by K. J. Parker
‘Oh.’ Xipho’s voice, horrified.
‘Yes, I know,’ Cleapho went on, ‘you were just as bad as he was, almost; and you, Gain, though I wouldn’t have expected you to remember. But you, Xipho – anyhow,’ Cleapho went on, ‘fortunately, I remembered; and I crawled to the trapdoor, pulled it up and dropped through. Then it was just a matter of walking down the corridor – bleeding like a stuck pig, I might add, but it was only a flesh wound, fortunately – and across the yard to the infirmary.’
‘But—’ Xipho, struggling to understand. ‘We thought you’d died. You let us believe—’
‘Ah.’ Poldarn could practically hear Cleapho’s sardonic smile. ‘So I did. And that’s why I’ve forgiven you, all three of you. I guess you could say I owe you everything, because of that night. And coincidence, of course, or you could call it serendipity. Is that the word I’m looking for? It’ll do. The point is, I staggered into the infirmary, believed dead by all concerned, on the very evening when Father Tutor realised he needed the services of a ghost: someone who didn’t exist, someone with no identity. When the nurse called him over to the infirmary – I was yelling blue murder, I wanted to have you three hung, drawn, quartered and then thrown out of Deymeson in disgrace, in that order . . . But Father Tutor explained to me that it was just fine, couldn’t have worked out better if he’d planned it that way, and he wanted to offer me a really splendid job opportunity – which, once he’d told me about it, I was delighted to accept.’ He yawned. ‘Now I won’t bore you with all the in-between stuff, or we’d be here for days. Suffice to say, the end result, after many years of hard graft and brilliant planning, was me becoming Chaplain-in-Ordinary, supreme head of religion in the whole wide world, under the amusing name of Cleapho.’ He paused. ‘A joke that nobody’s ever appreciated,’ he added, ‘or else they’ve kept it to themselves. Cleapho in Old High Thurmian means “partly dead”. And all,’ he went on, accentuating the drawl, ‘because I remembered a silly old trapdoor and you three forgot about it. I guess it was one of those moments in religion when everything in the universe suddenly changes, but too fast for anybody to notice: one moment we’re all facing south, next moment we’re all standing on our heads facing north, but everything looks the same because the scenery’s been switched round too, and it doesn’t occur to anybody to consult a compass.’ He sighed, pure affectation. ‘And all this while you – and the Earwig too, I dare say – you’ve had it in for poor old Ciartan here because you blamed him for killing me, when in fact it’s because of him that I got to be the most powerful man in the world. Well, nearly the most powerful, but we’re working on that, aren’t we?’
Poldarn wanted to laugh; because if this was the most powerful man in the world, how could he be marooned on a cart stuck in the mud in a narrow lane in the middle of the wilderness, in the driving rain? ‘Is that what we’re doing?’ he asked mildly.
‘No, of course not,’ Cleapho said, as though explaining the blindingly obvious to a small child. ‘We’re fighting for the survival of the Empire, religion and civilisation; making me Emperor is just a side effect, like tanning salt is a by-product of horseshit.’ Suddenly his voice changed; it bristled with sincerity, great big raw lumps of it. ‘Have you got any idea of what’s happening out there? You must have, if you’ve got half a brain. You’ve seen the ruins where great cities used to be, where the savages – no offence – burned them to the ground. I expect you know how that all started, a couple of hundred years ago, when the Empire rounded up the Poldarn-worshippers in Morevich and set them adrift on the ocean to die. Only of course they didn’t; they floated across the sea to the islands in the west, and spawned like ants, and then they started to come back – because over there, where you grew up, there’re so many things they don’t have. No metal ores in the ground, so the only iron and steel your people had was what they brought with them in the ships, a few tools, the nails that held the boards together, the anchor chains and the deadeyes. Amazing what they did with what they had; because a hundred and twenty-odd years later, they were ready to cross the ocean and come here – and they knew what they wanted from us, and they were angry.’ He paused; effect again. All those years of preaching sermons in Torcea Cathedral. ‘They didn’t want gold or silver or pearls or silks; they wanted wrought iron and brass and hardening steel, scrap – and they were prepared, no, they wanted to kill in order to get it. Oh, come on, Ciartan, you were there only recently. Didn’t you wonder why every barn in the country is crammed full with rusty helmets and broken spear blades, and why the headman of every settlement is the blacksmith? To them, we’re a species of domesticated animal, like cows or pigs: they kill our soldiers for their steel skins, and leave the meat for the crows. And when all’s said and done, you can’t really blame them for it. We started it, after all.’
Poldarn didn’t say anything.
‘No,’ Cleapho resumed, ‘they aren’t to blame, for doing what they have to do, in order to get what they need. The evil – not too strong a word, I’m sure – the evil came from us. From one man, the man who thought he could use them, your people, as a means of getting what he wanted, and the hell with the consequences. That was when the evil started. Before that, your people only came here to get steel and iron, and the best and quickest way of getting the finest-quality material was taking it off the dead bodies of soldiers. So they hunted down our coastal garrisons, killed them and went away again. They weren’t interested in towns and cities – not till one of us started talking to them, preying on their resentment, persuading them that what they really wanted, more than bits of broken metal, was revenge. Then the massacres began, the cities and towns, whole populations slaughtered with no survivors. Not their fault; our fault. The selfish ambitions of one individual.’
‘Tazencius,’ Poldarn said. Cleapho laughed.
‘Not Tazencius, no,’ he said. ‘Oh, he was happy to take the idea, thought he’d stolen it, imagined he was being wonderfully clever – and so lucky, finding you like that, so that the plan could be put into effect. But he was simply being used, as you were; and as soon as he’d done what was required of him, he was lucky to escape with his life. Come on, Ciartan, you were a damn sight more perceptive than this when we were students together, or have all those bashes on the head jumbled your brains up? You know who I’m talking about.’
A moment of silence; moments in religion, when two absolutes connect. ‘Feron Amathy.’
‘Ah.’ At any other time, Cleapho’s condescending tone would’ve been unbearably offensive. ‘You got there in the end, that’s something. Exactly so: Feron Amathy, the worst man who ever lived. It was Feron Amathy who taught the savages to exterminate whole cities, who betrayed everyone who ever trusted him, who treats human beings as expendable tools. As far as he’s concerned, the Empire is a forest and he’s a charcoal burner, he’ll cut us all down and burn us just to make a few baskets of coals. Everything that’s wrong with the Empire is his fault. Who do you think tricked General Allectus into starting a hopeless rebellion, just so he could sell him to General Cronan?’ Cleapho paused, just for a moment, to catch his breath; Poldarn got the impression that the subject had almost run away with him, like a big dog on a long rope. ‘Then who gave the savages – his own allies – to Cronan so he could prise the Emperor loose from the throne and put Tazencius there, simply because Tazencius would be easier to replace directly, once he’d finished him off? Every betrayal, every deception – and what’s possibly the worst of all, the miserly parsimony, using the same people over and over again, twisting them backwards and forwards like you do when you’re breaking off a green twig. To be the most evil man in the world, it’s not enough just to do evil things; plenty of good men, saints, have done evil for the best possible motives, it’s the rule rather than the exception when it comes to evildoing. No, it takes someone like Feron Amathy to do the things he’s done in the way he’s done them. That’s what makes him such an abomination.’
Poldarn could hear the passion, the righte
ous fury in Cleapho’s voice: quite a spectacle. A shame it was here, in the wrong context. It was meant for a cathedral, and didn’t really fit comfortably in a small cart wedged between two stone walls in the rain. He’s no better than the rest of them, Poldarn thought, the only difference is in what they’ve actually done.
‘So that’s who you’re fighting,’ he said. ‘Feron Amathy.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, that’s fine, and I hope you nail the bastard. But you obviously don’t need me.’
Rather surprisingly, none of them said anything to that. The next words came from Gain Aciava, who clicked his tongue and said, ‘Screw it, we’re just going to have to dump the cart and walk to Dui Chirra.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Gain,’ Xipho said, automatic as a sword-monk’s draw.
‘What’s stupid about it? The bloody thing’s stuck solid – yes, all my fault, I thought I knew the way and I didn’t. But there’s no way we can get this stupid cart free on our own. We can walk, or two of us can ride the horses.’
‘I haven’t come all this way just to be fucked over by a muddy road and your stupidity.’ This time, Cleapho sounded quite different. ‘We haven’t got time to walk, we need to get there quickly, before that fool of an Earwig screws it all up.’
‘Fine,’ Gain snapped back. ‘You ride one horse; Xipho, I expect you’ll insist on having the other. Ciartan and I will just have to walk.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous—’ Was that doubt in Xipho’s voice, as though quite suddenly she wasn’t sure what to do next? ‘You can’t – not on your own.’
Can’t what? Poldarn wondered, though not for long. Can’t be trusted not to lose the prisoner. And he’d had to think before figuring that out. Maybe Cleapho had been right about the effects of concussion.
‘What’s more important?’ Gain was saying. ‘Which of us has got to get to Dui Chirra first? Cordo, obviously. And—?’
That, apparently, was a very good question, and neither Cleapho nor Xipho knew the answer. They weren’t taking it well, either; two people who couldn’t keep their balance without certainty. ‘This is ridiculous,’ Cleapho suddenly exploded. ‘You bloody fool, Gain, you and your idiotic short cuts—’
‘It wasn’t meant to be a short cut,’ Gain whined. ‘I only tried this way because the proper roads were blocked. You can’t blame me for the rain.’
‘Fine.’ Cleapho had made a decision. ‘We’ll walk. Just leave the cart, leave everything. Can either of you tell me how far it is, or do we just blunder about in the dark for a bit?’
It was all Poldarn could do not to laugh. And then he thought, now’s as good a time as any: in the dark and the mud, they’d never be able to find me, they don’t even know where they are. And staying with them – whoever heard of such a ludicrous idea?
Very well, then. Plan of action – nothing difficult there. One jump from the cart box to the top of the wall, one jump down, then run; no direction required, I’m not running to anyplace, just away. Easy as drawing a sword. It would mean he’d never find the moment to ask Copis about the kid, his son, whom he’d never seen. But there were so many things he’d never know about now, if he turned his back on them—
He jumped; felt the wall under his feet, kicked against it, relaxed his knees for the impact of landing (hoping very much that there weren’t nasty sharp rocks on the other side; there weren’t. Mud, yes; but a year in Tulice gives you a doctorate in mud studies.) He heard them shouting: Cleapho swearing, Xipho yelling at Gain, Gain yelling back. He grinned as he ran; those three had definitely known each other for a very long time. Too long, probably.
Poldarn ran, and he ran. No idea where he was going, not interested; when you’d got nowhere to go, you could go anywhere. Well, not Dui Chirra, for sure. But since that was where they’d been trying to get to, and it had defeated the combined intellect of three Deymeson graduates, one of them being the world’s most powerful man, quite clearly finding Dui Chirra was impossibly difficult, far beyond his concussion-inhibited abilities, and so there was precious little risk that he’d manage to do it. So that was all right.
Free again, he thought, as he paused for breath, leaning his back against a tree. This was your true wisdom: when in doubt or danger, run away. He grinned; an image had popped into his mind of the past as a big, shaggy dog, standing in the middle of this very wood, sniffing the air in bewilderment because the scent had suddenly failed. It nearly got me that time, and here’s the bite marks on my leg to prove it; but I escaped. Free again.
Just to be on the safe side, however, Poldarn kept on going till daybreak; not running, because running through a swamp-floored wood in the dark gives the best odds known to man for breaking a leg or spraining an ankle, and suddenly there’s all that wonderful new-found freedom gone up in smoke. A sensible brisk walk, avoiding all unnecessary risks, until dawn watered down the darkness like a dishonest barmaid, taking away his best protection and freedom. On the other hand, it had, miraculously, stopped raining.
In the back of his mind, that damned song was spinning slowly round, unbalanced, like a broken wheel—
Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree
Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree
Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree—
—And he couldn’t remember what came after that. He tried not to think about it, for fear it would drive him mad. Instead, he thought—
They can’t still be looking for me, they’ve got more important things to do; and even if they are, it’s a moving needle in a soggy haystack. Even so, it’d be wise to stay out of the light for a day or so. In which case: climb a tree.
The nice thing about dense forest was that there were so many trees to choose from, another beguiling variation on the currently fashionable theme of infinite choice, unfettered opportunity. In the end, Poldarn chose a massive forked oak that couldn’t have been easier to climb if it had been specially designed by Galand Dev and Spenno. About thirty feet off the ground, above the first layer of canopy, there was a delightful little platform where the main trunk divided four ways. He was able to lie back with his head pillowed on his hands and his feet crossed, and close his eyes for the best-earned snooze of a lifetime—
‘Comedy,’ said a voice next to him.
He opened his eyes. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Comedy,’ the crow repeated. ‘Both the low comedy of slapstick and farce – people running about and falling in the mud, the humiliation of dignity and pomposity in a situation intrinsically ludicrous, such as getting stuck in a tight place – and the high comedy of inversion, the world turned topsy-turvy; as in the man who sleeps by day instead of night, up in the air rather than down on the ground, who runs away from his friends to seek sanctuary with his enemy— Actually,’ the crow admitted, ‘that’s stretching it a little; you’re the deadly enemy of crowkind, but I’m the individual, not the group, and I don’t actually own the tree. Nevertheless, comedy. Also, add the god running away from the priests – that’s a good one.’
‘Very good,’ Poldarn said, yawning; it was broad daylight, and he had cramp in his back and neck. ‘I think I’ll wake up now.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ The crow pecked at a slight tangle in its wing feathers. ‘You aren’t asleep, this isn’t a dream. You never met a talking crow before?’
Poldarn drew up his knee and massaged it where it was stiff. ‘Not that I remember,’ he said. ‘Except in dreams. Or hallucinations,’ he added in fairness, ‘caused by injuries and trauma, like getting bashed on the head. Did I fall out of the tree or something?’
The crow turned its beak toward him. ‘Obviously not,’ it said, ‘since we’re thirty feet off the ground.’
‘In that case,’ Poldarn said, yawning again, ‘it’s a dream. Is there a point to it, or is it just mental indigestion?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the crow.
‘No reason why you should,’ Poldarn replied cheerfully. ‘Fact is, I get two kinds of dreams. One kind – well, it’s like a series of lect
ures in remedial memory, so I can catch up with the rest of the class.’ He paused. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that’s more comedy; because the only thing I’m afraid of right now is the rest of the class catching up with me. But they won’t, because they’re stuck in the mud, like you said. Good joke?’
‘Laboured,’ the crow replied. ‘Go on. The second type of dream.’
‘Oh, right. Yes, the second kind is where I’m lying in a river bed or some other place where there’s running water, and I hear the two parts of me arguing, like an old married couple: there’s the new me, who’s trying to run away, and the old me, who keeps on tracking me down. That’s about it.’
‘I see.’ The crow was silent for a long while, so long that Poldarn began to wonder if he’d just imagined that it had talked to him at all. Then it laughed.
‘Sorry,’ it added. ‘I was just thinking of the old song. You know:
Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree—’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘This is a tall thick tree,’ he said. ‘And there’s only one of you.’
‘No,’ the crow said, ‘two. But it’s not important. I suppose I’d better get to the point.’
‘Ah,’ Poldarn said. ‘So it is a dream, after all.’
The crow nodded. ‘Actually,’ it said, ‘you were closer when you described it as a lecture. It’s important, you see, to help you decide. Too many choices, and you won’t know what to do with yourself.’
‘I like having too many choices just fine,’ Poldarn muttered, but the crow wasn’t listening.