by K. J. Parker
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Chapter One
He opened his eyes and looked down. He had no idea where he was. A long way below, he could see a man’s body lying in churned-up mud beside a river. It lay sideways, as if in bed, one cheek submerged in a shallow pool, still enough to form a mirror. That struck him as a pleasantly absurd symmetry; one side of the man’s face buried in mud, the other side duplicated by the reflection. There were red splashes in the pool that could be blood or, just as easily, something far less melodramatic. At first he assumed it was a peaceful scene, until it occurred to him to wonder why anybody would choose to sleep in such a position.
Then he heard voices. That was what put him on notice that something was wrong; because one voice belonged to the sleeper, the other quite definitely seemed to be coming from the reflection.
‘I’ve had it with you,’ the sleeper’s voice said. ‘I can’t take any more of this; it’s all completely out of control and I just don’t want to know you any more. And look at me when I’m talking to you.’
(Instinctively he knew that the unconscious body was his own.)
‘You’ve said all this before,’ the reflection replied. ‘You don’t mean it. I’m not listening.’
‘The hell with you,’ the sleeper replied furiously. ‘You know, that’s probably what I hate about you the most, the way you just look away every time I say something you don’t want to hear. Just for once, why can’t you listen to me?’
‘Because you never say anything worth listening to,’ the reflection said. ‘Oh come on, I’ve heard it all before. You aren’t going to leave me, you wouldn’t last five minutes without me to take care of you. On your own, you’re nothing.’
‘My God,’ the sleeper said, after a pause. ‘I’m listening to you, and I can’t believe we ever had anything in common. Get out of here, go away. I don’t want to see you ever again.’
‘Really.’
‘Yes, really. Can’t you understand anything? From now on, as far as I’m concerned, you’re dead.’
‘Charming.’
‘More than that, even. You never existed. I’ve never heard of you. I don’t know your name, or where you come from, or what you’ve been or done – especially that, for God’s sake.’
The reflection laughed insultingly. ‘Oh, right,’ it said. ‘And of course, all that was just me. You were never involved. You never did anything.’
‘No,’ replied the sleeper, ‘I never did. It was all you. And now you’re gone, completely out of my mind, like pulling a bad tooth. You were never here. You never existed.’
‘If that’s what you want,’ said the reflection, sounding offensively reasonable. ‘But I don’t think you want anything of the sort. You need me. You’ll be back. Same as the last time.’
‘No—’
‘Same as the last time,’ the reflection repeated, ‘same as always. But I’ll leave you to figure that out for yourself. You’ll know where to find me.’
‘Like hell,’ shouted the sleeper. ‘I’d sooner die first.’
‘We’ll see,’ the reflection said; then the body stirred and lifted its head, and the movement shattered the reflection, scattering it in waves out to the edges of the pool.
He opened his eyes and looked up. He felt dizzy and his head was splitting. Just now he’d had the most unpleasant feeling, as if he’d been floating in the air and looking down at himself; but that wasn’t how it was at all. Instead, he could see the black silhouette of a crow. It circled a couple of times, then turned into the slight breeze to slow itself down, opened its wings like a sail and glided down, pitching on the chest of a dead man who was lying next to him, a yard or so away. Having landed, the crow lifted its head and stared at him, as if to suggest that he had no right to be there. He remembered about crows; they’ll sit in a tree watching you for hours at a time, and they won’t stir till you leave. But they can’t count; you want to nail a crow with a stone or a slingshot, take someone with you as you walk to the hide; when you’re ready, send your friend out and the crow will watch him till he’s out of sight, then he’ll lift himself into the air on his big, stiff wings, sail in and pitch, right where you want him to be. Very smart birds, crows, with an instinctive knowledge of how far a man can throw a stone, but useless at figuring.
He meant to wave his arms and shout, because you always chase off crows, on principle. All he could manage, it turned out, was a vague flap of his hand and a croak in the back of his throat. It was enough to do the job, however, and the crow opened its wings and lifted, proclaiming as it went the subtle treachery of humans who lie still pretending to be dead, just to fool hard-working scavengers.
Just scaring off a bird was enough to make him feel dizzy and sick all over again. He lay back and stared at the sky, waiting for his memory to come back and explain to him how he came to be lying out in the open next to a dead body. Once he knew that, he’d know what to do; meanwhile, it’d do no harm to close his eyes again, just for a moment—
‘I had to make him go away,’ somebody said. He recognised it as his own voice, the sleeper’s voice from the dream, or hallucination, or vision, or whatever the hell it had been. ‘He was always trouble, nothing but trouble and sorrow. We’ll be much better off without him, you wait and see.’
Will we? he wanted to ask.
‘Just put him completely out of your mind,’ the voice replied. ‘Trust me, I know him. Whatever happens, we’ve got to be better off without him.’
So he opened his eyes again, sat up and looked round. He found that he was in the bottom of a combe, with a rain-swollen river running down the middle. The water had slopped out on to the grass on either side, and where he was lying was churned up into a filthy mess of mud and brown standing pools. In it lay dead bodies, some on their backs, some face down and almost submerged. He was filthy himself, with a black tidemark a hand’s span above both knees, and he was missing one boot, presumably sucked off when he’d stumbled into a boggy patch.
It’s all right, he told himself, it’ll all come back in a moment. He forced himself to stand up, in spite of violent protests from his head and knees. That gave him a better view, a broader perspective, but still none of it made any sense.
He looked down at the dead man lying next to where he’d been, trying to read him through the mud. A soldier, because he was wearing armour (boiled leather cuirass and pauldrons, cheap and cheerful and fairly efficient so long as you fight in the dry; over that a rough woollen cloak so sodden with blood and dirty water that it could’ve been any colour; trousers the same, the toes of the boots just sticking up out of the mud); cause of death was either the big puncture wound in the pit of the stomach or the deep slash that started under the right ear and carried on an inch or so into the leather of the cuirass, just above the collarbone. His face was just an open mouth and two open eyes, with drying mud slopped incongruously on the eyeballs, but whether it was a friend or an enemy he couldn’t say.
He counted. Two dozen bodies, more or less (he could easily have missed one in the mud), and half of them were dressed like the first one he’d looked at; the other half were scruffier, tatt
ier but kitted out in better armour – good steel scale, fine protection but expensive and a bitch to keep clean – and clothes that had once been good-quality civilian stuff. They didn’t mean anything to him either, and that bothered him a lot, so he went to the trouble of pulling each of them out of the swamp, wiping the muck off their faces so he could see their eyes, but it didn’t get him anywhere. Quite the opposite, in fact, since he went in over his knees more than once in the slough, and the thought of being stuck there, unable to move and with nobody living to pull him out, wasn’t a cheerful one. Fortunately, by going flat on his face and clawing hard at the grass with his hands until the mud let go of his knees, he managed to get away with it. Apparently that was something he had a knack for.
By now he was painfully tired and painfully thirsty. Even so, he didn’t fancy the river, at least not until after he’d lugged out the two bodies, lodged in a big patch of briars, whose blood was fouling the water. Then he drank, and that made him feel much better, though not inclined to stir much from where he was lying, belly down, back in the mud again. But it occurred to him that if the bodies he’d just cleared out of the stream were still bleeding, it followed that the fighting must’ve been quite recent – and that there had been two sides to the fighting, and he didn’t know which one he belonged to. It could easily be the case that the friends of one side or the other were out looking for them, that they could show up here at any moment. Of course, they might be his friends too, and overjoyed to see that he’d made it. Or they might not.
He lay in the dirty water, unable to make up his mind. It could be that he was on the home side, that this was his native valley and when his memory came back he’d simply walk home over the hills, have a bath and go to bed. Or he might be the last survivor of a raiding party, trapped a hundred miles behind enemy lines, in which case his only chance of ever getting out alive would be to find his own people quickly, before they gave him up for dead and withdrew. Or they might all be dead, and every living soul he’d be likely to meet would be his enemy, ready to kill him on sight. He thought about that, and realised that he hadn’t a clue what he looked like. If he knew that, surely it’d give him some idea of which side he’d been on.
He found a pool large enough to show him his reflection, but the face he saw in it could have been anybody, some stranger. He saw a man with his hair plastered down over his face with mud, a tidemark down one side of his face, traces of clotted blood gathered in the socket of the left eye; two days’ growth of beard, a long, straight nose, someone who was either younger than he looked or older than he felt; a mess. No armour, nothing that looked like military uniform or the clothes the other side were wearing (he was thinking of them as the other side, but only because the first body he’d come across was one of the uniformed soldiers) and no empty scabbard or sheath to suggest he’d been carrying a weapon. One civilian left alive, two dozen dead soldiers. Of course, any moment now he’d remember it all and everything would make sense – assuming he lived that long.
Big assumption. Give him five, ten minutes and he’d have his life back again, he’d know what to do. How long would it take for a troop of cavalry to get from the skyline to the riverbank? Two minutes, maybe three. In many ways he wasn’t as smart as a crow, but he could figure. It was time to go.
Halfway up the western side of the combe was a small clump of tall, thin trees with a little scrubby patch of ferns and briars tangled round the edge, enough to hide a man in if he didn’t mind getting scratched all to hell. It was as good a place as any to lie up and wait for himself to come back. (But if I’m hidden, how will I know where to look for me? Because it’s the only scrap of cover in this whole valley, fool. Obvious place to look.) As an afterthought, he dragged a left boot off the nearest dead man and crammed his foot into it – a size too big, much better than a size too small; as a second afterthought, he pulled off the man’s cloak and sword-belt, squelched ten paces up the slope, thought about going back to look for a rations bag or a water bottle, decided against it. After all, he’d only be laid up there for half an hour, an hour at most, just as long as it took him to remember himself.
He put up two crows as he bustled a way through the briars; they must hate me, he thought, I’ve been doing nothing but get in their way ever since I woke up. They circled a couple of times, swearing at him, then headed off due south, flying awkwardly and with obvious effort, like a man wading through mud.
Something was happening down below by the river. He crawled to the edge of the briar tangle, where he could see.
A dozen horsemen, soldiers, were riding at a smart gallop over the opposite crest. As they felt the soft ground under their horses’ hooves, they slowed down – dangerously easy for a horse to slip and break a leg on a slope in the mud – and walked the rest of the way. Before they reached the river, the man in front held up his hand, a signal to halt; then he dismounted, gave his reins to the man behind him, and walked carefully (not wanting to go arse over tip in front of the men) to the edge of the muddy slough. Didn’t have to see his face to sense the hesitation before he stepped into it – horror at what he was looking at, shock at the death of friends, or he really didn’t want to get his shiny black riding boots covered in mud and filth.
The horseman – he was a soldier, no question about it; but infuriatingly, his clothes and armour didn’t match with either side, he was wearing a knee-length mailshirt (terrifyingly expensive, and after an hour or so your neck and shoulders start hurting like you wouldn’t believe) and a tall conical helmet bulled up to a mirror shine, and a small round shield, bowcase and quiver were slung over his back – the soldier squelched through the mud like a fine lady crossing a farmyard, knelt beside the nearest body and peered at it, lifting the head; gently let it back, moved on to the next, and the next. He was examining the bodies from both sides with the same care and respect (if they were enemy bodies, would you lift the head gently then lower it softly again after you’d looked, or would you just use the toe of your boot?). And he was definitely looking for something or someone, rather than examining them for cause of death or any other evidence of how the fight had gone. Conclusion: they’re looking for me. Maybe; or they’re looking for someone else who was supposed to be here, but who escaped or got taken away. That was a thought; he’d been assuming that these two dozen dead men had fought to the death, each killing the other in a graceful act of symmetry so as to leave him the perfect puzzle when he came round. Bad assumption, made for the sake of keeping the problem confined. Bad assumption; all assumptions bad, though some worse than others, like assuming the battle had been for or about him, or that it hadn’t. This was no time to trust or take chances; better to keep well clear, like the crows, and wait till all the humans had gone and it was safe.
Whatever else the horseman may have been, he was efficient and quick in making his inspection, and when he was through he dragged himself back on his horse (he was tired, too, probably anxious to get home, change into some dry footwear, have something to eat) and gave the signal to move on. They didn’t go back the way they’d come, he noticed; instead they followed the combe parallel to the river until they were out of sight over the horizon.
Getting out of the briar tangle was significantly harder than getting in . . . The brambles ran their fingers down his face and tugged at his clothes like children wanting attention, as if they were sorry to see him go. Affection, he remembered, I guess I’ve known what that feels like. But it was easier to get out of my life than a patch of briars.
Nothing had changed; still the river, the mud and the bodies. He had a feeling it would get dark in the next hour or so. He still couldn’t remember anything, not his name or his nationality, or why he was here or what had happened. For the first time, he made himself contemplate the possibility that he could be like this for days, or weeks – and what would happen to his life while he was away from it? For all he knew it was about to catch fire or boil over, or starve to death; or maybe he’d walk out of this and back into it
and nobody would realise he’d even been away. No doubt about it, he was frightened, and the worst part of that was not knowing what he ought to be frightened of. Taking a deep breath, he made a resolution: to be afraid of everything, on principle, until he was sure it was safe. It worked for the crows, after all; and so far they were the only role models for survival that he had.
Ah yes, survival; not just a matter of keeping out of the way of swords and spears, you also had to eat and drink. He had an idea that a lot of people found it hard enough to manage even with their memories intact; it was difficult, not something that came by light of nature. It would probably be a good idea to get away from here and go somewhere else, somewhere he could find food and shelter, a change of clothes, the things he’d need in order to be still alive when his life decided to come back (idiotic, suddenly to remember that he was the crown prince or an incredibly wealthy merchant seconds before dying of starvation or exposure). The thought made him smile – so what am I supposed to do, settle down and get a job? Hell, I don’t even know if there’s anything I can do. Walking into some village – assuming there were villages nearby for walking into – and telling people the truth; that didn’t appeal to him for some reason, too dangerous. Maybe the first village he came to would turn out to be the one where he’d been captured after a life of highway robbery, where the soldiers had collected him to take him back to the city to stand trial. Maybe he’d been there before, hours or days earlier, to burn or pillage or maybe just to collect taxes—
It was starting to rain. He looked up at the sky, which was grey and low. Heavy rain about to set in for a long time, not a comforting thought. He could be sensible and crawl back under the briars till it passed over (but he didn’t want to do that) or he could start walking and hope he found a wood or a barn, something like that. As for a direction to walk in, he had no idea, other than a certain reluctance to go either where the horseman had come from or gone to. That still left him with a choice between east and west, far more choice than he actually wanted. He chose west because that was where the rain was coming from, and it was marginally less uncomfortable having it at his back than in his face.
