Pattern

by K. J. Parker

  Poldarn could feel anger building up inside him, a massive force of rage and fury pressing against his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. ‘I’m really sorry you feel that way,’ he said, ‘and if I’d known, of course I wouldn’t have said anything. I promise you, I won’t do it again if it bothers you so much. Does that make it any better, or are you still mad at me?’

  Eyvind shook his head. ‘I don’t know about you, really,’ he said. ‘First time we met, remember, I tried to kill you. And you killed Cetel, my best friend who I’d known since I was a kid – in self-defence, sure, and neither of us had a clue at the time who you were, so I’m not blaming you or anything. But at the time I had a feeling that we weren’t going to turn out to be lucky for each other, one way or another. Oddly enough, it was you I felt sorry for. I got the impression you’d come out worse for us having met. But then again, I get these feelings every now and again, and nineteen times out of twenty they’re just plain wrong.’

  Poldarn wanted the anger to go away, but it wouldn’t. ‘One in twenty,’ he said. ‘That’s a lousy average. In fact, it means that when you get one of these premonitions, there’s a ninety-five per cent chance it isn’t going to come true, so it looks like the best odds are that neither of us is going to come to a bad end. Excellent. You’ve cheered me up no end.’

  Eyvind’s face cracked into a smile. ‘That’s certainly one way of looking at it,’ he said. ‘But I really do think it’s time I went home, just to have a look, see how they’re getting on. Soon as I’m sure they’re all right I’ll come back. Will that do you?’

  Poldarn nodded. ‘That’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry I freaked you out like that. I just didn’t know, that’s all – which is why I need to have you around, to warn me about all this stuff. Otherwise, God only knows what damage I could do without realising.’

  ‘You’ll be fine, trust me,’ Eyvind said, slapping Poldarn hard on the shoulder. It was, of course, the friendliest of gestures, but all Poldarn wanted to do was hit back, hard. He had just enough self-control to keep his hands by his sides. ‘And anyway, I was wrong, probably. After all, that plan you came up with is pretty good – better than the alternatives, at any rate. That’s the trouble with us all thinking basically the same way, we don’t have the capacity to come up with original ideas. Not that we need them in the usual course of things; they only make life difficult.’ He laughed. ‘You know, I bet you think we’re all weird.’

  ‘Yes,’ Poldarn said. ‘Almost as weird as me. Mind you, I didn’t find the Empire was all that rational, if you see what I mean.’

  Eyvind stifled a yawn, and Poldarn realised that he hadn’t had more than a few hours’ sleep over the past few days. ‘Maybe there’s a place somewhere where everybody acts in a sensible, logical fashion and everything’s just fine as a result. Let’s just hope they never get it into their heads to invade, because we wouldn’t stand a chance.’

  The livestock was gone by next morning, along with a third of the men and most of the boys. Rook said they were headed north-west into the open country beyond the Tabletop mountains. ‘Good grazing land out that way, I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘Better than these parts, by all accounts. Never been that way myself, but I once met a man who had. He liked it out there, reckoned that if he ever branched out on his own, that’s where he’d probably go. Big plains, low hills, lots of woods, plenty of water. I’ve always had a fancy to see it, but the chance never came up.’

  Poldarn nodded. ‘So who lives there?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Oh.’ That seemed strange. ‘Why not?’

  Rook shrugged. ‘We haven’t got there yet,’ he replied. ‘In a hundred years, maybe, when we’ve used up all the space between here and there.’ He grinned. ‘I heard an old boy say once, this island is so big you’d be an old man before you walked from one side to the other. He reckoned he’d talked to a man once who tried to sail all the way round it, just to see how big it is. He was gone for six months, and when he came back he said he’d just carried on going north until his crew reckoned they’d had enough, so he turned round and came back. Wonderful country up north, he said, bloody great big forests of cedar and maple, and grapevines growing wild with grapes on ’em the size of duck eggs. Makes you wonder why we stick around here, with that thing – ’ he nodded at the mountain ‘– breathing fire and shitting ash on us. Still, I’m in no hurry to move on, not just yet. Around here suits me fine.’

  Scraping up the ash proved to be harder than anyone had imagined. Asburn vanished into the forge and came out a day later with a massive iron rake-head, twice the size and weight of the regular farm version, which had proved to be far too flimsy and small for the job. His next effort was a third wider again, and was declared satisfactory by Halder and the raking crews. Poldarn, who’d never been so tired in his life after a day behind a farm rake on the lower home meadow, was actually glad to be back in the forge, swinging the big hammer for Asburn as he struggled to meet the demand for his new invention.

  ‘Very simple, really,’ Asburn said, when Poldarn asked him how the things were made. ‘Take a good heavy bar, about three fingers wide; good steel if we’ve got it, something like a mill spindle or a waterwheel axle. First, make your socket; then take a good yellow heat about a forearm long, split the bar with the hot sett, bend the legs out at right angles and twist ’em half a turn, put the flatter on ’em and punch your holes for the tines; ordinary chain stock for the tines, a little finger long and thick, just draw ’em out, swage down a tenon to fit the hole, then rivet ’em in hard. Harden and temper, and that’s all there is to it.’

  Poldarn had come to dread that last phrase; but all that was asked of him was to hit the hot metal as hard as he could, so he didn’t really care. For once, Asburn was working hard and fast, not stopping to measure up every five minutes or to agonise over a slightly asymmetrical taper or a tiny ding from a misplaced hammer strike. In this mood, he worked so fast that Poldarn’s arms started to hurt and the side of his right little finger chafed into a long, fat blister; but it was better than standing around. What mattered was that he was working, helping, contributing, earning his keep—

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?’ Asburn said, as they waited for the steel to get hot. Asburn was working the bellows with his left hand, making it look as easy as swishing a fan on a pleasantly warm day. Poldarn had had to give up that duty on grounds of exhaustion. ‘I mean, it’s very kind of you, but don’t they need you in the fields, or in the house?’

  ‘Need me for what?’ Poldarn replied, as he bound his blistered finger with a piece of rag.

  ‘Well, to sort things out, make sure it’s all being done right. After all, it’s all your ideas, surely you should be there.’

  Poldarn sighed. ‘They seem to be getting on just fine without me,’ he said. ‘In fact, nobody’s asked me about anything since the meeting. Which is good,’ he added, ‘because they know what needs to be done and I don’t. I really wish I’d kept my face shut at that meeting – all I did was give people the wrong idea about me. I think Eyvind was ready to smash my face in at one point.’

  Asburn frowned. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What, do you mean he was angry or something?’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’

  ‘But why? What was there to be angry about?’

  Poldarn laughed. ‘Pretty much everything I said, I think. And, looking back, I can see his point. After all, it’s not for me to come in here telling everybody what to do. God only knows what got into me.’

  Asburn shook his head. ‘That’s not how it was,’ he said. ‘After all, you’re Halder’s next of kin, when he’s gone you’ll be the farmer. Of course it’s your place to speak for us. I mean,’ he went on, drawing the billet out an inch or so to check on its colour, ‘it’s not like you were ordering us about; and even if that’s what you were trying to do – well, it’d never work, it’d be like trying to harden soft iron, it simply wouldn’t t
ake.’

  Poldarn raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I guess it’s a bit like this,’ Asburn said. ‘And I’m really not sure if this makes any sense, because to tell you the truth I’ve never really had to think about this sort of thing before, like you don’t have to think about how to breathe, you just do it. But anyway; suppose Haldersness is a man’s body. We’re all the different parts of it – hands, feet, joints, bones, muscles, lungs and so on. Halder’s the head, and you’ll be the head when he’s gone. The head doesn’t tell the feet what to do, it’s just the part of the body where the command comes from. Otherwise it’d be like saying that if you punched someone, it was your hand’s fault, not yours. Oh shit,’ he added, jerking the billet out of the fire; there were tiny white sparkles dancing on the extreme end, where the steel was thinnest. ‘Serves me right for chattering,’ he added, swinging the billet through the air and laying it across the beak of the anvil at precisely the right angle. ‘When you’re ready.’

  Poldarn lifted the hammer and struck; and by the time he’d beaten the bar from white through yellow and dull red into scale grey, the subject had gone cold as well, and he didn’t try to raise it again. But that didn’t stop him thinking about it; particularly the references to when Halder was gone, when Poldarn would take over and become the farmer. Very bad idea, he couldn’t help feeling, because he’d be a head that couldn’t communicate with the rest of the body, and Haldersness would become one of those people who end up paralysed because of some horrific accident, and all they can do is move their eyes. If that happened, it’d be a worse disaster than the volcano. Maybe the best thing would be if I just went away one night and didn’t come back. So, what would happen if he did that? Either they’d have to choose someone else to be the farmer, or they’d all split up and go their separate ways; Rook would go north to the wonderful empty pastures he’d always wanted to see, Asburn could build his own forge and actually be the smith instead of a caretaker-impostor, things would get back to normal and Poldarn – I’d be free again, he heard himself think, just me to think about, and nothing but what I can carry. I don’t suppose I can go back to the Empire; but why shouldn’t I go north and build my own farm there, just me and an axe and a scythe and a bag of seedcorn—

  Ridiculous. Sooner or later, of course, he’d be doing all that right here – building his house, sowing his first crop, shearing his own sheep and raising his own calves; and the house would be called Ciartanstead, and you can’t own a farm more emphatically than by giving it your own name. Running away from Ciartanstead, from the wood his grandfather had planted for him on the day he had been born, was nothing more or less than running away from himself; and that, it went without saying, would be just plain impossible.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘We can probably get along without you for a day or so,’ Halder said suddenly. ‘Why don’t you go over to Colscegsford? You should go and see how they’re getting on.’

  Poldarn was so taken aback by this unexpected reprieve that he almost forgot to take the hot iron out of the fire. ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Splendid. You might like to take the dun gelding, it could do with the exercise.’

  Disconcerting; but so was everything at Haldersness, and the thought of getting out of the forge and not having to bash steel bars into ash rakes for a couple of days was almost intoxicating. ‘I’ll go first thing in the morning, then,’ he said.

  Halder shrugged. ‘You could go now if you like. I’m sure Asburn can cope.’

  ‘Sure,’ Asburn confirmed, and there was just a faint hint of relief in his voice. That wasn’t very flattering, but Poldarn could sympathise. They’d been cooped up together in the dark heat of the forge for five days while the rest of the household had been out in the fresh air raking ash, and what little they’d had to say to each other had been said a long time ago. He liked Asburn, of course – what was there not to like? Nevertheless.

  He found the horse saddled, groomed and ready at the mounting block, with saddlebags packed with bread and cheese, a heavy riding coat rolled up and strapped to the back of the saddle, and a light hand-axe with a long, slender handle hanging from the pommel by its wrist-loop. Nobody offered to tell him what the axe was supposed to be for, and he didn’t feel up to asking.

  Another thing nobody told him was how to get to Colscegsford but that was all right, since Eyvind had pointed out the head of Colsceg’s combe – you could just about see it from the Haldersness porch, on a clear day – and once he’d found that it’d be easy enough to find the house. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back,’ he told Halder as he shortened his reins and crammed his broad-brimmed felt riding hat onto his head. ‘Figure on a couple of days, at least.’

  ‘You take your time and don’t rush,’ Halder replied with ambiguous enthusiasm. ‘If they need you for anything over there, you stay as long as you like.’

  Poldarn decided to assume that that was well meant and ineptly phrased. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Any message?’

  Halder shook his head. ‘Can’t think of anything,’ he replied. ‘Well, you could mention to Colsceg that we could use another half-dozen cartloads of hazel loppings, but there’s no rush for them, we’ve got enough to be going on with. And I expect he’ll have more pressing things to do than go out cutting twigs for us right now.’

  It was undeniably pleasant to go for a ride in the weak sunshine, even though the crunch of ash under the horse’s hooves grated on Poldarn’s nerves every step of the way; undeniably pleasant to be out in the fresh air, each moment taking him further away from Haldersness; undeniably, supremely pleasant to be alone. He had no great opinion of his own company, having had a great deal of it during his time in the Bohec valley, but he’d been working and eating and sleeping surrounded by other people ever since he’d arrived at Haldersness, and he had the feeling that he wasn’t as naturally gregarious as all that. There were times when he felt as if he was getting swallowed up in the household, almost as if he was being diluted, to the point where he no longer existed as an individual; and yet not a single day passed when he didn’t feel the enormous gulf separating him from the others. Probably it’d be no bad thing if he could lose himself in the common mind of the farm. In a way, it was the best thing that could happen to him – since he had so very little of himself – to fill up the empty spaces in his mind with other people’s lives and thoughts and memories. Unfortunately, for all the others’ assurances that it’d all come flooding back any day now, there didn’t seem to be any reason to believe that it really would. In consequence, he was stuck halfway, a perpetual guest in his own house, never quite certain what he should be saying or doing, or where he was meant to be, or where anything was.

  From the top of the valley Poldarn had a fine, clear view of the farm. There was the main house, with the red and white sail incongruously draping the roof; beside it, the barns and sheds and stores, a grouping as large as a small village; behind them the animal pens and the kitchen garden, a splash of browns and greens in the ocean of black ash. Beyond that, flashes of green testified to the tireless efforts of the household and the efficacy of Asburn’s excellent cinder-rakes, while the river sparkled cheerfully in the sunlight, long and silvery as a childhood scar. Under other circumstances, he thought, you’d be hard put to it to find a better spot, and you’d have to be a prince or an earl or a wealthy man to have such a fine spread back in the Empire—

  (– And it’s all mine, or it will be some day, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine. More the other way around, like it owns me.)

  Half an hour further on down the other side of the slope, the Haldersness valley was invisible – you’d never even know it was there unless you happened to know the country. That was a strange thought, that the whole of his new life could be so easily overlooked, when the farm and its people had become his whole, all-enveloping world. Remarkable; a stranger could ride on by, and never know any of it was there (except that there weren’t any strangers in this country, of course, apart f
rom himself).

  The further he went, the less Poldarn enjoyed his day off. On every side there was nothing to be seen but black ash, masking the features of the landscape so that he found it hard to keep his bearings. It was as if someone had covered up the whole island with a dust sheet, like servants in a house to which the master isn’t expected to return for a long time. True, he was heading towards the mountain rather than away from it, but seeing it like this brought home to him the full scope of the disaster. If the stuff dissolved in rain, the mud-slides were likely to be terrifyingly destructive; and if it didn’t, there’d be nothing for it but to pack up and go somewhere else, because it’d take a hundred years just to clean up the Haldersness grazing, assuming there wasn’t more where that had come from. The sight of it made him feel uncomfortable. A fine inheritance this was turning out to be.

  Three hours on, as Poldarn passed the hog’s-back ridge that he’d been told to look out for – it marked the nominal boundary of the Haldersness pastures and the start of Colscegsford land, though from what he’d gathered, nobody really gave a damn – he decided he’d had enough. He dismounted, found the stone jug of strong beer he’d noticed in the saddlebag, and sat down under a scorched-looking thorn tree with the aim of drinking enough beer to restore his sense of perspective. That turned out to be harder to accomplish than he’d hoped; the beer was strong, but not that strong, and as soon as he sat down, a mob of crows formed in the air and circled over him, passing remarks he was delighted not to be able to understand.