by K. J. Parker
Poldarn frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I did. But it was just an empty valley. There was a farm, but a long way away, and the lie of the ground meant the fire-stream wouldn’t go anywhere near it. There was a small, deep combe; I figured it’d flow into that, and no harm done. It wasn’t even grazing land, just a bit of scrubby old woodland.’
Eyvind’s face grew very tight, as if something was hurting him. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Just a bit of scrubby old woodland, so you decided – like a god or something, only gods are supposed to know things – you decided that the little combe didn’t matter, you could just take it out, blot it out and there’d be no harm done. Is that what you thought?’
‘Yes,’ Poldarn said.
Eyvind took a moment before he replied. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Do you happen to know who that little combe belongs to?’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘No idea,’ he replied.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘I believe you. Well, you may be interested to know, it belongs to me. Not the farm; that belongs to my uncle. Just the wood. It was my wood. Do you understand what that means?’
Poldarn lifted his head and said nothing.
‘I think you do,’ Eyvind went on. ‘I think you must understand; because this house we’re in now, which I helped you build, this is your wood. Your grandfather planted it the day you were born, it was always here for you, for when it was time for you to build your house. It was your future. And that other one, that scrubby little bit of woodland, that was my wood. My future. And you destroyed it. Burned, flattened, filled in with rock so you can only tell where it used to be by seeing where the grass ends and the rock starts. Do you understand me?’
Poldarn didn’t say anything.
‘You took my house,’ Eyvind shouted, suddenly ablaze with anger. ‘You pointed your bloody fire at it and let it roll down the mountain right onto it, like it couldn’t possibly matter, like nobody else could possibly matter. Because of you, I won’t have a house of my own when my uncle dies, I’ll never get to live in my own house. Killing me would’ve been so much kinder. You should’ve done it, that day when I tried to ambush your cart; then I wouldn’t have brought you back here, and this would never have happened – my house, the mountain, everything. You know what? If you hadn’t come back, I don’t think the mountain would’ve burst, it never did anything like that until you came here, not in hundreds of years. You come here, ordering people about, closing your mind so we can’t see, beating me up at your own wedding, and you take away my future. It’s my fault for bringing you here, but it’s your fault too. I ought to kill you right now.’
Poldarn relaxed a little, because the way Eyvind had said it made it clear that he wasn’t prepared to do it. ‘I’m sorry,’ Poldarn said, ‘it wasn’t done on purpose. I was saving my house, it didn’t occur to me that something like that would happen. I don’t understand all your ways here, or I’d have known better.’
The anger in Eyvind’s face swelled and halted, as the fire-stream had done when Poldarn had tapped it. ‘I realise that,’ he said, ‘otherwise I’d have killed you and your people too. Obviously you didn’t know, or you couldn’t have done it. At least,’ he added, ‘a normal person couldn’t have done it, not one of us. You I don’t know about, maybe you’d be capable of something like that even if you did know, but I suppose I’ve got to give you the benefit of the doubt. We don’t do things like that here, you see, we don’t kill each other or beat each other up or order each other about. We couldn’t, even if we wanted to. Maybe an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong anywhere and just wanders about, like your friend Boarci, but not a normal person. We simply couldn’t – our minds wouldn’t let us.’
It occurred to Poldarn, in the abstract, that that was curious but probably true. Maybe it explained why they were so ruthless and brutal when they went raiding across the sea, because there was no outlet at home for all the violence and evil inside them, inside everybody. He could see where that made sense, if it was true.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘So what are you going to do?’
Eyvind straightened up and looked away. ‘Quite simple,’ he said. ‘You took away my house, so I’m going to take yours. I’ll have this house, my uncle will have Haldersness, and you can have our place. That’s fair, isn’t it? I’m not stealing anything, it’s a straightforward exchange. The only thing is, you don’t have a choice, because you didn’t give me one.’
It seemed like a ridiculous anticlimax, after the fear and the shock; a simple property transaction, an exchange of freeholds, no big deal at all somewhere else, where people chose where they lived and didn’t automatically know every morning what they were going to do that day. ‘I agree,’ Poldarn said. ‘It seems entirely fair. If only you’d come to me and suggested it—’
He’d said the wrong thing, of course; he knew it wasn’t a sensible thing to say before the words were out of his mouth. For a moment, he thought Eyvind might be angry enough to attack him, but apparently not.
‘Sure,’ Eyvind said. ‘We could’ve sat outside on the porch and talked it over, maybe haggled a little bit until we were both of the same mind, and then we’d have shaken hands on the trade and it’d all have been very pleasant and satisfactory, and you wouldn’t have been punished. You’d have stood up in the hall that evening and told everybody what you’d agreed, and they’d never have known that you’d done anything wrong, burnt down my house, ruined my life. Well, that won’t do, because everybody’s got to know what you did, they’ve got to understand that you don’t have any say in the matter, just for once you’re the one who’s being told what to do. I mean, you’re quick enough to give orders, which is a shameful and disgusting way to behave towards your own people, so it’s only fair you should be made to take orders. So this is what I decided to do, it was this or kill all your people, the ones I’ve got penned up back in my uncle’s barn – your wife, people like that. Or had you forgotten about them? You and your memory.’
Eyvind was right; Poldarn had forgotten, or it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder how Eyvind knew what he’d done. For the first time, he was genuinely frightened.
‘You wouldn’t have done that,’ Poldarn said.
Eyvind scowled angrily. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘Not unless you refused to obey me, and you slipped past me and tried to make a fight of it. I’m insulted that you should think I could. This is the right way to do it, because now all your people can see me humiliating you, they can see you having to do as you’re told, and how many of them do you think will stay with you after that? Well,’ he added, spinning round to face the Ciartanstead household, ‘what do you say about that? It goes without saying, any of you who want to stay here with me or go back to Haldersness, you’re more than welcome. I know what I’d do.’
Nobody said anything; but it was one of those times when words weren’t needed. Poldarn could see there and then who was going to stay and who’d be going with him, and there’d be precious few of the latter. In a way it was reassuring; because up till then, it had all struck him as too lenient, nothing that’d constitute the punishment Eyvind seemed set on inflicting on him, and so he’d been wondering what else Eyvind might have in mind that he hadn’t seen fit to mention. But taking his people from him, he could see how that would be a fitting punishment as far as these people (his people) were concerned. Of course, Eyvind couldn’t possibly hope to understand how Poldarn felt about the people of his household: that they bewildered him, made him feel uncomfortable, helpless and alone in a crowd of unfathomable strangers. It was almost funny.
Poldarn wondered if there was anything he could say to expedite such a mutually agreeable settlement; but anything he did say would most likely prove to be counter-productive. As for the house; well, it was a nice enough house, but it would never be home, he’d never think of it as his, and the people who lived there would only ever be strangers who stared at him when he asked them perfectly reasonable questions, and wouldn
’t let him do anything. What he wanted most of all, he realised, was to be on his own again – well, to be with Elja, because she was different, she was his, and maybe his friend Boarci, who everybody else seemed to dislike so much for no apparent reason. Curious, that his idea of a happy life should be everybody else’s notion of extreme punishment. It didn’t seem right, somehow.
‘Anyway,’ Eyvind said, with an effort, ‘that’s how it’s going to be. You can take a change of clothes but that’s all, and if you ever come anywhere on this farm again, I’ll kill you on sight, without saying a word. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Poldarn said. ‘I understand.’
‘Good.’ Eyvind breathed out; his whole body seemed to relax, shrink a little. Clearly he felt let down, frustrated, presumably because Poldarn didn’t seem to be suffering at all, in spite of the fact that Eyvind had done everything he could do against him. That must be terrible, Poldarn thought, to do your very best to hurt your worst enemy, and see no sign of pain. It just goes to show, he told himself, I’ve got nothing at all in common with these people, after all. They can’t even understand me enough to hurt me. That was disturbing too, in a way.
The departure from Ciartanstead was a comedy from start to finish. The spare cart had, of course, gone east with Hart the provider of salt beef, and the best cart turned out to have a bent rear axle, the result of a hidden pothole in the cart track down to Haldersness. Asburn (who was going with Poldarn) resolutely declined to straighten it, on the grounds that he didn’t work for people who broke into other people’s houses and threatened them with violence. That was all very well, but the alternative was a long and miserable walk, so Poldarn volunteered to do the job. But Eyvind wouldn’t let him, since blacksmithing was an honourable trade reserved for heads of households, and Poldarn no longer qualified. Someone suggested that in that case Eyvind had better do the work himself, since he was now the lord of Haldersness and Ciartanstead. Eyvind pointed out that he, being a younger son of the brother of the head of his house, who only stood to inherit because his cousin and elder brother had been killed in the last raid, had never learned the craft, and didn’t know spit about hot metal. That left the trap, which would carry two people in comfort, three in discomfort and four in acute pain. Eyvind, who was rapidly losing patience with the whole business, declared that Poldarn and his party could take the trap, or they could walk, it was up to them. Someone else proposed a compromise: since there’d be no luggage to speak of, two (or three) of Poldarn’s group could go in the trap, and the rest could ride. Eyvind objected most strongly to that, since his ideas of abject humiliation didn’t include the loan of valuable riding horses. Someone else put forward the proposal that Poldarn’s party (excluding the two, or three, who could fit in the trap) should be loaned something to ride on, but only something humiliating, such as donkeys or mules. That would be difficult, someone else said, because there weren’t any at Ciartanstead; on the other hand, there were three elderly ploughhorses. After a mild tantrum, Eyvind agreed to that, but insisted that the horses would have to be returned. Poldarn replied that that would be fine by him, since he knew the three animals in question, they were no good for work any more and he’d be only too pleased not to be lumbered with them. That sent Eyvind into another rage, at the end of which he withdrew the offer of the trap; Poldarn and anybody misguided enough to go with him would have to walk, and that was his last word on the subject. At this point, the men assigned to escort duty objected that they were damned if they were going to walk all the way round the mountain just to satisfy Eyvind’s lust for vengeance; and even if Eyvind issued them with horses, it’d still be a waste of time and a pain in the backside, since they’d have to ride at foot-walking pace, and the trip would take twice as long. They had other work they ought to be getting on with, they said, work that was rather more important than Eyvind’s grand revenge.
By this point, Eyvind was close to tears from sheer frustration. He calmed himself down with an obvious effort, and called on Asburn to be reasonable; if only he’d agree to fix the bent axle, he and Poldarn and the rest of them could ride in comfort and reach their new home in half the time. Asburn relented and said he’d straighten the axle (under protest) provided he could take the best of his tools – his favourite hammers, tongs, swages, hardies and setts, and the smaller of his two anvils – with him. Eyvind refused outright. In that case, Asburn said, Eyvind could fix the damned axle himself. Once again, Poldarn offered his services, and was promptly told to shut up.
Then someone said that he’d just nipped out and taken a look at the axle, and in his opinion it didn’t actually need straightening, at that. Eyvind said that, in that case, it might be a good idea to get the cart out and loaded straight away, before he did anything he’d regret later. They got the cart out of the shed, yoked up a couple of horses and brought it up towards the house. It hadn’t gone ten yards when the rear axle snapped in half, like a carrot.
Asburn said that he thought there might be a spare axle down at the Haldersness forge. Almost certainly it’d be too long, but it wouldn’t be too much of a job to cut it down; if it was too thick, however, it’d have to be heated up and swaged to the right diameter, assuming he had a swage the right size. If he didn’t he could make one, but that’d be half a day’s work. Alternatively, he added as an afterthought, there was always the Haldersness wagon.
Eyvind asked, what Haldersness wagon? Asburn replied, the Haldersness wagon, the old one that’d been there since he was a kid, probably longer than that; a high-sided back-sprung four-in-hand with a busted front rail, otherwise perfectly serviceable. Eyvind, totally confused, said that he thought that was the Ciartanstead spare cart; Asburn said no, the Ciartanstead spare cart was the old Haldersness hay wagon. He was talking about the Haldersness carrier’s cart – they called it a cart, but it was bigger than a cart, being a four-in-hand. Eyvind said that he couldn’t give a damn what it was so long as it was big enough to take Ciartan and his people round the mountain, or at any rate out of his sight, before he had them all cut into bits and thrown down the well. Two of his men got up without a word and left the hall.
They came back some time later and announced that there was indeed a backsprung four-in-hand at Haldersness, but someone had stripped off the back wheels, which were nowhere to be found. There was, however, a perfectly sound trap that would take two people in comfort, three or maybe four at a pinch. When Eyvind asked if they’d brought this trap back with them they answered no, they hadn’t, because the only suitable horses down there were out of action on account of thrown shoes, but if he wanted they could take a couple of the Ciartanstead horses down and use those. Eyvind told them to do what the hell they liked.
By the time the two traps were ready to go – there was some problem about not being able to find the right harness – it was beginning to get dark, and the escort party said they didn’t fancy the mountain track at night because of all the loose shale and big lumps of black cinder; so Poldarn was marched off to the rat-house along with the loyal remnants of his household – Asburn, Raffen and two men whose faces he recognised but whose names escaped him for the moment. When the door had been shut and barred behind them they sat in the dark and didn’t speak to each other. Fairly soon, one of them started to snore, but Poldarn couldn’t figure out who it was.
Just before first light they were hauled out. The traps were ready and waiting, with fine fresh horses in the shafts; one of them, a skewbald with a cropped mane, Poldarn recognised as Eyvind’s own riding horse. He and Asburn got into the Ciartanstead trap, which was smaller and more rickety after its service as a salt-beef transporter. Raffen and the two unknowns squeezed into the other one. Eyvind’s escort, six men armed with spears and axes, bracketed them – two in front, two behind and one on either side, in case anybody tried jumping out of the trap and making a run for it. They seemed to be in a bad mood and didn’t say a word for the rest of the day.
They camped out on the lower slopes of the mountain,
at the point where the largest and most boisterous of the western mountain streams cut the road. There had been a ford there when they came up that way the previous day, the escort leader said, but it didn’t seem to be there any more. By the looks of it, there’d been a landslip or something of the sort, and the ford bed was now full of large rocks. Poldarn said that that didn’t sound so good. Acknowledging his existence for the first time, the escort leader said no, it wasn’t good; the nearest ford was half a day to the west, on Sceldsbrook land, and he wasn’t minded to go there since the Sceldsbrook people could be very funny about other people going on their land without getting permission first. Getting permission would involve following the steam down into the valley to the farm, which was a good two days away, more like three. Raffen said that if the farm was that far away, it’d be highly unlikely for any of Sceld’s people to be out in that direction, so maybe they should chance it. But the escort leader wasn’t keen on that idea, pointing out that if they were caught out and it led to trouble between Sceld and Eyvind, he’d be the one who got all the blame. They argued about that until well into the night, until the escorts (who’d been up well before dawn the previous day, in order to launch their attack at first light) couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer and fell asleep.
‘Well,’ Raffen announced in a loud whisper, ‘now’s our chance. We could make a run for it, and it’d be dawn before they could get after us.’
‘True,’ Poldarn replied with a yawn, ‘but where in hell do you suggest we go?’
Nobody had an answer to that, so they went to sleep.
They were up again early the next day, still debating what best to do about the lost ford. Clearing it was out of the question – the rocks were far too big. In the end it came down to two possible choices: to press on to the next ford, or to turn round and head back to Ciartanstead. Neither option was in the least bit attractive. Taking liberties with the Sceldsbrook people was far too dangerous, the escort argued. True; but traipsing back to Ciartanstead and getting shouted at wasn’t likely to solve anything. The ford would still be blocked when Eyvind sent them out again, and they’d have had a long and dreary ride for nothing.