by K. J. Parker
‘There’s another way,’ Poldarn said quietly. ‘We could go up the mountain.’
The escort weren’t at all keen about that. By now, however, they’d more or less forgotten that they were guards in charge of dangerous criminals, and when nobody else could come up with a better suggestion, they politely asked Poldarn what would be involved. He told them: they’d have to send back the cart and the horses and walk, but of course it would be a far shorter distance, as the crow flew, and there shouldn’t be any danger from the volcano. They’d follow his original trail up the mountain, and when they reached the place where he’d diverted the fire-stream, all they’d have to do would be to follow it down into the valley, take a detour round the remains of Eyvind’s wood and get to the farm that way. True, he admitted, if they were prepared to ditch the horses and the wagon they could probably get across the ford, using the fallen boulders as stepping stones, but then they’d have a very long walk round the edge of the mountain instead of a short one up and down it. It was up to them, Poldarn said; whereupon the escort said that they’d prefer to leave it up to him, since he seemed to be the man with the ideas.
So up the mountain they went. Poldarn set them a crisp pace, and they were able to reach the point where the fire-stream had been breached just before nightfall. The stream itself was grey now instead of cherry red, but it was still viciously hot, and the only water they had with them was in a couple of two-gallon leather bottles, carried by Asburn and Raffen. Only three of the escort were with them by this stage, the others having left to take back the horses and the wagon.
‘And you actually smashed a hole in that?’ one of the three asked in amazement, as the heat forced him to step back rapidly. ‘Bloody hell.’
Poldarn grinned. ‘It was a damn sight worse when we were working up here,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it, Asburn?’
‘Much worse,’ the blacksmith agreed. ‘If we’d been standing as close as this, we’d be dead by now.’
The guard shook his head. ‘Rather you than me, then,’ he said. ‘Even thinking about it gives me the horrors. Mind you, I’ve always been scared stiff of fire and stuff like that.’
‘Oh, it’s not so bad once you’re used to it,’ Poldarn said blandly. ‘You’ve just got to treat it with a bit of respect, that’s all. I learned that in the smithy.’
‘Yes, well,’ the guard mumbled. ‘You wouldn’t catch me doing that job, either.’
They were tired enough to be able to fall asleep immediately, in spite of their acutely uncomfortable surroundings, and they slept through till shortly after dawn, at which point they were woken up by a brisk shower of rain. At first, they couldn’t figure out what was going on; it seemed as if they were being wrapped up in a small, predatory cloud that hissed at them like a small but fierce animal.
‘It’s the rain,’ Poldarn realised. ‘The rocks are so hot, it’s turning to steam before it lands.’
As soon as they started walking through it, they discovered that the cloud was rather wetter than the rain would have been. They were soaked to the skin by the time they began the rather nerve-racking scramble down the steep incline that led straight towards Eyvind’s ill-fated wood. The further down they went, the thicker the cloud became – presumably, Poldarn decided, because the surface of the fire-stream was hotter down below than up here, where its skin had thickened into a stout insulating wall – and finding their way without sliding or falling became a difficult and challenging pastime. Fortunately, the three escorts knew their own side of the mountain as well or better than the Haldersness people knew theirs; they were practically capable of navigating with their eyes shut. As was the way with terrifying experiences, the climb down to the relatively level plain seemed to take for ever, and then was suddenly over. Just when the ground started to level out under his feet, however, and the cloud seemed to be dispersing, Poldarn found that he was on his own. He couldn’t see the rest of the party, not even as dim grey shapes at the edges of clarity, and he couldn’t hear their footsteps or the sound of their voices. Also, he was looking at a very fine house, newly built and extremely smart, its pale yellow thatch not yet weathered to grey. That was very strange, since by his calculations he should be standing on the lip of the wooded combe, or the place where it used to be. He went a few yards further and realised that he could see the ground behind the house falling sharply away; that was the combe all right, no doubt about it, though there weren’t any trees any more. He was wondering where he’d wandered off to when a cheerful shout made him jump.
He turned his head in the direction the voice had come from, and saw a shape taking form through the curtain of mist. He recognised it at once.
‘Eyvind,’ he said.
‘There you are!’ He sounded much happier than he had the last time they’d spoken to each other. ‘I was starting to wonder where in hell you’d got to.’
‘We got held up,’ Poldarn said. ‘The ford was blocked.’
‘What, again?’ Eyvind clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘I’m going to have to talk to Sceld about that. If he can’t keep his damned cows from treading in the cutting, he’ll have to find some other grazing for them. It’s getting beyond a joke.’
For some reason, Poldarn felt prompted to look round at the mountain behind him. Its profile was entirely different, back the way it used to be before the volcano tore it apart, and it was capped with an elegant crown of pure white snow.
‘Anyway,’ Eyvind said, clapping an arm round his shoulders, ‘you’re here now, that’s the main thing. Bersa’ll be pleased. She’s been hovering round the porch all day, looking to see if you were coming. She won’t admit that, of course.’
Eyvind was frogmarching Poldarn along, giving him no choice but to walk with him towards the house. He had an idea that it wouldn’t be advisable to go in there, but he didn’t see how he could break away without giving offence. Then a crow lifted off the ground in front of them. Eyvind let him go and stooped to pick up a stone; he threw, and missed, and suddenly the cloud came down again. It lifted almost immediately, and Poldarn found he was looking at a very different landscape. There was no house, and no combe. Instead, the fire-stream marched straight as an army road towards a glowing red circle on the ground. On the edges, Poldarn could see the blackened stumps of trees. On either side, for about a hundred yards, the turf was burned down to ash and bare black soil. Boulders, dragged along by the stream and discarded at random, stuck out like a flock of feeding birds. The rain had stopped.
He looked round for the others and saw them, seven little dots in the distance, on the far edge of the red circle. The crow Eyvind had walked up swung in a wide circle overhead, screamed something offensive, and waddled across the sky towards the horizon.
The others were waiting for him.
‘Where the hell did you get to?’ demanded one of the escorts.
‘I’m sorry,’ he replied. ‘I think I must’ve lost my way in the fog.’
They seemed to accept that, though they weren’t happy. ‘We thought you’d run out on us,’ one of them said. ‘We weren’t looking forward to telling Eyvind when we got back home.’
‘Sorry,’ Poldarn repeated. ‘Still, I’m here now. We might as well press on to the farm.’
Eyvind’s uncle’s house – Bollesknap, another member of the escort told him – was smaller than Haldersness or Ciartanstead, with fewer outbuildings. Its grey thatch was green with moss, and a broad, slow stream ran through the yard. ‘That’s new,’ the man said. ‘It must’ve changed course when you diverted the fire-stream. You’ll want to watch that come the autumn, or you’ll get flooded out.’
Poldarn shrugged. ‘So long as it’s only water, I’m not worried,’ he replied.
The home fields were a reassuring sight: a promising crop of winter wheat just starting to stand up, a good show of cabbages and peas, some rather battered-looking leeks in a flat strip beside the house. Once that lot came in, there’d be plenty to eat, as well as seed for next year. No sign of an
y livestock, but he hadn’t expected to see any; presumably they were on their way to Ciartanstead or Haldersness. He didn’t imagine they’d like it there; the grazing wasn’t nearly as good.
Waiting for them on the porch was a small group of people. Poldarn saw Elja there, and a great weight fell away from him; also Boarci, sitting in a chair with two men he didn’t know standing over him, looking nervous, and four of the Haldersness hands, including Rook. The others were all strangers; Eyvind’s people, presumably.
One of them stood up and came out to meet them. He ignored Poldarn and spoke to one of the escorts.
‘So you got here at last, Tren,’ he said sourly. ‘What did you do, stop off to go fishing?’
The man he’d called Tren shook his head. ‘Long story,’ he said. ‘Sceld’s ford was blocked, so we had to go up the mountain and round; had to send the horses back, of course. Still, we’re here now. Anything to eat inside?’
The stranger laughed. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said, ‘all the food’s gone off in the carts to the new place, apart from a scrap or two for us for the journey. What do you mean, the ford’s blocked? How are we supposed to get to the new place if we can’t get across?’
Tren shrugged. ‘Have to go back the way we’ve just come, I guess. Bloody hard slog it is, too, so you’d better have got your walking boots with you.’
The stranger frowned. ‘What about the horses?’ he said. ‘We can’t leave ’em here – Eyvind said we can’t leave anything.’
‘Well, you won’t get ’em over the mountain, that’s for sure. We’ll just have to come back for them later, when the ford’s clear.’
‘Are you crazy?’ The stranger jerked his head in the direction of the people on the porch. ‘What the hell makes you think this lot’ll give ’em back?’
Tren didn’t seem to understand that at first; then he remembered that Poldarn and his people were their prisoners and enemies. The thought couldn’t have bothered him much, because he said, ‘I don’t think you need worry too much on that score. Anyway, unless you’ve got another route I don’t know about, it’s not like we’ve got much choice.’
‘Damn.’ The stranger didn’t know what to do. ‘Oh well,’ he said eventually, ‘if we do have to come back for them, I don’t see this lot giving us much trouble. As you can see, most of ’em decided to go to the new place.’
‘So it would seem,’ Tren said, and his tone of voice implied that he didn’t think much of them for that. ‘Well, that’s their decision, none of our business.’ The other man frowned, and Poldarn guessed there was more in Tren’s mind than showed in what he’d said out loud. ‘We’d better be on our way,’ Tren continued. ‘It’s going to be a long walk, and the sooner we start the sooner we get there.’ He turned to Poldarn. ‘If we leave our horses here, you won’t make trouble, will you?’
Poldarn shook his head. ‘I don’t pick fights,’ he said. ‘Particularly when I don’t stand a chance. Besides, we aren’t going anywhere, so we won’t be needing horses. If Eyvind’s taken all the feed we’ll have to graze them outside, that’s all.’
‘I don’t suppose they’ll come to any harm like that,’ Tren said, and his conciliatory tone suggested more than a touch of guilt. ‘Soon as the ford’s clear we’ll take them off your hands, and then we’ll leave you alone.’
‘That’d be best,’ Poldarn said.
He and his people watched them in silence till they were out of sight. Only when they’d vanished into a dip of dead ground did anybody speak.
‘Father and Egil are going to move out west,’ Elja said quietly. ‘They said they’d feel uncomfortable at Ciartanstead, and they didn’t want to stay here if the rest of the household went. I think that’s probably the most sensible thing all round.’
Poldarn looked at her. ‘You aren’t going with them,’ he said.
‘No.’ She looked away. ‘I thought I’d stay here.’
‘Good,’ Poldarn said. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold on to her as hard as he could, but he felt she wouldn’t like that. ‘What about the rest of you?’ he said. ‘You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. It’s not going to be easy, just the twelve of us on a place this size.’
Nobody said anything for a while; then Rook said; ‘It’s not so bad. I had a look round; they’ve taken most of their stuff but they’ve left more than they meant to. The standing crops, for one thing.’
‘They took all the tools,’ said one of the men whose names Poldarn couldn’t remember. ‘I watched them loading up the carts.’
‘The furniture, too,’ Elja said sadly. ‘No benches, no tables, no blankets even. We’ve got four walls and a roof, and that’s it.’
Boarci laughed. ‘No big deal,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a few trees still, and I think I saw what looked like a nice seam of potters’ clay in the yard, where the stream’s washed off the topsoil. We can make stuff; it’s not exactly difficult.’
‘Make stuff with what?’ Raffen objected. ‘They took all the tools.’
But Boarci shook his head. ‘They think they took all the tools,’ he replied. ‘But in a place like this, you never take everything, there’s always something left – a broken knife or a rusty old axe head in the corner of the barn.’
Asburn stood up and walked away; only Poldarn noticed him leave. ‘That’s all very well,’ Raffen went on, ‘but even if we can make a few things, that’s not the most important thing. What really matters is, there isn’t anything to eat.’
Boarci shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘It all depends on what you mean by food. When you’ve had to live rough as long as I have, you learn to get by on what you can find. There’s five apple trees out back, for a start, just coming up nicely.’
One of the nameless men coughed. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘they’re cider apples, not eaters.’
‘Big deal.’ Boarci grinned. ‘They may taste like shit, but so what? And if it’s meat you’re after, they’ve left us half a dozen big, tall horses. After all those dinners of porridge and leeks, a nice red steak’ll go down pretty sweet.’
But Poldarn shook his head. ‘We won’t do that,’ he said. ‘The last thing we need to do is give Eyvind a pretext. They’re to be left alone till Eyvind’s people come for them, understood?’
Boarci shrugged. ‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, though, we can do without. The mountain blowing its top means that all the deer and bears and wild goats and stuff have been pushed down into the valley, without even a wood to hide in. They’ll tide us over for a month or so, easy, even if we don’t find anything else. And there’s plenty of other things you can eat, if you know what to look for. Anyone here ever tried earwigs? I have. They’re not bad, if you just swallow and don’t think about it.’
‘It’s not like we’ve got much choice,’ Elja put in abruptly. ‘At least, some of you can go to Ciartanstead, but I can’t, I’ve got to stay here whether I like it or not. So yes, I’ll eat anything that’s edible, and be grateful. Anybody who doesn’t think that way had better push off now, before Eyvind decides to shut the door on you.’
That killed the debate stone dead. Raffen sat down on the stoop, took off his left boot and examined the sole. Boarci got up and went into the house. The two unidentified men who’d come with Poldarn started talking to each other very quietly, apparently about a completely unrelated subject. For his part, Poldarn stared out in the direction of the fire-stream, thinking about what he’d seen when he came down off the mountain. They stayed like that until Asburn came bounding back, in apparently high spirits.
‘I’ve just been to look at the smithy,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken all the tools but they’ve left a good anvil – it’s bolted down to a big stump set in the floor, and I guess they couldn’t get it out in time to take it on. And there’s a decent enough vice mounted on the wall, and the forge and the bellows are all still there. And they’ve left most of the scrap, and,’ he added with a big smile, ‘I found this under the bench.�
�� He held out a rusty lump of metal for them to see; it turned out to be a hammer head, a four-pound straight-peen with a nicely crowned face and the handle broken off flush in the eye. ‘There’s even coal in the bunker,’ he went on. ‘All I’ve got to do is put a new stem on this and we’re in business. We can make all the tools we need.’
Everybody looked at him, as though he’d started telling jokes at a funeral. But Poldarn turned his back on the view and said, ‘He’s right. With a hammer and an anvil and a fire and some material, we can make any bloody thing we like. We can make axes and saws and chisels, we can make hoes and scythes and rakes and a plough.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘At least it’ll be something to do,’ he said. It looked like nobody else understood what he meant by that, but he didn’t care. ‘It won’t be all that different from moving out to Ciartanstead; we’ll have to make all the little things, but the house is here already, we don’t have to build that. Oh, cheer up, for God’s sake. At least we’re still alive, not like Barn and those other poor bastards. I got up out of that river bed with nothing, not even any memories, and I’ve come this far. And just for once, I’ll know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.’
Asburn found a smashed-up wagon wheel in a ditch; he and Poldarn wrenched out one of the spokes, and Poldarn cracked a flint with the hammer head to make a sharp edge. While Asburn was fussing round his new forge, checking the bellows-leather for tears and sorting through the scrap pile, Poldarn patiently whittled down the spoke until it fitted into the eye of the hammer head; then he made a wedge out of a scrap of oak he found on the woodshed floor, split the top of the handle, slid in the wedge and slammed it down on the anvil a few times to drive it home. The weight and balance of his new hammer felt just about right, unlike the hammers he’d used back at the old place, which had never sat comfortably in his hand. By the time Poldarn had got that far, Asburn had lit the fire and found a couple of thick stakes that’d do for the makings of a pair of tongs. With tongs they could hold their work; they could make another hammer, another set of tongs, a set and a hardie and a punch, and with those they could make anything they chose, from an earring to a warship. Suddenly, there was nothing in the world they couldn’t make or do.