating to have to rely on an ally he couldn’t watch, or talk to, one he’d never even met, whose existence he didn’t really believe in, but whose contribution was vital and on whose timing everything depended.
He tried to prise his way into Eyvind’s mind, but that turned out to be impossible; so instead Poldarn had to rely on his imagination. He tried to think the way his old friend would be thinking, the way he’d always been able to do when killing crows. Uppermost in Eyvind’s concerns would be the pressure of responsibility, the priorities forced on him by events, the need to think clearly and pay attention to detail. That would be hard, with his entire world cracking up and burning all around him – Carey murdered, and he’d be sure he knew who’d done it, but what standard of proof would he need to show before he could take the decision to act on it? And the mountain, choosing this moment to flare up and reach out towards Haldersness; what the hell was he supposed to make of that, for pity’s sake? Then he’d be constantly itching in his mind about what he’d already done, the extent to which he’d been right and wrong, how much of it was someone else’s fault and how much was his own. There would be a voice in the back of his mind urging him to change tack, to find some way to deflect the course of events from the terrible conclusion that was being forced on him. Wouldn’t it be possible, that voice would be urging him, to chip a hole in the side of that unbearable chain of consequences, tap it and draw off the heat and the violence, sending it rushing away in some other direction where it couldn’t do any harm? Failing that, couldn’t he just get out of the way, leave, go somewhere else where the stream of consequences couldn’t follow him? But he’d know that was out of the question; because every stream diverted flows into someone else’s valley, and such a horrible force of heat and destruction can never soak harmlessly away, all he’d be doing would be changing the place where the end would come, possibly disrupting the schedule a little, almost certainly making things worse for himself, reducing his chances of being the one left alive when it was all over.
Poldarn thought about that. There had been a time when he’d pulled himself out of the mud and had realised his memories had all been washed out, like bloodstains from a shirt; a time when he’d had infinite choices, with no inevitable course he was bound to follow, no channels and slopes and lips and troughs forcing him to flow in any certain direction. He’d felt alone then, terrified, one defenceless little man in a vast open space, where everybody had to be presumed hostile until proven otherwise. Then his course had been aimless, he’d been sure of that. He’d chosen his turnings on a whim, allowing the most trivial factors to sway his decisions. But, as he’d flowed on and gathered speed down the side of his mountain (moving down and out from the peak of Polden’s Forge, the sharp apex at the beginning from which he could see everything and recognise nothing), so as he went he’d gathered up dust and stones and ash that stuck to him and formed a skin, an armoured crust that constricted him more and more as his descent gathered pace, forcing him to follow the contours and the features of the terrain, directing him . . . here, to the point where he was rushing down on the roof of his own house, the house he’d built for himself from the timber that had been ordained for that purpose since the day of his father’s birth. That conceit pleased him – the trees growing up to meet the fire-stream coming down, the perfectly timed confluence of fire and fuel, destroyer and victim, Poldarn and Ciartan; the threads drawn together to complete the obscure and complex but ultimately satisfying pattern.
Well now, he thought, how about that for a neatly planned conclusion?
He stayed watching the mountain until it was quite dark. The evening was unusually warm, and somehow he didn’t want to go into the house (any house, at this particular time) so he sat in a chair on the porch and closed his eyes. The chair was newly made and really rather fine – Raffen’s work, the man had a definite flair for making furniture – and he thought how pleasant life could have been here, if only he’d arrived in this place by a more auspicious route.
The chair was so comfortable that he slipped away into a dream, where he was sitting in a chair on a porch, watching a glowing red sunset over a mountain. But in the dream he was wide awake, because he was waiting, nervously, for a very important appointment. Beside him was a door, a rather magnificent thing made of bronze, with eight panels and slightly over-ornate hinges. Just as the sun set – such timing – the door opened and a grave-looking man in an ecclesiastical robe beckoned to him to come in.
The room he found himself in was big and rather dim; there were scores of candles, but all down at the other end. There wasn’t any furniture apart from the table the candles stood on, but there was a mat – a wholly inadequate word to describe such a glorious piece of work. It was dark red, patterned with black and gold lines intertwined in a way that made him dizzy, so that he looked up, and saw the ceiling. That was even more spectacular. It was covered in a fresco, executed in a style he recognised as very old indeed, and it seemed to be telling a story, though he hadn’t a clue what it was about. In one corner, a man and a woman were riding in a cart across a field covered with dead crows, while in the background a volcano was erupting, spewing red lava out of one side of the summit. In another corner, the same man who appeared in the cart was getting married, apparently to four women at the same time. Opposite to that, the same man was engaged in the sack of a city, amid scenes of graphic and very artistic carnage. In the fourth corner, he was standing in the bed of a river, surrounded by dead bodies. There was no indication as to the order of events, and the four panels converged on each other in such a way that they formed a continuous circle. In the centre, two sword-monks faced each other in a crowded room, transfixed in the moment of the draw; somehow the painter had contrived to give the impression that the events surrounding that central scene were all taking place in that same frozen moment. Although he reckoned he knew pretty much everything there was to know about the draw by now, he couldn’t make out from the position of the figures which one was going to win; in fact, it looked almost certain to be a dea
d heat.
Someone walked between him and the bank of candles. Actually, there were two men: one of them a young man, the same age as himself, the other older by some twenty years or so. They both wore the standard robes of the order, perfectly plain and ideally suited for the exercise of religion, and both had swords in their sashes, just like his own.
‘Has it stopped raining?’ the older man asked.
‘Quite some time ago,’ he replied. ‘In fact, it’s a lovely evening.’
The older man nodded. ‘It’s about time we had some better weather. Now, Monach, Poldarn, when you’re both ready.’ He stepped back a pace or two and stood with his arms folded, while the younger man loosened his sash and tied it again, twisting two turns of cloth around the scabbard of his sword before tightening the knot.
‘Can we begin?’ he asked.
‘Whenever you like,’ the older man replied.
The young man took a deep breath and knelt down on the floor, slowly drawing his sword and laying it on the mat in front of him. He did the same; then, at the same moment, they bowed to each other, sat up on their heels and sheathed their swords. The older man clapped his hands once, and they both stood up. ‘Poldarn,’ the older man said; and the younger man bowed again. ‘Monach.’ He returned the bow. It was all very polite and graceful, but it wasn’t making him feel any less nervous. Quite the reverse, in fact.
‘You may begin,’ said the older man; but neither of them moved. The younger man, Poldarn, took two deep breaths, drawing the air slowly down into the pit of his stomach, holding it there and slowly letting it out again. Suddenly he realised, as if remembering something obvious but temporarily forgotten, that when Poldarn had finished taking in his third breath, he’d draw; that would be the moment. He also knew that it was far too late to prepare himself to meet that draw, that inevitably he’d lose. He took two steps back and held up his hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Poldarn relaxed, slumping forward slightly as the tension drained from him. ‘That’s perfectly all right,’ the older man said. ‘Take a moment and start again.’
This time, he knew exactly what he had to do. Instead of watching Poldarn he ignored him completely, concentrating instead on his own breathing, making sure he knew where his own hands and feet and head were, building his circle so that he’d be able to tell when something broke into it even if his eyes were shut. He drew in his third breath until his lungs and stomach were full; only then did he look for his opponent – found and marked him, though really it wasn’t necessary, his hand would know where his enemy’s neck would be. As soon as there was no more room left for air inside him, he felt his right hand relax—
In the event, he did the draw perfectly, flawlessly, to perfection, in accordance with all the precepts and observances of religion. The back of his hand found the hilt and flipped over so that the fingers could close around the sharkskin-wrapped handle. His left thumb flicked the swordguard forward to free it from the jaws of the scabbard and the draw launched: the sword slipped effortlessly free and began its precisely directed journey, sweeping forward like a lava flow, unstoppable and deadly. It was a perfect draw.
But apparently Poldarn’s was better. As he fell backwards, in the last moment of consciousness, he wondered how on earth anybody could draw so fast; and he realised that the difference between them was one of time, because somehow his draw had been in the present, whereas Poldarn’s had already happened, Poldarn had already drawn and struck and beaten him before they’d even faced each other on the mat.
Then he opened his eyes. Poldarn was kneeling over him, looking worried. The older man was standing behind Poldarn’s shoulder, with a faintly disappointed look on his face.
‘Never mind,’ the older man said. ‘My mistake. I believed you were ready, and you aren’t. It’s just as well we had this practice, before we tried it with sharps.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he heard himself say. ‘It was the wrong time. I hadn’t realised.’
‘That’s all right,’ the older man said. ‘It’s all part of learning, after all. Help him up, Poldarn, and get him a drink of water.’
Poldarn pulled him to his feet and steadied him with an arm around his shoulders. ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you,’ he said.
‘No, I’m fine,’ he lied. ‘My own silly fault – seems like I’ve been missing the point all along.’
‘Quite,’ the older man said. ‘In fact, it’s quite remarkable that you were able to fool me into thinking you were ready. If you can draw that fast with just your hand and arm, you ought to do well once you’ve learned the proper way.’
That sounded like a compliment, but he was feeling too groggy to parse it thoroughly. ‘It’s because—’ he started to say, but he couldn’t find the words.
The older man nodded approvingly. ‘It’s because once Poldarn set his hand to his hilt, the draw was already done and over,’ he said, ‘whereas in your case it was just beginning. You still exist in the moment.’ And he pointed up at the ceiling, to the two painted swordsmen frozen in the instant of the draw. ‘You have everything, all the technical accomplishments, but you have no religion. It’s very perplexing,’ he added, ‘because usually, at your stage of training, it’s the other way round: still not perfect technically, but perfect in religion, which is all that matters in practice. You’re still nothing but a human being with superb reflexes. Poldarn, on the other hand, is a relatively slow and cack-handed god. Now,’ he went on, ‘if I were you I’d go and sit down outside for a while, since it’s such a pleasant evening, and take a moment to catch your breath and pull yourself together.’
That seemed like an excellent suggestion, so he followed it; and after a while he began to feel drowsy and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he knew at once that he was actually asleep and dreaming, because the first thing he saw was a huge black crow.
It was sitting on a fire-blackened timber that stuck out from a pile of rubble and ashes, and as soon as it saw him it spread its wings with a resentful squawk and lifted laboriously into the air. He felt an urge to grab a stone and kill the horrible creature, but he couldn’t be bothered; instead, he watched it flap away until it was out of sight. Crows, at that precise moment, were the very least of his worries.
‘Well,’ someone standing next to him said, ‘that’s that, then. A pity it had to end this way, but it wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t anybody’s fault, really.’
Far away in the distance, the mountain was leaking glowing red blood. ‘How can you say that?’ he replied, finding enough passion to be angry, much to his surprise. ‘It was their fault for starting it. It was my fault for finishing it. Of course,’ he added bitterly, ‘you can’t be expected to understand, since you’re just an offcomer.’
‘Fair point,’ the other man said – he hadn’t turned to look at him yet, couldn’t be bothered to do so now. ‘But it was all just trivial stuff, a quarrel about a cart. Odd how it always seems to begin with a cart – there’s some sort of pattern there. I think I’ll go and see if there’s anything worth having in the barn.’
Some of the embers were still smoking, but mostly there was just black ash. He ground some of it under his foot and listened to the crunch. It had been a fine house, but now it was just so much charcoal. That thought made him grin in spite of himself; maybe he should come back here with a cart and some sacks and bag it up, then there’d always be plenty of charcoal to get the forge lit. He considered that for a moment, but dismissed it as profoundly lacking in taste and respect for the dead.
There was nothing more to do here, so he turned his back and walked away. Nearby, next to the trap-house wall, he saw a nice sturdy log and sat down on it, his back to the wall. Once he’d taken the weight off his feet, he suddenly became very much aware that he hadn’t slept for several days. This was hardly the time or the place for a nap; but resting his eyes for a moment or so couldn’t do any harm.
As soon as his eyelids closed, he knew he was somewhere else, in a dream; he w
as sure of that, because he was sitting at a table, in the middle of which stood a wonderfully lifelike ebony statue of a crow with a ring in its beak. It was extraordinarily realistic; in fact, it looked more like a crow than any crow he’d ever seen, especially the live ones. The urge to throw a doughnut at it was almost impossible to resist.
But that would have been a waste of an exceptionally fine doughnut – there was a plate piled high with the things right next to his hand, and beside that another plate of honey-cakes, and a silver basket of cinnamon biscuits. In the distance – it was a very long table – he could just make out a parcel-gilt fruit bowl overflowing with oranges, apricots and peaches. Closer to hand was a huge chunky wine goblet, silver with gold inlays – vulgar, but impressive nevertheless. This was clearly a better class of dream altogether.
‘And just then,’ someone was saying, ‘the stable door opened and in walked the sergeant; and he looked at the young officer, and he said, “Actually, what we do is, we use the mule to ride down the mountain to the village.”’
Everyone – everyone but him, of course – burst out laughing, and someone suggested that that called for a drink. A pair of hands appeared over his shoulder; they were holding a gigantic silver wine-jug, which gurgled a stream of red wine into his cup. Then someone out of sight at the far end of the table called for a toast, and everyone started to get up. Naturally, he followed suit.
‘His majesty,’ said the distant voice, and everyone repeated, ‘His majesty,’ and had a drink. Then they sat down again. As he settled back in his chair he noticed that everyone was staring at him, though they stopped doing so almost immediately and started talking to the person next door. It was only then that he realised that he was sitting at the head of the table, and the toast had apparently been aimed at him; hence their surprise when he joined in. Bad form, to drink your own health.