by K. J. Parker
(And then a door opened in his mind, only a crack between door and frame, through which he could see a small part of the landscape behind: a high, square-cut hedge running down a steeply sloping hill, an old man trimming back the hedge with a brush-hook while the boy raked up the spoil; winter, nothing else to do around the farm, so time to tidy up, impose a few straight lines and square edges on the curved and rounded forms of nature; the old man was all straight lines and square edges, he remembered. Of course, he hadn't really been old then, Poldarn realised, he couldn't have been much more than twelve years older than I am now, but to me he was as strong and stern and remote and timeless as a god, undisputed master of two enormous valleys, and everybody else around the place called him the boss, or the owner. He's hardly changed at all in thirty-odd years, but the boy-that's me, I recognise that old green shirt-something must've happened to him between then and now, some great sorrow or trial, or an unwanted apotheosis.)
'I think I remember you,' Poldarn said. 'You had a grey felt hat with a very wide brim. I borrowed it once and left it out in the rain, and it was ruined.'
The old man laughed, a brittle, unhappy sound. 'You were a terror for taking things without asking,' he said, 'and then you'd bust them and pretend it wasn't you. God, how we used to argue about that; you'd never listen, it was like I was talking to myself.'
(That's right, we were never close, never really comfortable with each other. Nothing that mattered to me was ever important to you, and you never even tried to understand me. I was always the next best thing, the grudged and meagre compensation for your fine, dead son. I remember we rode together once in the cart from our farm to somewhere two days' ride away, and we never said a word to each other the whole way.)
'That sounds familiar,' Poldarn said. 'But the name-Ciartan, you said; that doesn't really mean anything to me.'
The old man shrugged. 'Figures,' he said. 'Don't suppose anybody ever called you that above once or twice a year. Mostly you were boy, or you there; son, maybe, when I forgot or I was trying to be nice. Don't remember you ever calling me anything, now I come to think of it. You never did talk much, anyhow.' He sighed. 'But you were a good worker, I'll say that for you, and a quick study, when you could be bothered. God help us, what've you been doing all these years?'
'Well,' Eyvind interrupted (Poldarn had forgotten he was there), 'obviously you two'll have a lot to talk about, so we'll leave you to it. Remember, we're pulling out as soon as it gets dark.' He turned and walked away, grabbing his uncle Sigfus firmly by the elbow as he did so. Uncle Sigfus didn't look like he wanted to go, but he didn't have much choice.
'I don't know,' Poldarn said. 'Sorry, I thought Eyvind had explained. You see, I got bashed on the head and lost my memory-'
'Yes, I heard about that,' the old man interrupted, 'I mentioned it a few minutes ago, or weren't you listening? But you must be able to remember something.'
'No. Well,' Poldarn qualified, 'almost nothing. Just now I remembered a few things about when I was a kid. But they were just scraps, bits and pieces, pictures. I can't remember names of people or places, or anything useful like that.'
'Not much help, then, is it?' The old man shook his head. 'It'll be different once we're home. Soon as you set eyes on Haldersdale and the farm, it'll all come right back, you'll see. You always were mighty fond of the valleys.'
It was starting to get cold, and Poldarn had nothing except what he was wearing. He considered asking the old man if there was a spare coat or blanket, but he decided against it. Showing weakness at this stage of their relationship would probably lead to repercussions later-the old man didn't look like the sort of person who'd forget something like that in a hurry. 'Tell me something about myself, then,' he went on, 'see if that works.'
The old man considered this for a moment, said, 'Very well,' and squatted down on the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet as if he was expecting to have to jump up and fight at any moment. That made him wonder what kind of place this Haldersdale was.
'Well,' the old man said, 'when you came to me you were just a baby; no use to anybody. Had you doing chores round the yard when you were five and old enough to hold a rake; the sort of thing that needs doing, but it's a waste to set a grown man on the job. You were doing things like scraping the yard, turning the apples, fetching the stock in and out of the pens. And that was it, really, till earlier this year. Winds were bad, see, we had to launch the ships early if we were going to get out at all. Same as the year you were born, come to think of it; we left early that year, too, and that was another time everything went wrong. A judgement on us, I guess, for being in such a damn hurry all the time.'
'What about my father?' Poldarn asked quietly.
'Tursten, his name was,' the old man said, looking down at the ground between his knees. 'He was a good boy, Tursten, and just shaping up to be a good farmer. Only his second year out,' he went on, 'and that bitch murdered him. There was no call for her to go doing that.'
My mother, Poldarn thought. Who died today, the day I found my people and family again. Best not to dwell on any of that. He looked up, wondering how the old man would look now that he'd faced that particular issue. To his surprise there was no perceptible difference. Not so strange, at that, he rationalised, since I only met her the once and I couldn't get away from there, here, fast enough. Or maybe I'm just naturally callous. That's possible, too.
'Are there any more of us?' he asked. 'Family, I mean.'
The old man nodded. 'Cousins,' he said. 'My brother Turcram's boy, almost exactly the same age as your father, and he's got four sons-Cari, Stearcad, Healti and Oser. Then there's Eplph's son Turliff, he's got two girls, Renvyck and Seun; and there's the other cousins, over at Colsness. It's not a big family or particularly close, but it's better than being alone.'
'That's good,' Poldarn said, wondering what it must be like to know someone all your life. Very strange, he decided, like being part of a herd of animals or a flock of birds. 'I'll look forward to meeting them,' he added. For once, he seemed to have said the right thing.
'They'll be surprised as all hell to see you again,' the old man said, and this time there was just a little warmth in his grin. 'Which is just as well,' he added, 'it'll take their minds off all this. There won't be a family on the island except ours that won't have lost someone. And we'll be one stronger, instead of two or three less,' he went on, looking over Poldarn's head at the gradually setting sun. 'Well, they say even in the worst times there's always one good thing to every half-dozen bad. Reckon someone must be looking after us, the way things've spun out.'
It was getting noticeably darker, and some of the men were getting to their feet, picking up their things, tightening their bootstraps and hanging the straps of their luggage round their necks. I wonder, Poldarn thought, what it'll feel like, flying back towards the trees and rejoining the mob. Will I still be an individual, or just part of the family? Of course, nobody else in the world but me would ever ask a question like that.
'Is it far to the ships?' he asked.
The old man shook his head. 'Couple of days, day and a half; if we can cover some ground tonight, so much the better. It's their damn horsemen we've got to worry about. One of these days they'll build ships so we can bring our horses with us when we come over, and then we'll show them something, I'm telling you. But you can never find horses in this damn country; probably the government takes all the useful ones for their army.'
They were starting to move out. Nobody gave a signal or blew a horn, nobody specified a direction. 'You dropped this,' the old man said, producing the borrowed backsabre. 'You may need it before we're done.'
Poldarn stood up. 'Tell me about the farm,' he said.
That pleased the old man. 'Haldersholt,' he said. 'It's not a big spread, but it's plenty for us. There's a small river runs down the middle of Haldersdale; that's about a thousand-' The old man said some unit of measurement; it meant nothing to Poldarn, of course. '-And at the end of the valley
there's a deep old combe, more or less at right angles; all wooded on the north side, with a little stream in the bottom, good pasture up the other side, but steep. The farmhouses are where the combe stream meets the river. We've usually got a couple of hundred sheep, a hundred beef stock, thirty-odd milch cows, a few dozen horses; west side of the dale's in plough, we switch ends around every year, plough and fallow. Wheat never comes to much, barley's all right, and there's gardens for greens and stuff out back of the houses; orchards too, and a hop garden. Got our own quarry on the patch, which is a blessing, and a little mill on the combe stream. There's always a few goats and pigs and chickens about the place, but the women see to all that. We had grapevines on the south side of the combe when I was a boy; my father grubbed them up one year in a bad season, but they'd probably take again. There's a few deer in the wood, birds in the season; used to be a salmon weir at the south end of the dale, but we haven't bothered with it in years, not since the Barnsriver people built theirs and fished the river out. Still, we haven't had to trade for anything outside the farm for sixty years, to my certain knowledge-got everything we need, and what we don't need we do without. And that's not much, either.'
'I like the sound of that,' Poldarn said. 'You must have a fair few men working for you.'
The old man gave him a strange look, then shrugged. 'Really have lost your memory, haven't you?' he said. 'That's not how it is back home; I'll explain it to you later, when there's time. But there's, what, fifty or sixty of us at the farm, maybe another half-dozen up at the hill station or the coal pits; like I said, it's not big but it's big enough. You want to meet some of the hands? Left most of 'em behind this time, thank God-so far, we only lost one, back there in the battle. Here,' he went on, lengthening his stride; Poldarn had to trot to keep up, like a little boy. Suddenly the old man stopped, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Two men ahead of them in the group turned their heads and looked round; the old man waved at them to come over.
'This is Raffen,' the old man said. 'You may just remember him; no? Shame. You used to play together when you were kids.'
The man called Raffen was very tall and broad-shouldered, bigger even than the old man. He was bald as well, with a springy ruff of greying black hair ringing his head from ear to ear, and a short, neatly trimmed beard. He didn't say anything, but he nodded, and his eyes said that he recognised Poldarn after all this time, was even glad to see him again. 'Raffen's the head shepherd,' the old man went on, as the two hands started to walk alongside them. 'Only the second time he's been off the farm in his life; figuring it'll be the last, aren't you?'
Raffen nodded again, and pulled a wry face. Poldarn wondered if he was capable of talking.
'The other one's name is Scaptey,' the old man went on, and the tone of his voice changed a little; disapproving and indulgent at the same time, implying that Scaptey was some kind of tolerated rogue, put up with for the sake of some special skill or quality. He was very short for a raider, with bushy fair hair, bright blue eyes and creased brown skin, and he almost seemed to bounce along as he walked. 'Scaptey's a pain in the backside most of the time,' the old man went on, 'but only because he knows he can get away with it. Isn't that right, Scap?'
The little man shrugged. 'Whatever you say,' he replied. 'You know me, never one to argue.'
'When he's not being a pain in the backside,' the old man continued, 'he's a half-decent carpenter, general mender and fixer. Which is to say, he built a new barn last winter and it hasn't fallen down yet. Oh yes, and he's your cousin, two or three times back; he's the grandson of my aunt Ranvay, who married out on the north coast, at Locksriver. I figure we only took him in because it's not right that one of ours should be living with foreigners.'
Poldarn decided that must be some kind of old, familiar joke or taunt between them, because Scaptey pulled a face and even Raffen smiled. For some reason Poldarn felt vaguely annoyed at being left out.
They were setting a brisk pace; he could feel his knees and the calves of his legs aching already (too much riding around in carts, not enough walking… The voice in his mind that said that sort of thing to him was already starting to sound like the old man, like his grandfather. Very briefly, he thought he heard the voice of the god of crows, welcoming him). It was already too dark to see clearly, but he could make out the head of the man in front of him, who seemed to know where he was going, so he followed that. Soon, there was nothing left to see at all, but somehow he knew where the man in front was; the technique worked, he didn't trip over or put his foot down a rabbit hole, and after a while he stopped feeling the pain in his legs as the rhythm of the pace took over.
When they stopped, he stopped, not knowing why or even how he knew to hold still and stay quiet. Something was going on, somewhere up ahead. He closed his eyes and tried to catch some sounds, but he couldn't even hear breathing.
They've run up against something, we've run up against something, so we're sending out our scouts. When they get back, we'll know what it is and decide what to do. He concentrated on standing perfectly still; naturally, the harder he concentrated, the greater was the urge to shift his feet and fidget, so he tried to think of something else instead. He thought about the farm. There was already a picture of it in his mind, but it was flat and artificial, like the paintings on the wall of the inn at Sansory. There was the river, there was the stream, medium blue for water; overhead the sky was bright light blue, and the grass was a uniform fresh green, inlaid at appropriate intervals with fluffy white sheep. He tried thinking about the two men, Raffen and Scaptey; God help me, he thought, I'm about to get on a ship and sail away to the Land of the Archetypes, where everybody's either a strong, silent, faithful retainer or a lovable rogue. He thought about the old man, but somehow his mind skidded off the surface of that thought, like a file on a hardened steel edge. He tried to remember something about home, but he didn't like to get too close to the pictures that came into his mind, for fear that the paint was still wet and might smudge.
Suddenly there was some movement, and up ahead, shouting and thumping. Something fell over with a bump he could feel through the soles of his feet; somebody yelled in pain, at which point he started to walk forward, his hand tight on the sabre hilt, feeling a hard edge where the wood had shrunk a little away from the tang. Someone had lit a torch, several torches, forming a circle of light around a dozen men, and a cart.
'Talk about a slice of luck,' someone was saying, in our language. 'Anybody know who these clowns could be? They look important enough.'
Eyvind's voice: 'Here, somebody find Tursten's Ciartan.' Who? Poldarn realised with a jolt that that name meant him. 'He knows their language, he can translate.'
It was as if someone had put a hand between his shoulder blades and pushed him forward. Men got out of his way without looking round (so how did they know he was coming through?). When he reached the edge of the circle (reached it but hadn't violated it, he was still just about in the dark) he called out, 'I'm here.'
'Splendid,' Eyvind's voice said (Was Eyvind in command? He didn't think so. At least, he hadn't been in command before, but now here he was, deciding what was to be done. Poldarn made a slight effort and adjusted his mind. Eyvind was in command now, for this particular job. When it was over, he'd be subsumed back into the group, the mob, the melt. Apparently, that was the way we do things.)
'Splendid,' Eyvind's voice said. 'All right, I'll say the question, you translate it into their language, then tell me what they say. Ready? Right, here goes. Who are you?'
Poldarn had to think this time, he couldn't just put his hand to his side and draw the words instinctively. 'Who are you?' he said.
No reply. His first instinct was that he hadn't translated it properly, then he realised they'd understood just fine, but they were refusing to say anything back. That struck him as downright rude. He improvised. 'Unless you tell us,' he said, 'we'll take that tall man on the extreme left and cut his hands off. Now, who are you?'
He a
lready knew part of the answer; they were soldiers, probably imperial rather than Amathy house: eight cavalry troopers, four men who looked like officers. One of us was standing up in the cart; he called out, 'Hey, there's another one in here, but he looks like he's sick.'
Poldarn thought for a moment. 'You in the cart,' he called out, 'who are you?'
'That,' replied a weak, ragged voice, 'is actually a rather complicated question. But my name's Monach.'
One of the troopers tried to get up into the cart, presumably to shut the voice up. One of us grabbed him by the shoulder and compressed him to his knees, apparently with no effort at all.
'Monach,' Poldarn said. 'Are you a soldier too? I can't see you.'
'Me? No, I'm a civilian.' There was something about the voice; it was telling the truth, but it was telling it for a reason of its own, probably not fear of death or torture. It was up to something.
'All right,' Poldarn said. 'So who are these people you're with, and what are you doing with them?'
'Why the hell should I tell you that?'
Poldarn had to search his minds for the right words. 'Because if you don't, we'll kill you. Is that a good enough reason?'
The voice laughed, and the laugh broke up into a cough. 'Not really,' it replied. 'Why don't you come over here where I can see you?'
Why indeed? For some reason, Poldarn felt apprehensive about stepping into the light. 'I can talk to you perfectly well from here,' he replied.
'Please yourself. Your voice sounds a little bit familiar, that's all.'
'Yours, too, come to that.' Poldarn frowned. This wasn't helping, and he could feel Eyvind frowning at him. 'Answer the damn question,' he said. 'Who are these people?'
There was a brief silence, then the voice said, 'The medium tall one in the middle is General Cronan.' Two of the troopers twitched, as if they'd been meaning to have a go at rushing the cart, and their nerve had failed at the last moment. 'I don't know the names of the other three, but they're senior staff officers. Congratulations, whoever you are, you've thrown a double nine. I think that means you get a free go.'