by K. J. Parker
'Would it be all right,' Monach asked, very quietly, 'if I sat down on your floor? Just for a moment or so.' Before the old man could answer, Monach pressed his back against the wall and slid down to the floor. It took him a great deal of effort not to yell and scream.
'By all means,' the old man said. 'I won't press you for your name,' he went on, 'but as and when you feel like mentioning it-'
'Vesser,' Monach said. 'Vesser Oldun. I-' He coughed, and took advantage of the pause to think. 'I was on the road, on my way home-I'm a trader, you see, I deal in small household stuff, buckles and pins and brooches and buttons, that sort of thing-and I was just a mile or so north-west of here, shortly before sunset, when some men on horses overtook me and-well, you can probably guess the rest. I lay there for a while until I felt strong enough to move, and made my way into town. Is there an inn here?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Oh. Oh, that's a nuisance. I'm sorry,' Monach added, trying to ignore the pain in his jaw that came from so much talking, 'you must be wondering why I came bursting in here like that. The truth is, I was looking for an inn, as I said just now, and then all of a sudden I started feeling so weak and faint I simply couldn't stand up any more. So I pushed on the first door I came to, and it turned out to be yours. I'm terribly sorry if I'm causing you a lot of trouble or anything.'
'Not a bit of it,' the voice replied. 'Well, well, that is a surprise. I don't think anybody's been robbed in these parts for forty years, or at least that's what my neighbours have told me. Of course, I was away for a great many years and only came back here-what, a dozen years ago? Less than that, probably, I can't remember. Anyway, I can't vouch for it personally, for the reasons I just gave, but I'm fairly sure what they told me about the lack of robberies is more or less true. So, if someone's just set up in that line of work nearby, we'll have to do something about it.'
'Yes,' Monach said, struggling a little. 'Yes, you really should.' He could feel himself sliding into sleep, there was a dream already open and waiting for him to fall into it. 'Well, if there's no inn…'
The voice laughed. 'Don't worry about that,' he said. 'You're welcome to stay here for the night, or as long as you want to. In the morning, though, when the boy comes with my breakfast, I'll send him for one of my neighbours. She's very good with broken bones and medicines.'
Monach managed to thank him before his mind tripped and went sprawling into the dream Monach opened his eyes, and saw bright daylight. Instinctively he looked up, and saw a blue sky with a few smudges of high white cloud. The position of the sun told him it was mid-morning. It was very quiet, but he could sense that he wasn't alone. Something was about to happen.
He looked over his shoulder, and saw an army. They were drawn up in line of battle, and their formations stretched away on either side as far as he could see, thousands of men, standing at parade ease, all staring straight ahead. He turned back and tried to make out what it was that they all found so fascinating.
He couldn't see it. He and the army were just below the crest of a hogsback ridge, looking down a fairly gentle, even slope of what looked to him like average-to-good sheep grazing towards a quite substantial wood at the foot of a steep hill. There were no houses, barns, linhays or other buildings in sight, no walls or hedges or livestock. As views went it was pleasant enough, but rather dull.
I wonder who I am, he thought, but didn't allow himself to dwell on the point. He was sure he'd find out soon enough, and besides, it was only a dream.
'There, look,' somebody said, a few yards away on his right. He looked at the man who'd just spoken; his arm was outstretched and he was pointing. 'Just coming round the edge of the wood, look,' the man went on. Monach followed the line of his finger, but couldn't see anything. 'Can you see it, General?' the man went on, and Monach perceived that the words had been addressed to him. 'Outriders, probably,' the man went on, 'or mounted pioneers. Do you want me to send out a cavalry squad, see if we can cut them off?'
Damn, he's asking me a question, Monach thought, slightly flustered. If this dream is something that really happened, what if I give the wrong order, and we lose the battle? Or win the battle, for that matter, when we should've lost it? Would that mean I'd be trapped in this dream and unable to get back out again?
'It's funny you should say that.' Monach looked round; standing right next to him on his left was the old man from Cric, the one who might once have been General Allectus, the one on whose floor Monach's body was sleeping.
'I'm sorry?' Monach said.
'It's quite all right,' the old man said. 'And I shouldn't have startled you like that. No, it's all right. No matter what orders you give them, I'll still lose the battle, history will take its course. Those men there-' he gestured to his left with the back of his hand, 'the Amathy house,' he went on, 'they'll change sides as soon as things start to go wrong for me, and that'll be that. But we're drifting away from the point, I apologise. I just wanted to set your mind at rest, so you can enjoy the dream without fretting about getting home again afterwards.'
'Thank you,' Monach felt obliged to say.
'My pleasure. Now, what was I about to tell you? Oh yes.' The old man wiped a strand of fine white hair out of his eyes; the wind was getting up, and here on the slope they were in a position to catch the worst of it. 'This idea of yours about getting trapped in a dream.'
'What? Oh, right, I see.'
'It's not a new thought,' the old man went on. 'In fact, in some versions of the Poldarn myth, that's what happens to him; he falls asleep under a lime tree on Deymeson Hill and in his dream he suddenly finds himself sitting on the box of a cart, dragging across the moors to a place called Cric. But he doesn't remember who he is or where he came from, or anything like that, let alone the fact that he's a god, not a mortal.' The old man laughed; he seemed to be in rare high spirits. Of course, he was younger than Monach remembered him. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'what my men-sorry, your men-are looking out for is the first sign of General Cronan's army, which is due to come out from behind that wood any moment now. When it does, you'll give the order to stay put and receive them here. It's a very sensible order, and even now I can't help wondering what'd have happened if they'd obeyed it.' He sighed, and suddenly he was an old man again, though only for a moment. 'They don't, of course,' he went on. 'They let Cronan's men get halfway up this slope, and suddenly take it into their minds to charge. That works very well to begin with, until Cronan springs his trap and two thousand heavy cavalry come out of the wood, race up the hill on the flanks and cut us in half. The lower half keeps on pushing forward, bursts through the line and carries on down the slope and into that wood. They don't come out again, ever. The top half-well, Feron Amathy changes sides, and the rest of them pull back in good order to the top of the ridge and withdraw from the field. I-you-we stay here, trying to rally enough men for a stand; the enemy cavalry catch sight of us and at the last minute we break and run away-you and me with them, of course, which is why I'm alive and trapped here. If for some reason you decide to stay, please try not to win the battle. As I told you a moment ago, winning'd be the easy option. And it wouldn't matter, even if you did win. You'd still lose, but it'd all take longer and the casualties would be higher. Ah,' the old man said sharply, 'they're here, and about time too.'
As the enemy army became visible inside the wood, they put up a colony of rooks and crows that flew ahead of them for a while, like the slow, shallow wave that comes before the breakers. 'In a sense,' the old man was saying, 'all battles are just unpleasant, conscience-stricken memories, just as this one is; they've all happened before, and the only difference lies in who's dreaming them this time. Then again, you can pass off all kinds of old rubbish by tacking in a sense in front of it.'
Monach squinted; the wind was making his eyes water. 'I can see them now,' he said.
'Can you? Splendid.' The old man was looking at them too. 'Interesting, I suppose, that you chose to come here, before the battle started. My guess is that you
r instincts led you to the moment before the draw, the point where they violate our circle. Since you believe in religion, the next part, the battle itself, doesn't really exist; there's just the moment before and the moment after. Or am I oversimplifying?'
'Yes,' Monach replied, 'you are. The battle wouldn't exist only if this was a perfect world, which it isn't, or if you and I were gods, which we aren't.'
The old man grinned. 'I'm not, for sure. As for you-well, I can't see that it matters all that much, one way or the other. If I told you, Yes, you're definitely a god, take my word for it, you wouldn't believe me, after all. You'd say this is just a dream, and your dream at that.'
Monach wasn't sure whether that was a divine revelation or simple teasing. He thought it best to ignore it, on either count. 'So,' he said, as his instincts urged him to counterattack, 'you really are General Allectus, then? May I ask, what're you doing hiding out in a wretched little dump like this?'
'I was born here,' Allectus replied. 'Not in the village, you understand; my grandfather owned the whole valley and half the moor-it was more trouble and expense than it was worth, which is why when he died my father just forgot about it, stopped trying to collect the rents, let the house fall down; at the best of times the income from the estate wasn't enough to pay the gardeners at our main house, in Torcea.' He wiped something out of the corner of his eye, a speck of dust or grit, or a small gnat. 'But yes, we had a house here. If there's time, you might make a detour and take a look at the ruins, if there's anything still there to see; the villagers have been tearing it up for building stone for forty years, so there's probably not much left. And yes, I was born here, while the family was spending the summer out here one year. We moved around a lot then, tracking from estate to estate, like a bunch of itinerants roaming the countryside with all our possessions packed in a cart. Of course it had to be a very big cart to get all our stuff inside. But a cart's a cart.' He shook his head. 'Anyway,' he continued. 'When I lost the battle and my army and found myself in these parts, alone and with a price on my head, I suppose a sort of homing instinct drew me back.' He smiled. 'And it helped that I could remember a few bits and pieces from our visits here when I was a boy. I remembered the name of a servant we hired from this village who was just about my age, by the name of Jolect. He left with us, caught a fever and died. I hardly knew him. But when I came here, I decided to be him, coming home after a lifetime of service in the army. Fortuitously, the Jolect family had died out in the meanwhile, so nobody was left to say I wasn't who I claimed to be; besides, nobody cared. I had twelve gross-quarters in gold coin when I arrived here-it was my pocket change, the day I ran away from this battle, but enough to represent a time-expired veteran's life savings, enough to make me a rich man in Cric. I gave it to my neighbours so they could buy all the things they couldn't grow or make-iron and steel for ploughs and tools, mostly, and some other materials, enough to last all of Cric for a generation-and in return I have this fine house, and they'll feed and clothe me till I die. What more could a god ask?'
Monach didn't say anything.
'Besides,' Allectus went on, 'there's a beautiful symmetry about it. I was born the son and heir to this huge demesne-worthless, maybe, but vast by any standards-and now in my old age here I am again, the squire, the old master, loved, respected, tolerated and put up with by my faithful tenants.' He pulled an exaggeratedly sad face, as the sun flashed alarmingly on the spears of Cronan's army, far away in the distance. 'We have a habit of turning out to be what we're supposed to be, regardless of whether we like it or not, or know it or not. If you understood religion instead of just knowing all about it, you'd see that that's what the Poldarn story's all about, an allegory for that simple fact. Of course the Poldarn story also happens to be true, every word of it, but that doesn't stop it being an allegory as well. You can stay here as long as you like, you know.'
Monach didn't quite follow. 'What, here, you mean? This battle?'
'No, of course not. In Cric. At my house. After the pounding you took from the Amathy house, it'll be a week at least before you're fit to move, and besides, it won't be healthy for you in these parts until Feron Amathy moves on. Escaping was bad enough; breaking his finger into the bargain-that's a bad loss of face, he'll be taking it very seriously. But you'll be safe here.'
'Thank you,' Monach said, as General Cronan's army began to climb the slope. It was large, but not as big as his, Allectus', own. In the middle was a hedge of pikes, with a wispy line of skirmishers strewn untidily in front of it and blocks of armoured foot soldiers and cavalry on either wing. Behind the pikes he could see the baggage train, a sloppy column of carts and mules, packed too closely together. 'That's very kind of you.'
'On the contrary,' Allectus replied. 'After all, you're the man who's undertaken to kill my deadly enemy, General Cronan-not that you'll succeed, of course, but it's the thought that counts. If anything happens to me, by the way, don't panic. Just keep out of sight when they bring in the food, and leave the dirty plates and the washing. Sometimes I stay in the back room sulking for weeks on end, so they won't think anything of it; and as for the smell-well, who's going to notice, in here?'
'Thank you,' Monach repeated. He was aware of the army above and around him starting to get restless, muttering and shuffling. 'Am I really going to fail in the mission?'
'Yes,' Allectus told him, 'but not for the reason you think. You see, nobody knows where Cronan is; that's why he wasn't here, wasn't on the road where he should have been, wasn't where he told his people he was going to be. The plain fact is, he vanished a couple of months ago, on his way to Josequin, and nobody's seen or heard of him since.'
'What?' Monach shouted, but he couldn't make himself heard; his army had decided to ignore his orders and charge down the slope, and a moment later he was on the ground, his arms over his head to protect it from the boots and knees of the soldiers all around him. Allectus had vanished, in any case. Monach wound himself up into a ball, squeezing his legs and elbows in as tight as he could to get them out of harm's way, but a man running flat out tripped over him, and the men behind piled up on top of him, until Monach was buried under a mound of jerking, squirming bodies (a living grave, he thought, now that's original). He tried to breathe, but it rapidly went from difficult to impossible, at which point he suffocated and died -And sat up, to find both hands clamped tight over his nose and mouth, which would explain the asphyxiation. Thin spikes of sunlight were intruding under the door and between the gaps in the old, warped timbers of the shutters. He felt cold, probably because he was soaked in sweat. He tried to remember the dream he'd just tumbled out of, but it had passed by.
Next he tried to move, and that was a very bad idea. In eighth grade they'd done wounds, including how to recognise your own; they'd been taught a cumulative assessment system-ten points for a broken collarbone, thirty for an arm, fifty for a leg; you chose your course of action on the basis of your running total, and if it came to more than two hundred there was no recommended course of action. On that basis, he scored somewhere between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and fifteen, depending on whether there was major internal bleeding around the smashed ribs.
'Hello,' he called out. He could remember his host saying something about some local wise woman or witch doctor; country medicine wouldn't have been his first choice, but it was better than dying or (worse still, in a way) healing up with unset bones and being a cripple for the rest of his life. Not that he wanted to impose on his host in any way, but that was one offer of help he could reconcile himself to accepting.
'Hello,' he repeated, and then he realised that the shape in the corner, which he'd been assuming was a sack or a pile of old clothes, was a body.
He sighed. Too much to hope for, obviously, that the old fool could somehow manage to stay alive long enough to arrange for the doctor to call. That would've been too easy, not a sufficient challenge for a brother tutor of the order. The statistical probabilities intrigued him; of the two of them,
he'd have bet money on who was more likely to survive the night, and he'd have lost.
If anything happens to me, by the way, don't panic. Just keep out of sight when they bring in the food, and leave the dirty plates and the washing. Someone had said that to him recently, but he couldn't remember who. He frowned-even frowning hurt, the tightening of the skin across his forehead tugging apart the lips of a gash that was only just beginning to knit together. Maybe the old man had said it last night, when he was drowsy and half asleep.
In the ninth grade they'd taught them basic field medicine and surgery, with a short and mostly hilarious session on how to set your own bones and bind your own wounds. It had been too close to the end of the term; they'd all been worn out with study, saturated with too much information, and nobody had really made any kind of an effort to learn the stuff properly. For the rest of the day, therefore, he was forced to rely on trial and error and instinct as much as authorised procedures. That was a great pity, since experimenting on one's own broken bones is a painful and demoralising experience. For bandages he had to use strips of the late General Allectus' threadbare and filthy carpet-a genuine Morevish tent rug, no less-which he slowly sawed and hacked to shape with Feron Amathy's unpractically shaped knife. All day he was pitifully thirsty, and there was a water jug no more than ten feet away, but somehow he never got around to crawling across the room and fetching it.
Eventually the splinters of light began to fade, suggesting the onset of evening. He wasn't conscious when the food arrived-he passed out at least a dozen times that day because of the pain and his general condition-and he woke up out of an involuntary doze to hear the door closing. Once he'd got the panic under control, he listened for the sound of someone moving about or breathing; while he was holding still and doing that, he had time to work out the various possible explanations for what he'd heard and the odds on each of them. The likeliest explanation was that the villagers were used to Allectus being asleep or crazy out of his mind, and left the food and the house without saying a word or making a loud noise. That would suit him just fine, of course. The food and the water and the clean clothes would be left beside the door; all he had to do was get from the inner room to the main room without tearing the loose confederation of injuries he called his body.