Shadow s-1

by K. J. Parker

  The innkeeper and his wife weren't overjoyed at having a sword-monk hammering on the door, and would probably have harboured a grudge against them if it wasn't for the fact that earlier in the day they'd bought six sets of buttons for the price of five (Copis had been feeling generous) and were quite delighted with the bargain. Accordingly, although the inn was full, the innkeeper's younger son was turned out of his room and sent to sleep under the table in the kitchens, while Copis and Poldarn got a bed for the night, albeit a small one, and a view out of the tiny fifth-floor window over the bleak main street down towards the gate-with-no-walls and the moors beyond. By the standards of Sansory or any of the main-road inns they'd stayed in it was damp, cramped and miserable. On the other hand, it could easily have been far worse.

  'Actually,' Copis was explaining, while Poldarn leaned his elbows on the window ledge and watched the last glow of sunset fading in the west, 'curfews aren't all that uncommon, but mostly you get them in Guild towns, so it didn't occur to me that there'd be one here. Of course, it's like a Guild town in ever so many ways, so maybe I should've suspected. Never mind,' she went on, 'there's no real harm done and we can find somewhere better in the morning.'

  'Doesn't bother me,' Poldarn replied truthfully, as he watched a distant glimmer of light. 'But I guess the innkeeper's son would like us to go away so he can have his bed back. Are we allowed to move on, though? I got the impression that once we're registered somewhere, we've got to stay put till we leave.'

  Copis frowned. 'Not sure,' she replied. 'The impression I got was that we aren't committed to staying anywhere till we register in the morning; so if we get up good and early we can scout around and find somewhere before we sign in at the what's-its-name, prefecture.' She yawned. 'This is an odd town,' she said. 'Not the oddest I've ever been to, not by a very long way, but still odd. Good for business, though.'

  'That's true,' Poldarn said absently. He was still watching the light. 'One of these days, you'll have to explain to me about Guild towns. I've heard people talking about them, but all I've gathered so far is that they're different and not all that pleasant to visit.'

  'You've been to Mael,' Copis said sleepily. 'That's a Guild town.'

  'True. Now that was an odd place.'

  'Tell you about it in the morning,' Copis sighed, and turned over on to her side. She was occupying the whole bed, and Poldarn didn't feel like bickering, so he grabbed the cushion off the chair for a pillow and lay down on the floor. Just before he fell asleep, he thought he heard something moving about in the thatch directly over his head, but he wasn't sure; it could just as easily have been the crows in his dream, spreading their wings and launching themselves wearily into the darkness of his mind.

  'It's him, isn't it?' one of them said.

  'It's him.' The speaker, an old man with a thick bush of unruly white hair, rested both palms on the table-top. 'No doubt about it whatsoever.' He paused for a moment, catching his breath, then went on: 'I was more or less sure when I heard the report from Sansory, about the man who met with Chaplain Cleapho but escaped before they could catch him. Then there was the message from the inn-full marks to your sword-brother, by the way, it was an inspired idea to set the innkeeper to watch out for him-and I was almost certain. Now I've seen him with my own eyes. It's him.'

  There was a long silence. 'That's settled, then,' the abbot said at last. 'Now that we know it's him, what shall we do?'

  There were no suggestions. Father Abbot leaned forward a little in his chair, elbows on the table. 'The obvious solution would be to kill him, or to load him with chains and send him to Torcea. I'm not sure what we could charge him with, but there's bound to be something. In any event, I don't suppose the emperor will be very particular about details.'

  He paused, waiting for someone to contradict him. Nobody seemed inclined to say anything. Father Abbot frowned. For once, unanimous agreement with his decision wasn't what he wanted.

  'With respect.' At last, the abbot thought. More than anything else, he wanted a way of not having to do what obviously needed to be done. 'With respect,' the man who'd spoken repeated, 'I don't believe either of those courses of action is either necessary or advisable.'

  Father Abbot gestured to him to continue.

  'The point is,' the speaker continued (he was a short, fat monk with very curly grey hair and a rather babyish face; he was also the deacon in charge of security and defence), 'we have excellent grounds for believing that-well, we may know who he is, but he doesn't.'

  That wasn't what the abbot had been expecting to hear. He was interested.

  'My agents have been looking for him for some time now,' the deacon went on. 'The plain truth is, they couldn't find him, except for one; and for practical reasons that agent was in no position to file regular reports. I've now had an opportunity to piece together what we've learned so far. I think you'll agree, it puts a different complexion on the matter.'

  'Go on,' Father Abbot said. Nobody else spoke.

  'To cut a long story short,' the deacon said, 'we believe that on his way from here to Boc he was ambushed by an enemy unit sent specially to find him-how they knew where to look I'll deal with later-and there was a short but very fierce fight. We believe that he was the only survivor of that battle; what's more, we're almost certain that during the fighting he took a heavy blow to the head that knocked him out. When he woke up, he found that he'd lost his memory. He didn't know who he was, where he was, or even what language he was speaking in. We believe that he still hasn't got his memory back; in fact, I've taken advice from my colleagues in the infirmary and one or two lay experts in the field, and they assure me that the most likely outcome will be that unless he's suddenly presented with the truth about his past, he'll quite likely never remember, neither who he is nor what he's done. To all intents and purposes, he's a different man altogether. And as such,' the deacon said, 'not only would it be wrong for us to kill him or betray him to the authorities; it would also be a wickedly negligent waste of a remarkably useful opportunity to make use of him.'

  'Well,' said the abbot, 'we can't have that, can we? Perhaps you'd better explain your idea to the rest of us.'

  The deacon made a short, crisp bow. 'By all means,' he said, and proceeded to tell the chapter what he had in mind. At the end of his presentation, Father Abbot was wearing a very slight smile.

  'A very elegant solution to the problem,' he said, 'provided, of course, that your information is accurate and you can get him to do what you have in mind. It's also the nastiest, most vindictive punishment I've ever heard anybody suggest, and therefore entirely suitable. As long as you're sure on those two points, I'm quite happy for you to proceed. Opinions, gentlemen?'

  Nobody spoke for a long time. Then one of the monks shook his head.

  'I'm not sure,' he said. 'I know who he is and what he's done-more to the point, what he would've done if it wasn't for this freak accident we've heard about. Even so, I wouldn't do that to my worst enemy.'

  Father Abbot breathed out through his nose. 'Your humanity does you credit,' he said. All in favour.'

  The vote was, of course, unanimous; every vote of the chapter in council since the foundation of the order had been unanimous, or at least that was what it said in the minutes. Nevertheless, Father Abbot wasn't blind or stupid. He could see that at least one of the councillors was unhappy with the decision, not counting himself. (But then, if he'd opposed every sensible measure that he found morally repugnant, the affairs of the order would've ground to a halt ten years ago.)

  Poldarn woke up, and found that he was sitting upright, both hands clenched. He assumed that it was because he'd been having a bad dream.

  This time there was definitely somebody moving about, and not just outside, actually in the room with them. He glanced over at Copis; she was fast asleep, lying diagonally across the bed, one foot and one arm sticking out from under the covers. Just to be sure, he kept still and waited to hear her breathe. It seemed to be a long time before she
did.

  Whoever it was moved again. Poldarn stretched out with his fingertips until he identified the hilt of his sword, and carefully teased it towards him until he could get his left hand around it and pull it smoothly across the floor. He wasn't wearing a belt or a sash, so when he got to his feet he held it pressed to his waist with his left hand in exactly the right place.

  He closed his eyes-it was too dark to see anything, and somehow he knew he'd be able to make more sense of what was going on if he shut off his vision and relied entirely on hearing and touch. He had an idea he'd practised fighting blindfold or in a darkened room at some point in his life.

  Curiously, as soon as he closed his eyes he could see his circle. It was like being back in his dream, the one he'd just come from (it wasn't the dream, because there weren't any crows; at least, he didn't think there were any crows. Of course, he wouldn't be able to see them even if there were any, in the dark with his eyes shut). The circle was as clear as anything; he knew where it was in the same way that he knew where his feet were, without needing to look or listen. He applied his mind to the presence of his enemy, feeling for his circle -And found it, a fraction of a second before it burst in on his own. The draw happened; but instead of the firm, soft resistance of flesh, he felt the sword in his hand spring back, like a hammer dropped in its own weight on to the face of an anvil. Whoever it was had parried the cut.

  While he was still figuring out what was going on, his legs and arms were busy; he discovered that he'd jumped back the full radius of his circle and was standing in a position that came instinctively-feet a shoulder's width apart and at right angles, heel to heel; body chest on, with the arms extended equally, outstretched but the elbows slightly bent, the pommel of the sword level with his navel; it came as naturally as breathing, and suddenly he felt secure, in control, powerful, like a captain on the bridge of his ship. It had taken no longer than a single heartbeat. His circle blazed and flowed around him like a burning moat, like the invisible walls of Deymeson, and quite suddenly he knew he was home…

  The attack came in on his left side, at sixty degrees to his sword blade. He could feel the violence of it before his circle was even breached. His left foot went back and behind his right heel, and at the moment when his enemy had to be raising his arms for the cut he launched his own sword at the place where the other man's hands must inevitably be (the best defence is no defence; the best attack is no attack… maxims that had always been there in his mind, asleep or silent) and felt the curve of the tip, the optimum cutting point, biting into the soft iron of a hilt. The right idea, then, but he'd missed by perhaps as much as an inch; by the time he realised that, he'd already wheeled his circle through ninety degrees to the right, reading everything there was to know about his invisible enemy from that one instant of contact. He knew that he was fighting someone so close to him in skill and experience that he might as well be fighting against himself; each could read the other's mind as clearly as his own thoughts, and nothing he or the other man could do would surprise or deceive the other. It was as if the darkness in the room was a mirror, and he was facing up to his reflection.

  ('…When will I know that I've learned the draw?'

  'When you can outdraw your reflection in a mirror.'

  'But that's impossible.'

  'If you really believe that, it's not the end of the world. You're still young enough to get indentures with a clerk, or learn how to mend saucepans.')

  A cut was on its way, slanting in from the right, aimed at the point where the collarbone faded into the shoulder. He stepped forward, knowing exactly where the point of the curve would pass, and as its slipstream cooled his cheek he swung low for the knees, bracing himself for the shock that would travel up the blade as the other man parried with the flat. He used it to spring his sword up, racing the other man to see who could get there first as he turned his wrist for an upwards flick at the underside of the jaw. The other man stepped out of the way, of course, and he gave ground himself to avoid the riposte, a side-cut that would have sheared through his hip into his spine if he'd been there to receive it. He was like a man reciting a poem he'd learned by heart so long ago that the words no longer mean anything, and as his body made each inevitable movement his mind began to wander, drifting into a state between sleep and waking, the place where the crows roosted.

  'Stop,' said a voice in the dark. He stopped, knowing he could trust the voice implicitly. 'Is there a lamp or a candle in here?'

  Before he could reply Copis grunted and woke up. 'Who's that?' she mumbled, in a voice still saturated with sleep.

  'It's all right,' Poldarn replied. The other man's voice had only confirmed his position; Poldarn already knew exactly where he was. Nevertheless, by speaking the other man had pinpointed his location, an act of truce as clear and eloquent as dropping his sword on the floor. The least Poldarn could do was reciprocate by answering. Besides, if Copis was awake, it changed the whole nature of the fight. If she chose to stand up and wander about, she stood a better than average chance of getting in the way and being cut in half. 'Who are you?' he asked.

  For some reason the other man laughed. 'I could ask you the same question,' he said. 'Is there a lamp or a candle? We'll probably understand each other better if we can throw some light on the subject.'

  'No,' Poldarn replied. 'At least, I don't remember seeing anything like that.'

  'Pity.' Poldarn heard the click of a sword being returned to its scabbard. 'Still, it's not essential. You'll just have to use your imagination.'

  'Look,' Copis interrupted, 'who the hell are you, and what are you doing in our room?'

  'Listen to me.' The voice had changed a little. 'You don't know who you are, do you?'

  'No,' Poldarn admitted. 'I lost my memory a while ago-'

  'When you woke up beside the river, after a battle. Yes, I know all that. I'm a little vague about what you've been up to since, but I-we know pretty well everything about you up to that point. Would you like me to tell you?'

  Poldarn hesitated two, perhaps three heartbeats before answering. 'Yes,' he said.

  'Then I'll tell you. But first-'

  'No. Now.'

  'First,' the voice said emphatically, 'I've got to warn you. Tomorrow morning, some senior officers of the order will send for you and have you taken up to the chapterhouse. There they'll tell you all about yourself, in great and very plausible detail. They'll tell you that your name is Brother Stellico, that you're a renegade monk of this order and therefore-technically-an outlaw already sentenced to death; that before you left the order, you were a father tutor-that's a very high rank indeed-and the senior deacon of applied religion, which is our term for swordfighting. According to what they'll tell you, I was your immediate subordinate and your pupil, and you taught me everything I know about the subject.' He paused. 'None of this is true,' he said.

  'Oh,' Poldarn said.

  The voice laughed softly. 'It's all entirely possible, of course,' he went on. 'And it fits everything you'll have learned about yourself. They'll go on to offer you amnesty and an impressive-sounding title and privileges, provided you stay here for the time being and send away your friend here-Copis, isn't it? And before that, you were called Xipho Dorunoxy, when you worked in the brothel in Josequin. That's not your real name, of course.'

  He'd pronounced Xipho Dorunoxy perfectly, or as well as Copis had, at the very least. 'How clever of you,' Copis said. 'I won't ask how you know.'

  'Thank you,' the voice replied. 'We prefer not to explain how we come by our information. It's not a dreadful dark secret, quite the opposite, in fact, all perfectly straightforward and unimpressive. Which is why we don't explain; it ruins the mystique.'

  Poldarn breathed in slowly. 'Why would they want to tell me all these lies?' he said.

  'Let me tell you who you really are,' the voice said reasonably, 'and you should be able to work it out for yourself. You'll also see why, even though I have every reason to hate you and see you come to harm, I
couldn't stand by and watch them do this to you. I may not respect you, but I respect our order; if we stoop to acts of pure malice, such as what they have planned for you, we stand to lose everything we are.'

  'All right,' Poldarn said. 'Now, tell me who I really am.'

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They dragged him, bleeding and dizzy, from the cart to the tent flap (and as his feet trailed behind him, each bump and jolt jarring the broken bone, flooding his body and mind with pain, two crows got up out of a dead spruce tree and flew away). The sentry outside the tent blocked their way with his spear.

  'What's the hurry?' he asked suspiciously. 'And what's that?'

  'Top priority is what it is,' snapped the trooper on his left. 'Urgent. You know what urgent means?'

  'It's all right.' The voice came from inside the tent. 'Let them through, I'm expecting them.' A hand pulled back the tent flap, and they hauled him through and lowered him to the ground like a sack of grain, gently enough to stop him splitting open, but beyond that, not too bothered.

  'Lift his head.' A hand gathered enough hair for a grip and pulled upwards, lifting his head enough for him to see the man in the tent. 'That's him. Fine, good work. Now, you two go and get something to eat, catch a few hours' sleep. We're moving out just before dawn.'

  Monach opened his eyes, and shivered. He couldn't see the two troopers now, so he assumed they were saluting or whatever cavalrymen did; all he could see was six square inches of threadbare carpet. But he could hear the rustling of canvas, which led him to believe they'd left the tent.

  'Do you know who I am?' the voice said. A pause-he didn't reply, mostly because that would involve moving his jaw, which would be very painful. 'Hello, can you hear me? I asked you a question.'