Pattern

by K. J. Parker

  ‘You,’ Poldarn said firmly. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have left here, I’d have stayed here and been a good little farmer, I’d never have gone abroad; and hundreds of thousands of dead people would be alive today.’

  A moment of silence. ‘I hadn’t actually thought of it in those terms,’ she said. ‘But no, I think you’re wrong there. Yes, I’m sure of it. After all, if it hadn’t been me there’d have been some other reason, you’d have got yourself into trouble one way or the other. You were born to it, for pity’s sake. You were born because your father raped your mother, and then she killed him. You’re nothing but trouble, you know that perfectly well. Someone whose idea of fun is killing crows isn’t exactly normal, you must admit. For all we know, if it hadn’t been for me, and getting thrown off the Island when you did, you might’ve ended up doing something even worse.’

  Poldarn was extremely angry. ‘Worse? What could I possibly have done that could’ve been worse? I’ve had cities burned down and innocent people massacred. Everybody I’ve known has come to a bad end. Everybody I’ve loved, either they’re dead or they’re so screwed up that they’d be better off dead. And now, as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve come home, started a blood-feud and got my own daughter pregnant. And it’s your fault.’

  Her reply was as cold as ice. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘At every turn you had a choice. You were the one who did all those things. Oh, at the time it was always the right thing to do – for your people, for the cause, to save your skin, whatever. And don’t try pretending that this losing your memory thing excuses anything. When you came back here, you had a perfect fresh start, a whole new life, everything anybody could possibly want – and now look at what you’ve done. You’ve got us fighting among ourselves, killing each other. Nobody else could’ve done that, only you. So leave me out of it, thank you very much. I’m just another one of your victims, and don’t you ever try and pretend otherwise.’

  ‘I did it because I loved you,’ he said quietly. ‘And I thought you loved me.’

  ‘Like you hid the barrel of salt beef? Well, quite. You thought that what you were doing was right. But don’t you see, that’s exactly the sort of person you are. You know what, Ciartan? You’re like a mother polecat in a chicken run. You believe that the right thing to do is feed your babies, so you kill all the chickens. And yes, in a way it is the right thing to do, but you can bet your life nobody else is going to see it that way. You’re like a weapon, Ciartan, an axe or a spear. The right thing for a weapon to do is to kill people and hurt people, and at the right time in the right place, that’s very good. But the rest of the time— What I’m trying to tell you is, it’s in your nature to wreck everything you touch. Maybe you can’t help it, I don’t know. Now, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could be very useful, you could do a lot of good, even. But when you’re out of context you’re a menace, and you ought to be knocked on the head and buried in quicklime.’ She sighed. ‘Nobody would think it to look at you,’ she went on. ‘You come across as dumb and sweet, a bit vulnerable, maybe not the sharpest chisel in the rack but quite endearing, in a passive sort of way. And people see that, and they overlook this simple talent you’ve got for breaking things, and the fact that when you lash out there’s usually something sharp in your hand and people tend to fall down dead. Oh yes, and you have a sneaking suspicion that you’re a god, and it’s your destiny to bring about the end of the world. That really helps things, of course. You know, if you really wanted to help other people and make the world a better place, you’d find a nice strong tree, a milking stool and ten feet of good quality rope.’

  He didn’t answer for a very long time. ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ he said at last. ‘But that’s definitely not going to happen.’

  ‘Please yourself. But you wanted my advice and now you’ve got it. If you’re just going to ignore it, don’t ask me again. And now, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to carry on being dead, please. It doesn’t have a lot to recommend it, but at least it means I don’t have to associate with the likes of you.’

  He opened his eyes; and his first thought was, it’s all right, I never remember my dreams. In a second or so it’ll have gone, and I’ll never know. But for once he was wrong. It was still there in his mind, the whole thing; and he knew it was true. He could remember it all.

  Herda, Colsceg’s second wife: young and very beautiful, but wild and dangerous. That was how he’d thought of her when he’d been eighteen and had seen her for the first time. She was everything he’d dreamed of, and he fell in love like a dead crow tumbling out of the air. Whether she’d loved him or whether she was just amusing herself and pretending, he never knew and didn’t care. The adventure was the main thing, and the tiny brief escape from the unrelenting certainty of Haldersness, where everybody knew what everybody else was thinking, all the time. It hadn’t been Herda’s sweeping red hair or glowing green eyes or the breathtaking softness of her slim body; what he’d fallen in love with had been the opaqueness of her mind, which she could hide from him whenever she wanted (and she wanted, all the time). It was from her that he had somehow picked up the trick of shutting the door on everyone else, keeping them out of the part of his mind where he was really himself. It had been a useful knack, because even he couldn’t prise open that door; whenever he chose he could stop being himself and be somebody quite different, separated and protected from who he really was. But it hadn’t gone well. Suddenly she’d told him she was going to have a baby, and he was the father, and she wasn’t going to see him any more. For a while he’d moped about the place, and nobody had known the reason, though a few people seemed to have had their suspicions – her brother Egil, for one. He found out quite early, somehow or other, but he’d had his own reasons to keep his mouth shut. There had been a morning, he remembered, shortly before the affair ended, when he’d got up just before dawn to go out and decoy crows and he’d met Egil in the yard, with blood all over his face and clothes. Nobody else was up and about and he’d wondered where the boy had been, how he’d managed to get himself in such a dreadful state, so he’d stopped and asked him. Egil didn’t want to say, which made him all the more curious; finally the boy broke down and told him what had happened. He’d been up on the mountainside, exercising his dogs, and two strangers, offcomers from the other side of the island, had come on him unexpectedly. One of the dogs bit one of the men; both men seemed to get very angry and said that they were taking the dogs as their settlement for the bite. Egil was furious and when the men tried to take the dogs he hit one of the would-be thieves on the side of the head with his stick. That was the wrong thing to do. They were big, strong men, and one of them held his arms while the other one slapped and punched him – not hard enough to do any damage, he was most careful about that, but just enough to make him burst into tears and beg the man to stop. Then they’d laughed at him and taken the dogs anyway and Egil had come home; and all he wanted in the whole world was to see them punished. He told him that, and then a strange expression came over his face, and he said, ‘You ought to help me. After all, you’re a friend of the family.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he’d replied. ‘But it’s none of my business, really.’

  ‘I think you ought to do something about it,’ Egil had said. ‘Like I ought to tell Dad a thing or two, only I haven’t. Not yet, at any rate.’

  That had been enough; so he’d gone into the barn and found a small axe. Then he told Egil to take him to the place where he’d last seen the two men. They were easy enough to track down, and when he confronted them, they didn’t seem the least bit worried – not until he pulled the axe out from under his coat and pecked it into the sides of their heads, one after the other, as neat and quick as a bird with a worm.

  Egil was scared stiff, but he’d told him, ‘It’ll be all right, they’re only offcomers. Nobody’s going to miss them, and if they do, they won’t care.’ So they dragged the bodies up the mountain –
it took a long time and wore them out – and pitched them into the big crack where the hot springs burst out. Then they went home, and he’d told everyone a story about having a bad feeling about something and going up the mountain and finding Egil lying there all bloody, after being chased and batted about by a bear. Everyone thanked him and told him how well he’d done; and later on, he took the little axe and tossed it into a ditch, in that same field where he’d killed all those crows a short while before he diverted the fire-stream.

  And that was how Egil had known, and why he couldn’t tell anybody; it was lucky that he’d got a touch of the same knack of hiding his thoughts, because nobody ever seemed to have found out the truth from him. (Though, looking back, there had been that off-relation who’d come to visit, and who’d been so pleased when he’d heard he’d lost his memory; and Hart too. Maybe they’d seen a little of it in Egil’s mind, enough to let them know there was something wrong.)

  Shortly after he’d killed the two men, Herda had told him about the baby; he’d gone to stay with one of Halder’s friends, hoping he’d get over it, but there wasn’t much chance of that. Then some men had called at the farm, talking about going raiding come the autumn, and he’d asked to go with them. They’d said yes, and nobody’d seemed to mind; and on the way there, they’d started talking about how useful it would be to have a spy inside the Empire, someone who’d stay there and find out about the place, stuff that’d be useful to the raiding parties. That seemed like the best possible idea: a new start in a new country where nobody at all knew him, where he’d have a second chance at his life, all the mistakes wiped away.

  He remembered all that; and now he’d come home and married Colsceg and Herda’s daughter, to please his grandfather by beginning a clean new life, his second fresh start. In a way, it was ludicrous, as if the only reason he’d been allowed to forget what had happened for a while was so that he’d stroll blithely into his own trap, do something so unbearably wrong that even he would never have done it if only he’d known. Tactically, it was inspired. Whoever it was who’d thought of it deserved to be congratulated for their imagination, economy of force and painstaking attention to detail.

  Well, he thought; time I wasn’t here.

  It was still early. If he took a horse and rode quickly, he could be on the other side of the mountain before they’d even noticed he was gone. A few days at a good pace, assuming he didn’t get lost and start going the wrong way, would get him to the coast, and it wasn’t long till the start of the raiding season, a few weeks at most before the first ships left for the Empire. Till then, he’d have to find work, doing the sort of thing offcomers and outsiders were allowed to do, but something told him he’d manage somehow or other. One thing he couldn’t do was stay here another day; even if he could still mask his thoughts from the others (from Elja? Little chance of that), it couldn’t be long before Geir’s son got back from telling Colsceg about Elja being pregnant – and what if Egil came back with him? But if he went away immediately, there was a chance that nobody else would ever know; and what nobody knew didn’t exist, for all practical purposes. And one had to be practical, or else how the hell could anybody expect to survive?

  That wasn’t the only reason why he ought to leave; but it would do as well as any other. He stood up, wincing at the cramp in his legs, and went over to the stable.

  When he opened the door, he realised he wasn’t alone. Someone else was in there, he could hear movement. Whoever it was, he was acting as though he had a right to be there; Poldarn heard the sound of a bridle jingling as it was lifted onto a hook. That told him that the stranger had stabled his horse and was putting the harness away neatly, in the proper methodical fashion. Look after your horse before you look after yourself (someone had told him that, years ago, and he knew it was the right thing to do). Taking pains to walk silently, he headed for the sound, and presently he discovered the source. It was Egil.

  Either Egil knew he was there, or it was pure coincidence that he turned round at exactly that moment, leaving Poldarn no time to get out of sight. They stared at each other for a moment; then Egil said, ‘I heard the news.’ He had his saddle in one hand, and a rusty, pitted old axe in the other. Poldarn recognised it as the one he’d found in the ditch.

  ‘What news?’ Poldarn said.

  ‘About Elja, of course,’ Egil replied. Without breaking eye contact, he let the saddle fall off his forearm onto the ground. ‘Judging by the way you’re looking at me, I think you know why I hurried over here as soon as I heard.’

  Poldarn nodded.

  ‘Fine,’ Egil said, ‘because I didn’t want to have to explain it to you, and I reckoned you had a right to know, before we settled things.’

  ‘You think there’s something to settle, then,’ Poldarn said.

  ‘Yes. Don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so. And you look like you’ve made your mind up already, so there’s no point arguing. What sort of settlement had you in mind?’

  Egil shook his head. ‘Seems to me there isn’t much choice,’ he replied. ‘You know what I mean.’

  The axe head was still black, crusted with flakes of rust, but the cutting edge had been worked up recently with a stone. ‘It doesn’t take a mind-reader to know that,’ Poldarn replied. ‘Have you told anybody else?’

  ‘Are you out of your mind? No, of course not. And I’m not planning to, either. The way I see it, there’s only two of us that know, and that’s one too many.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Poldarn could see a hayfork, just out of arm’s reach to his left. ‘I’ll go along with that,’ he said. ‘So, what are you going to do?’

  Egil twitched, as if he’d been about to move but had decided not to, or had found that he couldn’t. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I suppose that if I’d got here and you’d been still asleep, I was going to cut your throat as you lay there. But you’re here now, which is much better. At least we can be straightforward about it.’

  Poldarn took a deep breath, then let it go. ‘You’re going to kill me, then.’

  ‘I don’t really see any other way, do you?’

  ‘Go on, then,’ Poldarn told him.

  Egil stood perfectly still for a moment or so; then he took a long stride forward and swung the axe over his head. As soon as his arm started to move, Poldarn knew that it wasn’t going to be difficult or dangerous, or anything like that. Even as he sidestepped the cut and reached for the hay-fork, it seemed to him as though he was remembering something from long ago, a scene he’d witnessed, maybe something from a recurring dream. The fork handle snuggled comfortably into his right hand; he took a short step diagonally, passing behind Egil’s right shoulder, and as his foot touched the floor the top half of the handle dropped into his left hand. The thrust itself must have happened, because the results were plainly obvious a fraction of a second later, but afterwards Poldarn never could remember what he did. All he remembered was the instant when the tips of the fork’s four slim tines showed through the back of Egil’s coat, like the growing season’s first green shoots.

  Egil slumped off the fork and dropped to the ground in a messy heap. Well then, Poldarn said to himself, there was nothing to that. He stooped down, retrieved the axe and stood up again. It was a pity, of course, a great shame that something like this had to happen, but it was over and done with, so there was no point fretting about it. As luck would have it, Egil had fallen face down, so Poldarn didn’t have to look him in the eye afterwards. By anybody’s standards it was self-defence, though of course Egil had been right in trying to do what he did, just as what Poldarn himself had done was entirely proper and justifiable. After all, they’d agreed beforehand among themselves what the outcome had to be, and that was precisely what had happened. The secret had been contained, and now it only existed in one mind. From now on, Poldarn was the only person who knew; and his word, uncorroborated, was opinion, not fact. Henceforth it would exist only in his memory, and as the years
passed he’d begin to doubt it, wondering if perhaps he could have been wrong, and what he thought was a memory of reality was only a fragment of an undigested dream, taken out of context, vivid enough, perhaps, but entirely false. And what if the circle went round again, and he woke up a second time beside a river, unable to remember his name or anything else? If that were to happen, then none of it would ever have happened, and everything would have been put right.

  He shook his head sadly. It was a great pity that Egil had had to die in order to correct his bad memory, but at least it wasn’t his fault now. The outcome was the main thing. It could have been far worse. It could have taken the mountain blowing wide open and drowning the whole island in molten rock to cover up that false version of history, but luckily it hadn’t come to that. Thank the divine Poldarn for small mercies.

  He chose the small grey mare, as being the least useful and valuable horse to steal; for the moment at least he was still head of this household, so he had a duty to minimise its losses where he could. His hands didn’t shake or anything like that as he saddled and bridled the horse, which gave him a certain degree of satisfaction. It made him feel that he could at least control his own body, and that was always a good feeling to have.

  At the top of the ridge he stopped and wondered if he should look back, take a last sight of Poldarn’s Forge. But the sun was rising, and the whole valley was blotted out in a flare of bright red light, so there wouldn’t really be anything to see.

  If you enjoyed PATTERN,

  look out for

  MEMORY

  The Scavenger Trilogy, Book Three

  by K.J. Parker

  Chapter One

  Precepts of religion. Every victory is a defeat. Every cut made is a wound received. Every strength is a weakness. Every time you kill, you die.