by K. J. Parker
He didn’t quite catch what the head porter called after him as he drove away.
The original plan had been to hang around Liancor for the rest of the day, drinking heavily and eventually winding up in a gutter somewhere, but he had the cart to think of; Falx Roisin would probably forgive him for losing another driver, but he seemed to treat the rolling stock as if they were his own children. He didn’t relish the prospect of going back the same way, probably passing the two dead bodies (he had a horrible vision of Eyvind jumping down on the cart from the branches of a low tree, missing his footing and getting crushed to death under the wheels), but he wasn’t in the mood for creative navigation. In a vague attempt to keep his mind off the things it wanted to be on, he tried singing, but he only knew one song –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 along comes the Dodger and he says, ‘That’s me.’
- and he didn’t like it much anyway. Nevertheless, he sang it; and after he’d droned through it a couple of times it occurred to him that before there’d only been one crow. He decided he didn’t really want to know where the other one had come from.
He spent the night beside the road, sitting with his legs spread out in front of him and his back against the front wheel, not sleeping. As soon as there was enough light to see by, he set off again, hoping to get across the river early. Fortunately as it turned out, he lost a cotter pin about an hour after sunrise and wasted a lot of time whittling a replacement out of green oak; it was just after midday when he approached the top of the heavily wooded scarp overlooking the Bohec valley, and heard the noise.
At the back of his mind he was surprised, disappointed even, that it didn’t jog his memory. Given what he’d pieced together about himself, particularly the most recent evidence, he’d have thought that the sound of a battle in full swing should have been specially evocative to him, possibly enough to crack open the seal. Instead he recognised it for what it was, not because it was familiar, but because there’s no other sound on earth like it.
He reined in the horses and sat still for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. Turning round and heading for Liancor as quickly as possible seemed to have a logic to it that was hard to fault. Apart from the matter of his own safety, he had a feeling that he really ought to let them know there was a war on the way. There again, however, his lack of background knowledge made him hesitate. It might well be their war, one they’d started against somebody or other, one that everybody else in the world knew about but him. There was also the possibility that the war was headed for Liancor with the intention of wiping it off the map, in which case being stuck inside the gates might not be a good idea. He could set off across country, maybe, but he had no idea what lay out of sight of the stretch of road he’d travelled along, and he was getting sick and tired of the unknown. That left the option of trying to get round the war somehow and returning to Sansory. Assuming Sansory was still there.
He pulled a face. He might not know what the best choice was, but it certainly wasn’t sitting still in the middle of the road a few hundred yards away from a battle. Back in one of the identical streets of Mael Bohec he’d seen a large, ugly statue of a chunky nude female, whose inscription told him that it had been set up to celebrate One Thousand Years Of Peace. What was it like in the empire, he thought, when it was officially at war?
He jumped down from the cart, left the road and picked his way between the trees and brambles, heading for the crest. There was little point even trying to be quiet, with the noise of the battle so close and insistent: shouting, banging, clattering, industrial noises of various kinds. When he’d reached the top of the rise, he poked his head up to see what he could see, and realised his view of the river and the battle was blocked by a clump of young, spindly pines. He found that frustrating (he was curious; he wanted to see what a battle looked like), so, having looked round carefully for any signs of an unfriendly presence in the immediate vicinity and found none, he lowered his head, ducked under a swathe of brambles and shoved and wriggled his way to the foot of a big, bent chestnut tree. As he’d hoped, climbing trees turned out to be one of his many talents; he shinned up the trunk without thinking about how he was doing it, reached the low branches with a certain amount of effort, and found that the middle branches formed a convenient natural ladder. As he hauled himself up to the point where he could see the valley, he dislodged a very big, squat crow – practically put his hand on the bird’s feet before he saw it – and nearly fell out of the tree in surprise as it shot out its wings, more than trebling its size, and flopped sullenly into the air, calling him names as it went.
Ah yes, he said to himself, grinning. That’ll be the other one.
Then he remembered what he’d come to see: the battle. Most of all, from this height and perspective, it looked untidy, as if a naughty child had deliberately scattered its toys right across the field as a protest against being sent to bed; the black, familiar shapes lying where they’d been dropped, the toy horses, carts, wagons left lying on their sides, knocked over and trodden on and broken by a spoiled child who didn’t value what it had been given. It was an affront to all his instincts of good behaviour, this wanton mess and the attitude it implied.
He didn’t know, of course, how long the battle had been going on for, but it wasn’t too hard to pick up the plot. The opposing sides had drawn up on either side of the river, held position long enough to plant a few flags and standards, and then, for some reason, the army nearest to him had charged down the slope and rushed the ford. They’d got a small part of their forces across by the time their enemy reached the river; but somehow or other the enemy had been able to stop them and retake the ford, cutting off the men who’d already crossed and surrounding them. That hadn’t happened all that long ago, to judge by the number who were still standing and the rate at which they were going down; meanwhile, the army on his side of the river was trying rather too hard to retake the ford and rescue them, pouring men into a space where large numbers wouldn’t fit, with the result that about a quarter of the men trying to push through were getting shoved out of the way and into the deep water, where the current was doing a reasonable job of flushing them away. The men defending the ford, however, didn’t seem to have appreciated the strength of their position; instead of holding still and letting the enemy make trouble for themselves, they were trying to push forward and get ashore on the other side – where, surely, they’d be running the risk of repeating the enemy’s mistake. In any event, the battle had lost whatever subtlety and tactical interest it might once have had, and had turned into a nasty, disorganised shoving-match, a confluence of two mistakes. Even from a distance Poldarn could see that the men involved were squashed far too close together to be able to fight. Instead they’d become soft weapons for the men behind them to barge and thrust at the enemy with, a blunt and fragile pike-hedge and shield-wall that reminded Poldarn rather too vividly of the fight between the decrepit old men he’d seen when he first arrived in Sansory. The worst part of it, perhaps, was the fact that the two sides seemed so evenly matched in numbers that he couldn’t see how there could be an outcome before both had been decimated; while they were so completely engaged with each other, jammed together like the two carts in Falx Roisin’s gate, even if they both agreed to stop fighting immediately it’d take hours of joint effort and a lot of imaginative thinking to get them apart again.
If he’d been hoping that watching a battle might let slip some of his own memories, such as another battle in a river between exactly matched forces, he was disappointed, and the very act of watching like this, when he was nothing to do with either side, struck him as morbid and distasteful, as if he’d climbed up on a roof and poked a hole through the thatch to watch two extremely ugly people making love. It was also, after a while, boring; nothing very much was happening, apart from the stalemate in the ford, and he was starting to feel cramp
ed and uncomfortable on his tree branch. The hell with it, he thought; I’ve had enough of this, I think I’ll leave now.
He gave that some thought. Getting across the river was clearly impossible here. He could try going up- or downstream for a mile or so and looking for somewhere to cross, but downstream he stood a fair chance of running into men who’d been swept away by the river and survived, whereas upstream there was a risk of stumbling into a cavalry squadron sent to outflank the main battle, assuming either party had the brains to think of such a move. Going back to Liancor, on the other hand, looked much more promising. If he was reading this battle correctly, by the time it was over neither side would be in any fit state to sweep down on Liancor and lay it waste, even if that was the intention. The worst that could happen, as far as he was concerned, would be for the army on his side of the river suddenly to break off and pull back, retreating up the road in panic. That didn’t seem likely, though, unless something extremely melodramatic and improbable happened, such as divine intervention.
He was two-thirds of the way down the tree, at a point where he was having to wrap his arms round the trunk and sidle down inch by inch towards the next convenient foothold, when he heard shouts and crashing noises disconcertingly close by. There was, of course, no way he could turn round to see what was going on. Unless whoever was making all the noise and fuss was blind, however, it was a cinch that they could see him. At the very least, it was embarrassing.
Or maybe they weren’t looking, having other things on their minds. As he reached the foothold, someone screamed and then stopped screaming very abruptly. Then there was a quite distinctive sucking noise, which he couldn’t remember having heard before, but guessed was the sound of a long, thin, probably fluted blade being pulled out of flesh. It was at that point that he was stable enough to turn round.
He saw a dozen or so men on foot in a circle around a single horseman; they had short-shafted halberds in their hands and were closing slowly, with the air of skilled trades-men not about to ruin an important job by rushing it. There was a riderless horse a few yards away, standing calm and patient over a slumped body. The horseman in the middle of the ring was flailing at arm’s length with a sword – one of the famous backsabres, to be precise; it was too heavy for him to use one-handed, and his swishes were uncontrolled and weak but still well worth staying clear of in the absence of any pressing reason to get close. The horseman was wearing a velvety red surcoat over some expensive-looking scale armour and a high conical helmet with a noseguard that obscured his face, but the odds were definitely against him and in favour of the halberdiers, who were also colourfully and incongruously dressed in the sort of fabric Poldarn associated with the higher class of textile stalls in the Undergate in Sansory.
Then one of the halberdiers happened to look up and see him as he reached with his toe for the next foothold. He could see the man’s face, not that it was anything remarkable, and the man could see his.
‘Bloody hell,’ the man said, and stepped backwards out of the circle. Not again, Poldarn thought; the man was staring at him, as he swung the halberd single-handed overarm and back, getting ready to throw it javelin fashion. The horseman stopped thrashing about; just for a moment, nobody was paying him any attention.
‘It can’t be,’ one of the halberdiers said, as the halberd left the first man’s hand and sailed slowly, spinning, through the air. ‘He’s dead.’ Very nearly true; Poldarn was so mesmerised, so thoroughly sick of the same thing happening, over and over again, that he left ducking to the last moment and was nearly pinned to the tree by his neck. As it was his left foot slipped off the branch and there was an awkward moment when he almost lost his balance. As he was wavering, scrabbling at the bark with the fingernails of his right hand for a grip to steady himself by, he heard someone else shout, ‘You three, get after him, we’ll deal with—’ He didn’t hear the rest; it was drowned out by the sound of splintering wood as the branch he was standing on gave way.
Hell of a time to fall out of a tree, so it was just as well he had sharp reflexes and was able to get a hand round a branch on the way down. He wasn’t able to hang on long enough to pull himself back up, but at least he managed to make a controlled landing, with only about four feet to drop before his feet touched down. He stumbled immediately – he’d landed on a tree root, which did something painful to his ankle – but managed to shift his weight on to his back foot in time to swing round and face the closest halberdier in some semblance of good order.
Luckily the first man to reach him was the one who’d just thrown away his halberd; he also had a sword, but only a rather vague idea of what to do with it, and in the end he proved more of a help than a threat, since he fell straight backwards as soon as Poldarn made his draw, and the man behind him had to sidestep in order to get out of the way. Unluckily for him, this manoeuvre opened up his left side, giving Poldarn a brief but clear opportunity for a second-rib-level thrust that he didn’t neglect. Number Two dropped unhelpfully to his knees, but the speed with which his two colleagues had been killed clearly stunned the third man to such an extent that he stopped dead in his tracks, thereby losing the initiative. Poldarn feinted at him low and left, then, as the halberdier executed a slow and clumsy block, he stepped neatly past him, kicking in the back of his right knee as he went, and sprinted for the spare horse, which was waiting obligingly for him with a vacant expression on its face.
The horseman who’d been the centre of attention a few moments ago must’ve had enough intelligence to know a good thing when he saw it, because as soon as Poldarn’s foot touched the stirrup the ring of halberdiers appeared to collapse in on itself, and he caught a brief glimpse of another horse moving off in the opposite direction just as he’d got control of the reins. He didn’t have time to see what happened to the other rider (a halberdier materialised suddenly on his left and had to be kicked hard in the face before he’d go away), but when he looked round again the man was nowhere to be seen.
I know him, Poldarn thought. Tazencius?
Poldarn’s own situation was far from ideal, as the only way he could get clear of the soldiers was to ride down the road towards the battle. But it wasn’t as if he had a choice (just this once, a choice would’ve been welcome), so he kicked the horse smartly on and ducked low on to its mane to avoid an overhanging branch. He was congratulating himself on having strolled unscathed out of yet another desperate encounter when two men jumped up at him out of a clump of brambles, waving their arms. The horse shied and reared, and the last thing he remembered seeing was a blurred snap of a dead and rotten tree branch growing larger in front of his eyes at an alarmingly high rate.
Chapter Fifteen
‘I thought I’d told you to go away.’ Poldarn opened his eyes, and saw half his face reflected in water. It was a familiar image, though not a reassuring one. He closed his eyes again, and immediately he realised his mistake; he wasn’t the body slumped in the water at the river’s edge, he was (of course) the ragged black crow circling overhead, looking warily at that same body and speculating as to whether it was safe or not (you couldn’t be too careful, especially with humans; each of them a nasty little mind of its own, and all of them treacherous).
He listened to what the human was saying, though it took him a moment to figure out who it was talking to, since there was no other living human nearby. Apparently, though, it was talking to its own reflection in the water. He thought about that, and laughed. He (the greater He) had seen literally millions of humans over the years, and nothing they did surprised him any more.
‘For God’s sake stop following me,’ the human said to its image in the water. ‘I thought I made it perfectly clear, so even you could understand. I want nothing more to do with you.’
‘Sure,’ replied the image ironically. ‘Sure you don’t; at least, not till something happens; someone pulls a sword on you, or you run in with some soldiers. Then it’s a different story altogether, of course. You expect me to drop everything and come
running and save you, like the big, strong, brave hero I am. You know what? You want to make your mind up sometime. ’
‘I already did,’ said the human angrily. ‘And what the hell makes you think I wanted you to come barging in like that, killing people, making everything horrible?’
‘Oh, right. Now you’re going to say you were managing perfectly well without me.’
‘I was.’
The reflection laughed. ‘Like hell you were. I can’t leave you alone for two minutes and you’re in trouble again.’
‘That’s a lie,’ yelled the human. ‘Any trouble I get into, it’s always you that causes it.’
‘You want to think that, be my guest.’ The reflection was calm and still, maddeningly so. ‘I’d just like to see how you’d make out if I really wasn’t there when you need me. Which is pretty much all the time. You want to try that? Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t believe you. Fortunately I know you better than you do. I’ve accepted responsibility for you and I’m going to see you right. Whether you want me to or not.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘That’s really sweet of you. And typical. Oh, and while I think of it, what’s all this about you seeing other people while I’m not there?’
‘So what if I am? Absolutely nothing to do with you. And besides, they’re family. People I share in. Part of me. Which is a damn sight more than you are, now.’
‘You think. We’ll see. We’ll see if they’ll come and dig you out of the next mess you get yourself in. But,’ the reflection went on, ‘you needn’t worry, I don’t mean that. Like I said, I’m responsible for you. I happen to take these things seriously – you know, vows, obligations. And I gave up expecting gratitude long ago.’
‘Gratitude!’
‘Yes, gratitude. Like, remembering me when I’ve gone. Staying awake. Of course, I know you still care about me.’