by K. J. Parker
She moved the cart on; a steady walk, no point in forcing the pace. As they watched, the flash turned into three riders, and when they were close enough, he saw that they were nothing like any of the soldiers he’d seen so far; they wore round, broad-brimmed steel helmets and no armour, and each one had a bow and quiver on his back and a curved sword at his side. They were riding fast, as if they were in a hurry to catch up with something.
‘I think I made the wrong decision,’ said Copis. ‘I’ve seen an awful lot of soldiers over the years, but never any like them.’
‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘I can still run for it if you like.’
‘No point,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope they’re nothing to do with you. I hate hoping,’ she added. ‘It’s like rubbing dock leaves on a nettle sting. They tell you it helps, but does it hell as like.’
The riders came up to them very quickly. One passed them and blocked the way, while the others closed in on either side.
‘You in the cart,’ said the man in front.
‘Me?’ he called out, rather pointlessly, since the rider was staring at him.
‘Stay where you are. Don’t move.’
Copis looked at him. ‘You can understand what they’re saying?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t.’
The two riders in flank held their position while the third man slid off his horse and walked up to the cart. ‘You,’ he said, ‘take your hat off. I want to see your face.’
‘All right,’ he replied.
The man looked at him and nodded. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘You know who I am, then?’
‘Oh yes,’ the rider replied. ‘I know exactly who you are.’
‘Then would you mind—?’
The rider reached up and grabbed his arm, pulling him on to his feet. With his other hand, he was drawing his sword. ‘Shut up,’ he said, and pulled again. Then Copis kicked him in the face.
It wasn’t a very hard kick, or particularly well aimed, but it was enough to make the rider lose interest for a moment. ‘Go on, run,’ she hissed, and it struck him that it would be rude not to do what she told him to, though he wished she hadn’t got involved. But there it was; he jumped down off the cart and made a quick mental estimate of how far away the rider’s horse was and how long it’d take him to get to it. Too long. Meanwhile the rider was ignoring Copis and drawing his sword, so he jumped on to the boom, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him down. The rider landed awkwardly on his back, giving him enough time to jump off the boom and kick him hard on the chin; then he stooped down and grabbed the sword. It seemed to fit his hands, almost as if it was a part of him that he’d had amputated years ago and which had suddenly grown back. That was just as well, because as the left-side rider rode up and slashed at him he was able to parry the cut squarely and in good time, opening the rider up for a thrust under the armpit. The moves came easily, faster than he could think. Probably, he reflected as the man slipped out of the saddle and hit the ground, I’ve done this before.
The other rider was wrong-sided, of course; he’d either have to turn and go round the back of the cart, or go all the way round the front of the horses. That helped. He watched as the rider hesitated, then came forward, presumably anxious to get to him before he could mount up on either of the spare horses. He waited till the other man was level with him, then hopped back on to the boom and made a dive under his horse’s legs.
The rider wasn’t expecting that. He swished airily with his sword but was far too late to connect with anything, then craned his neck to see if he could find out what his opponent was up to. He didn’t have to wait long to find out; a moment later his horse squealed with pain and started bucking furiously, throwing him. When he hit the ground his eyes closed reflexively for a second; when he opened them again, he saw his enemy scrambling out of the way of the horse – he’d slashed its belly open – and heading for him. He made it to his feet just in time to get in the way of a slanting cut that sliced into him at the junction of neck and shoulder and went on to bite into his spine.
The third rider was on his feet, looking around desperately for some kind of weapon. He made the wrong choice; the left-side rider’s body was too far away and his enemy came back over the boom at him and cut him down before he had a chance.
‘My God,’ Copis said. Presumably she didn’t intend it as a pun. Her face was as white as milk and she was shaking. He crossed back over the boom one last time, to grab hold of the maimed horse’s head and cut its throat.
‘It was them or us,’ he said, and noticed with interest that his voice was level, calm. ‘As soon as you kicked the first one the only way out for us was to kill them all. You don’t offer force to soldiers and get away with it.’
She took a couple of deep breaths, probably fighting back the urge to throw up. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘you’re right. How did you know that?’
‘I just do,’ he replied. ‘My guess is this isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with a situation like this.’ He looked down at his hands and arms, which were splattered with blood; it reminded him of how they’d looked earlier that day, when he’d been flecked with spray from the waterfall. ‘Actually, it was all fairly easy,’ he added. ‘I knew what to do, didn’t have to stop and think – probably that was the difference between them and me. I’m sorry,’ he added.
‘Are you? Why?’
‘Well . . .’ He waved a hand at the dead bodies. ‘Not a pretty sight,’ he said.
She shuddered. ‘Seen worse,’ she said. ‘Tell me, what would you have done if I hadn’t kicked that man?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I was more interested in the fact that he seemed to know who I was.’
‘He was going to kill you, right there on the spot.’
‘Small price to pay for knowledge.’
She muttered something under her breath, ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ or words to that effect. He was kneeling beside the man he’d spoken to. ‘You really didn’t understand what he was saying?’
‘No, and I speak seven languages.’
‘Good God. How many languages are there?’
‘Lots,’ she replied. ‘What are you looking for?’
He looked up at her. ‘Money,’ he said. ‘Also anything of value that we can sell, so long as it’s not the sort of thing that’ll get us into trouble.’
‘Another instinct?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Apparently I’m one of nature’s scavengers. ’
As it turned out, none of the dead men had anything of any real value on them, apart from their clothes and weapons, which they obviously daren’t take. But each of them had half a loaf and a two-fist-sized slab of hard white cheese in his saddlebag, and one of them also had a thick slice of rather elderly bacon and three apples.
‘Worth more to us than money,’ he said.
‘Matter of opinion,’ she replied.
There was a boggy patch a couple of hundred yards away. He carried the bodies over there, one at a time, and slid them into a still, black pool, which was just about deep enough to cover them. The dead horse was too much trouble to hide or bury, but he stripped the harness and tack off the other two and dumped them, before chasing the horses off. ‘Not worth the risk,’ he explained, when Copis protested. ‘For all I know, there’s ways of telling a cavalry horse: regulation shoes, that sort of thing. All right, let’s get out of here.’ He was painfully aware of the bloodstains on his clothes, but he couldn’t quite face the thought of crawling back into his own, still completely sodden garments (and besides, he didn’t want to be wearing the clothes he’d woken up in the next time they met somebody . . .).
They drove on in silence for the next hour. Then Copis said, ‘Well, at least somebody must know who you are. Pity they weren’t more friendly.’
‘I was thinking that,’ he replied. His arms and back were starting to stiffen up after their bout of brief but violent exercise. ‘At last I meet somebody who can tell me the one thin
g I want to know above everything else, and a few moments later I’ve killed them.’ He frowned. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘it’d probably be best if I left you soon. If there’s a welcome like that waiting for us in this town of yours, we might not get out of it so easily.’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be a bastard,’ she replied. ‘You think I’m going to let you run out on me after putting me through all that? In your dreams.’
That struck him as a strange attitude, but he was still trying to figure out why she’d forced the issue earlier by kicking the rider. He could think of at least three explanations, but none of them felt right. ‘If that’s the way you feel about it,’ he said. ‘But at the very least, as soon as we come in sight of the place, you go on ahead. I’ll follow up on foot and meet up with you there.’
‘Not a chance,’ she replied firmly. ‘You’re the god in the cart, remember? It’s got to be done properly, or else we’ll really be in trouble.’
Well, that fitted in with explanation number two, but he still wasn’t convinced. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I still figure it’s a bloody stupid risk to take.’
‘So’s being born,’ she replied, as if that was any kind of an argument.
Later, she told him about the god act.
‘Your name’s Poldarn,’ she said. ‘At least, that’s the name we’ve been using, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t stick with it.’
‘Poldarn,’ he repeated, ‘No, doesn’t mean anything to me.’
She laughed. ‘I’d be absolutely amazed if it did,’ she replied. ‘You see, the god these people believe in hasn’t got a name, it’s forbidden or some such crap, at least until the second coming. So we had to make one up. At least, I didn’t make it up exactly, it’s a real name.’
‘A real god’s name?’
‘There aren’t any real gods, silly. No, it’s something I remembered from when I was a kid, actually. The alley we lived in, there was a builder’s yard, and they had stacks and stacks of roof tiles, all piled up as high as a haystack, and my brother and I used to play in there sometimes. Strictly against the rules, of course – I can see why, thinking back, because those stacks weren’t meant for clambering about all over, and if one of ’em had collapsed we’d have been squashed like bugs. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘we used to play hide and seek, and I have this crystal-clear picture of myself hiding among these stacks, tucked away in a little child-sized hole only I knew about, and lying there for what seemed like hours at a time while my brother looked for me, and all that time I was reading the maker’s name stamped on the tiles, over and over again: Poldarn House Torcea, Poldarn House Torcea, in exactly the same place on thousands upon thousands of tiles. Of course, I hadn’t got a clue about how they made the things, I thought it was a little man with a chisel or something, and it beat me how on earth he was able to get it so exactly precise every single time . . . Anyhow,’ she said, frowning, ‘that’s why I had this name Poldarn floating around in my head, and that’s what we called the god. So now you’re Poldarn.’
‘Right,’ he replied. ‘Named in honour of a brick. Why not, after all?’
‘You don’t like it.’
‘I think it’s a wonderful name,’ he said irritably. ‘Or at least, it has a hell of a lot going for it as against nothing at all.’
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘That’s settled, then. Now, the way we do the show is like this . . .’
The first thing they saw was the remains of a charcoal burners’ camp, stranded in the middle of a broad, flat plain covered with tree stumps.
‘I think they used to use up something like four square miles of forest a year,’ Copis said. ‘At least, that’s what I heard once. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so bleak and boring in these parts. There’s old iron mines scattered about all through here, from the Mahec down to Sansory – nearly all worked out, of course – and they used charcoal to smelt the ore, or whatever the technical terms are. A hundred and fifty years ago, all this lot was forest.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Oh, it’s worse the other side of the Bohec. They cleared that about, what, seventy years ago, and it’s incredible in some places. Where they cut the trees and left the top branches, it’s all grown over with briars and weeds and stuff, all tangled up like a thorn hedge a mile thick. From time to time there’s big fires, in the dry season. Nothing else could ever clear it.’
He thought about that as he stared at the fire pits and slagheaps, submerged under thick mats of nettles and docks, and the countless lopped trunks, like the dead bodies after a battle. ‘What did they need all that iron for?’ he asked.
‘There was an imperial armoury at Weal Bohec,’ Copis replied. ‘It supplied all the soldiers in the province. The foundry there turned out something like a thousand tons of iron a year. Don’t ask me how I know all this,’ she added. ‘Useless information just gets stuck in my head, like flies in a spider’s web.’
‘Lucky you.’
She laughed. ‘Yes, well,’ she said. ‘Probably it was one of the customers told me, when I worked in the cat-house in Josequin. My God, didn’t some of them love the sound of their own voices . . . ? Worst part of the job, really, and that’s saying something.’
She hadn’t mentioned that before, not that it mattered. It was an interesting thought that this desert of couch grass and bog had once been a great forest. Interesting that even the landscape could lose its memory so completely, could go from being so full to so empty. For some reason, he almost found it comforting.
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the town’s just ahead, is it?’
‘Should be,’ she replied. ‘Pretty soon we’ll start seeing the smoke.’
‘Smoke?’
‘There’s still a foundry there,’ Copis explained. ‘Only reason for having a town out in the middle of all this. I think they make a living from scavenging bits of stuff from the old worked-out mines, bits the original miners missed or couldn’t be bothered to go after. They burn peat now, since they can’t use charcoal.’
That was an interesting thought, too; having used up everything that grew in it, they were using up the ground itself. It hadn’t occurred to him that iron was so destructive.
The further they went, the drearier the landscape became. Here and there he saw big briar tangles, which he took to be overgrown loppings, such as Copis had described earlier, and a fair sprinkling of derelict buildings – sheds and stores, built low out of rough-cut stone blocks, with broken-backed slate roofs drowning in creepers and nettles. A very predatory kind of place, he decided, where the people ate up the ground and the ground swallowed up the buildings, killers and carrion-feeders, making up a cycle.
‘I hope the town’s a bit more cheerful than this,’ he said. ‘It’d depress me, living somewhere like this.’
‘For all you know,’ she replied, ‘this is home.’
‘Now there’s a charming thought.’
He kept looking for smoke, but there wasn’t any, just the usual low cloud (or mist, or possibly heat-haze) that blurred the distinction between ground and sky. Copis, who’d been assuring him that any moment now they’d encounter the first outlying farms and workshops, stopped talking entirely; she was staring at the skyline like a bird, scanning from a great height. There were more buildings now, but still all derelict, the skeletons of houses and barns. There were dry-stone walls, so overgrown with grass and weeds that they looked like banks; a few boundary stones, sticking up like the remaining teeth in an old man’s mouth; details like a stone watering-trough split by the frost, a deer hunter’s high seat fallen on its side and sinking among the nettles, a millstream clogged with weeds, a dovecote bald of thatch and leaning at an angle on its post.
‘Actually,’ Copis said, in an unusually subdued tone of voice, ‘you get this sort of thing all over the place. It’s where a whole village gets called up for military service; they’re marched off to the wars somewhere and they don’t come back. Either the government resettles the fami
lies somewhere else – that’s what they’re supposed to do, at any rate – or the people who were left behind just go away, to a town or wherever. All these little wars they keep having use up a lot of manpower.’
They stumbled on the town quite unexpectedly, just as it was starting to get dark; what was left of the ruined walls had grown over so quickly that at first they mistook them for more briar clumps, and it was only when they began noticing angles of brick and stone peeping out from under the weeds, like the edge of the bone in a bad fracture, that they realised what they were looking at. It had happened within, say, the last ten years. Long enough for several seasons of rain to have washed most of the soot off the ruined walls, for the scattered timbers to have been bleached grey or green under a thin slime of lichen, for the crows to have pecked the skulls and bones as clean as a good child’s plate. Here and there the remains of a door still hung off its hinges, a few rafters framed the sky over a gutted house, a few paving stones peeped out from under the grass; a few moments of the old normality, incongruous among the new growth. They were looking at the final stages of the change from scab to scar; another year or so and there would be nothing here but a healed-over ruin, its sharp edges all rounded off by rain, wind and growth, its bones covered with new green flesh. The turf and ground and stones would lose their memory and begin all over again.
‘Oh,’ Copis said.
She didn’t say anything else for a long time. Instead the cart rumbled sedately down what used to be the main street, now a pattern in the grass, and if from time to time something brittle crunched under the heavy wheels, it could just as easily have been something innocuous, like a potsherd.
‘All right,’ Copis said, ‘we’ll just have to press on to Josequin, assuming it’s still there, of course. We’ll have to work some of the poxy little villages south of the city. They’re a miserable lot, but better than nothing.’
He’d been looking around, taking note, like an observer from a neutral country. ‘Who do you think did this?’ he asked. ‘The pirates?’