by K. J. Parker
Poldarn shook his head. 'Names don't mean anything to me. Tell me how long we've known each other.'
'Since sixth grade, actually,' Torcuat replied. 'At least, we were in the same class, but so were a hundred other kids. You were always the high flyer, of course; four months in sixth grade and then straight on to seventh. I was stuck in sixth for another two years, and by then you were a junior proctor. Then you were my-'
'Tutor in swordsmanship for six months,' Poldarn said. 'You were clumsy. In fact you were worse than clumsy, you were a menace to yourself and others. You even dropped your sword once, I wanted to have you thrown out of the school-'
The monk grinned, and pulled up the left leg of his trousers to show his ankle. 'There,' he said, 'see it?'
Poldarn saw it very clearly indeed: a crescent-shaped pink scar, just above the bone. He could remember the same mark when it was gushing blood; how he'd almost panicked, for just a moment convinced himself that one of his students was going to bleed to death right there in the schools, and that'd be the end of his teaching career. He looked up at Torcuat's face.
'I remember you,' he said. 'You used to keep-'
He couldn't say the words.
'A crow in a cage,' Torcuat said. 'Horrible, mangy old thing, and it wouldn't eat table scraps-just my luck, a gourmet crow; I had to go scrabbling about in the cellars hunting mice for the useless bloody creature, and even then it wouldn't touch them till they were three days old.'
Poldarn took a step back and to the side, putting all four monks back into position, like a king granting a reprieve to condemned men already standing on the gallows drop. 'It had a gold ring round its neck,' he said.
Torcuat laughed. 'Brass, actually,' he said. 'It was a curtain ring, from the big hall at home. About the only thing I ever had to remember home by, actually; I left when I was six. It was you held that damned crow still while I shoved that ring down over its head-'
'Poldarn. It was supposed to be Poldarn's crow.'
Torcuat was beaming now. 'You do remember,' he said.
'Yes, that's right. We had that southern kid in the dormitory with us, we wanted to scare him out of his wits because he believed in Poldarn, and seeing the crow… You know, I'd forgotten that myself till you reminded me.'
Poldarn took a step forward and left. 'The woman I came with,' he said. 'What's happened to her?'
The abrupt change of subject seemed to take Torcuat a little by surprise. 'I don't know,' he said, fluently enough. 'I guess she'll be going back to Sansory, unless she feels like staying here for a while. Weren't you two doing a good trade down in the town? Maybe she'll be hanging on for a day or so, carrying on the good work.'
That would, perhaps, explain the cart. 'I think I'd like to go back for my book now,' Poldarn said.
Torcuat shook his head. 'Sorry,' he replied, 'but we've kept the escort hanging about long enough as it is, standing around chatting like this. Under the circumstances, of course-' His eyes lit up. 'I know,' he said. 'What if I were to change places with the escort sergeant? Then we could carry on talking about old times, and you-'
He didn't draw. Instead, he swung his fist, smacking Torcuat so hard on the point of the chin that the monk dropped immediately, like a sheaf thrown out of a hayloft. For a moment the other three hesitated, unable to cope with an assailant who hadn't drawn and therefore couldn't be restrained with deadly force. The moment was long enough for Poldarn to take four quick, short steps backwards, clearing their circles.
'What the hell do you…?' one of them shouted, and the captain of the escort lifted his head and stared. By then, though, Poldarn was standing beside the horse so thoughtfully provided for him (but there would always be a horse standing by when he needed one, and a sword ready to his hand when he felt the inclination to spill blood). He mounted awkwardly, his foot slipping out of the stirrup at his first attempt, but he still had time in hand when he grabbed the reins and pulled the horse's head round, facing it away from the gate and towards the inner yards. Tactically it was a mistake-not running to any place in particular, just running away-but just for once, when he wanted choices there weren't any.
As he passed under the gate arch, a monk with a staff stepped out of the shadows about twelve yards in front of him. He pitied the poor fool as he reached for his sword, but the monk took a step forward, turned sideways and threw the staff at him like a javelin. The squared-off point hit him in the middle of his chest; he felt his feet drop out of the stirrups, then all he saw was dancing sky, until something very broad and fast-moving slammed into his back.
The monk put a boot across his throat before he could move. Neither of them said anything.
'Well done.' He couldn't look round, of course, but he recognised Torcuat's voice. 'Is he damaged?'
The monk shook his head. 'Shouldn't be,' he said.
'That's all right then. Bastard nearly broke my jaw,' Torcuat went on, his voice suggesting that he found it hard to understand how anyone could bring himself to resort to violence. Someone stooped down and relieved Poldarn of his sword. So this is what losing feels like, he said to himself. Actually, it's even worse than I'd imagined.
They lifted him up, and two monks held his hands behind his back while a third tied his wrists together with thin, sharp cord. 'What was all that about, anyway?' Torcuat asked. 'One moment we were talking about the Poldarn legend, the next you were trying to ram my teeth down my throat. Was it something I said?'
They turned him through ninety degrees so that he was facing the main gate. Of course, the fifty horsemen, his cavalry escort, had been watching the whole time. Most of them hadn't moved. He wondered what they were making of all this.
'I told you,' he replied. 'I want to go back for my book.'
'What? Oh, there really is a book, then. I thought you were joking.' Torcuat rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Why didn't you just say so?'
'I did. You didn't seem to be listening.'
'Oh, for pity's sake.' Torcuat shrugged, then turned to one of his colleagues. 'Be a good man, run up to the provost's office, get him to open up our friend's locker and find this book of his.' He looked back at Poldarn. 'You haven't got more than one book, have you? I wouldn't want him fetching the wrong one.'
Poldarn shook his head. With his hands tied and the monks bracing his feet with their own, it was about the only part of himself he could move. Curious, he thought. When I didn't know who I was, I could do any damn thing I liked. Now I'm me again, and I can't even wipe my own nose.
'That's all right, then,' Torcuat said. 'Otherwise, we could be here all day. Right, if you'd be kind enough to follow me.'
They marched him across the yard and lifted him like a dead weight into the saddle. Two monks passed a rope around his waist and tied it to the pommel (attention to detail…). By the time they'd finished, the monk was back with Poldarn's book and had tucked it into his saddlebag.
'Cheer up,' Torcuat called out after him as the escort moved off. 'You'll probably find you like it when you get there.'
Six horsemen held perfect position around him: two in front, two behind and one on either side, making rescue as impossible as escape. They'd put his sword back in its scabbard, but since he couldn't even reach it with his teeth, thanks to the rope around his waist, he couldn't imagine it being much use to him. The main street of the lower town was just as empty as when he'd last seen it, but there was quite a long line at the gate (they rode round it) and most of the people waiting in it seemed to be staring at him as he went past. He assumed that they were looking at the monk's habit and issue boots he'd been given to wear, and were wondering what a brother of the order could possibly have done to warrant forcible restraint and expulsion under heavy guard. Their faces suggested that they were watching a god being thrown out of heaven. That reminded him; he looked up at the branches of the trees beside the gate. No crows anywhere.
(Figures, he thought. No cart, no priestess, no superhuman strength and skill with weapons. Why would a crow waste his t
ime looking at me now?)
He wondered what they would do to Copis; whether they'd done it yet; whether he'd ever find out. What a terrible thing it must be, he thought, to be a soldier dying in the middle of a battle, never knowing whether his side won or lost. Victory in war must go to the party the gods favour most, the one with right on its side (or where was the point in it?); to die without knowing if you'd been right or wrong was a special kind of torture that the gods must reserve for only the most hopelessly evil and depraved.
An hour after Deymeson dropped down out of sight behind the horizon, the column stopped suddenly. It was open country, apart from a large wood a few hundred yards away on the left and a small, steep hill crowned with five spruce trees beyond that. There was no obvious reason for stopping here.
A horseman detached himself from the front of the column and rode back to the middle, where Poldarn was. He stopped his horse a yard or so away.
'Recognise me?' he said.
Poldarn nodded. 'You were at the council meeting in the abbot's lodgings,' he said.
'That's right. And?'
Poldarn thought for a moment. 'Say something else,' he said.
The monk was short and fat, with very curly grey hair and a rather babyish face. 'All right,' he said. 'What'd you like me to say?'
'I don't know. Anything that comes into your head.'
The monk shrugged. 'All right,' he said. '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 Lucky-'
'It's you,' Poldarn interrupted. 'You broke into my room at the inn last night.'
The monk's expression didn't change. He was definitely the right height and build. 'Did I?' he said. 'I don't think so. You probably had a dream.'
'I'm sure it was you. Why have we stopped?'
The monk grinned. 'Do you really want to go and join up with Prince Tazencius? I have an idea that the welcome he'd give you would be enthusiastic but probably not enjoyable.'
Poldarn shook his head. 'You know,' he said, making an effort to move his arms and failing. 'You know, I don't think I'd really have much of a choice in the matter, even without all these damned annoying ropes. You could call it predestination, I guess.'
'You haven't got any choice,' the monk said. 'Luckily for you, though, I do. Several choices. For instance, I could have you killed, right here and now, or I could let you go free on your solemn undertaking not to be a pest in future. Or a nice sensible compromise, later on when we've finished and we don't need you any more. Wouldn't that be best?'
'No,' Poldarn replied. 'Letting me go's still the best one you've mentioned so far.'
The monk laughed. 'No, you're too valuable,' he said. 'But as it happens, that's exactly what I'm going to do: cut the ropes and let you go free. I'll even ride with you to Cric, make sure you get there.'
The name Cric was, of course, very familiar. 'What would I want to go there for?' he asked.
'Don't worry,' the monk replied. 'It's where Cronan's camp was, last time I heard. I don't suppose anybody's going to take issue with you because of what you did and who you were the last time you were there, and even if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. It's Cronan's personal guards you want to worry about.'
Poldarn frowned. 'Why?' he said. 'Won't they recognise me?'
This time, it was the monk's turn to look confused. 'Surely that's the point,' he said. 'What we've got to do is try to get you past them before they recognise you. I'm sorry if this sounds unduly negative, but being handed over to Tazencius would be a positive pleasure compared with what Cronan'd do to you. And when all's said and done, you can't really blame him after the way you've treated him.'
Ah, Poldarn thought. Not the same voice, then, after all. He looked round for a crow with something in its beak, but there wasn't one anywhere to be seen. Then another explanation occurred to him. 'Just remind me,' he said. 'My memory's been weak for so long I don't seem to be able to remember anything for very long. What was my name again?'
A long moment of silence. 'Stellicho,' the monk said. 'How could you have forgotten that?'
Poldarn nodded. 'That's right,' he said. And why am I going to General Cronan's camp?'
The monk sighed impatiently. 'To kill him, of course. We sent our best man, but he's obviously failed. Then suddenly you turn up again out of the blue-either by coincidence or Poldarn heard our prayers and sent you. Can't you remember anything?'
'It's coming back to me,' Poldarn said, 'I just need to be reminded. So why did the abbot say I was being sent to Tazencius?'
The monk scowled. 'Because of what you did,' he said, 'the reason you ran away in the first place. Don't say you've forgotten that too.'
'I'm not sure, I mean, I may not be remembering it straight. You tell me.'
'You killed-sorry, let's not mess about. You murdered a brother; your father tutor, not to put too fine a point on it. Which is why the abbot sentenced you to death. Sending you to Tazencius because you'd lost your memory and didn't know what you'd done to him-well, Father Abbot has a weakness for poetic justice. For my part, I think it's a waste of resources. As far as I'm concerned, the deal is that if you manage to kill Cronan you'll be the saviour of the order and the empire and the abbot's bound to give you a free pardon. If not-well, you're dead already, and the term "no great loss" springs readily to mind. Does that seem fair to you?'
Poldarn nodded. 'So the abbot doesn't know you're doing this. You're disobeying orders.'
The monk smiled. 'I'm a member of chapter and a councillor,' he replied. 'I do what's best for the Order. Now, you have a choice. Don't take too long about it, I'm getting cold hanging around in this wind.'
Poldarn glanced at the escort. They were sitting still, quiet, upright in the saddle as good troopers should. If the monk's story was for their benefit, they didn't appear to be paying much attention. On the other hand they were sword-monks, probably trained from childhood in secret unobtrusive eavesdropping techniques. 'That's not my idea of a choice,' he said. 'If I manage to kill General Cronan, will you let me go? Really let me go, I mean.'
'Of course,' the monk replied, 'if that's what you want. You can go back to Sansory and your lady friend and spend the rest of your life selling buttons, if that's what you want.'
Copis, Poldarn thought, but of course he couldn't trust anything the monk had told him. 'I think so,' he said. 'If this was my old life, I reckon I'd be well out of it. Horrible way to live, if you ask me.'
'I'm sorry to hear you talk like that,' the monk replied, and he sounded quite sincere. 'You were my student, you know, for two years. I'd never met anybody that age with such an intuitive grasp of abstract theology.'
'Thank you,' Poldarn said. 'What's abstract theology?'
The monk kept his promise and had one of the horsemen untie the ropes. Poldarn hadn't realised how cramped and painful his arms had become until he had the use of them again. 'Of course,' the monk warned him, signalling the column to move on, 'if you even look like you're thinking about trying to escape, I'll kill you myself. Please don't make the mistake of thinking I like you,' he added, with a little smile. 'I don't. In fact, it's only the extreme unlikeliness of your getting out of Cronan's camp alive that's reconciling me to doing this. If I thought there was a serious risk of you surviving, I'd cut your throat now and deal with Cronan myself. I just thought I'd tell you that,' he went on. 'Just in case nobody's thought to mention it to you.'
After that nobody said anything for a long time. They were making good progress without hurrying unduly, which suggested to Poldarn that they had a long way to go. He still didn't have a very clear picture in his mind of where Deymeson and Cric were in relation to each other; his mental geography was calibrated in other units besides measurements of physical distance. He let his mind wander-very easy to do when you're riding a horse and not having to navigate for yourself-and found himself humming a tune. It was, of course, the only tune he knew: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tre
e, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, And along comes the Dodger and he says, 'That's me.'
The monk had made him think of it, of course, by reciting the words just now. He hummed it a little louder, and suddenly realised that all the horsemen near enough to be able to hear were staring at him.
'Sorry,' he said. 'It wasn't that bad, was it?'
None of them said anything, but the look on their faces was pure hatred. But, since Poldarn had decided by now that he didn't like them either, he carried on humming even louder. Needless to say, they were too well trained and disciplined to rise to the bait, which was fine, too, since he didn't want to fight anybody, just be annoying. He started to sing: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree He wasn't, he realised, a particularly good singer. He resolved not to let that deter him. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree 'Do you mind?' said the horseman to his left. 'If you must sing, perhaps you'd care to sing something else.'
'I don't know anything else.'
'Oh, come on.' He could tell that the man was furiously angry about something, for all that he sounded like a man discussing the best way to grow carrots. 'Of course you do. The Vespers hymn. The "Come, Shining Light". How about "There Is No Rose"?'
Poldarn shook his head. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Don't know any of them.'
'You must do, you're a brother of the order.'
'What, are they religious songs or something?'
That, apparently, made the man too angry to speak at all. Poldarn shrugged and went back to singing the song about the crows, softly, under his breath, but just loud enough that the horseman would know what he was doing. At one point he noticed the monk looking round at him and frowning, but he pretended he hadn't noticed. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree It was the kind of tune that works its way into your head and stays there, itching and annoying, like a burr in your shoe or a little strand of meat lodged between two teeth. It was getting on his nerves now. He made a special effort to stop singing it and put it out of his mind. A few minutes later he realised he'd started singing it again. Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree There was an old dry-stone wall on the north side of the road, and behind it a stand of spruce trees; seventy years or so ago, someone had planted them out for timber, but he'd died or gone away before thinning the stand out, and the trees were far too crowded and close together; they'd grown up spindly and crooked, no good for anything. Poldarn could see where a few of the tallest and weakest had blown down, falling halfway before their branches fouled in those of their neighbours and stopped them, allowing briars and other green rubbish to spring up and tangle their shoots in the thin, dead twigs. Holly and birch and hazel had sprung up to fill in the gaps, turning the copse into a fortified position. Poldarn smiled; talk about your tall thin trees Two crows got up and hung circling in the air, almost directly above his head, screaming abuse at him He was still singing, instinctively, without thinking. And so was somebody else: Old crow sitting in a tall thin tree, And along comes the Dodger and he says, 'That's me.'