by K. J. Parker
That wouldn’t do, not for a moment. Walking through woods, he told himself, was easy. People did it all the time, woodcutters and poachers and all manner of people with far less brains and common sense than he had. Chances were that he hadn’t come more than a few hundred paces from the clearing; maybe the sensible thing would be to swallow his pride, retrace his steps and start again. At least that way there’d be some kind of logical progression behind his actions, instead of this aimless blundering about.
So he tried that, and fairly soon he stopped and admitted to himself that he was now in another completely new and unknown place, a dense thicket of holly on the side of a dry, rocky slope. The holly saplings stood so close together that he couldn’t squeeze between them. ‘We’ll see about that,’ he told himself and set about clearing a path with the backsabre. Thanks to the weapon’s exceptional cutting and edge-holding abilities, he cleared a path nearly six yards long before he became too exhausted to stand.
Of course, he still had the option of retracing his steps . . . This time, he did make it back to the clearing, though for some reason he couldn’t begin to imagine he was on the other side of it, facing the front gate of the millhouse. That bothered him, as did the discovery that the man he’d killed wasn’t there any more.
He searched until he found a patch of blood on the grass and his own discarded sword. There were bootprints in the soft mud beside the millstream that didn’t fit his own boots. He sat down at the foot of the pear tree and thought about the implications of that, with special regard to the implications for his latest idea, of staying where he was and waiting for someone to come and fetch him. On the tramp back from the holly glade, that had seemed an extremely sensible idea; on the other hand, if the men who’d been here since he left the place had carefully retrieved the dead man’s body, it suggested that they were the enemy, and if they’d come here once, they could just as easily come back. It was one of those awkward problems; the more you think about it, the harder it gets. He hated those.
When he considered the matter rationally, he knew that he had no choice but to go back into that loathsome wood and find his people, the war and his life as quickly as possible. Irrationally, though, he couldn’t quite bring himself to stand up, partly because he was worn out, partly because it was quiet and peaceful here, wherever it was, and being here took no effort at all. Of course, he couldn’t stay put indefinitely. Sooner or later he’d need something to eat, and of course he had responsibilities, vitally urgent ones that couldn’t spare him for a moment. If only, he thought, he could have some kind of warranty or affidavit confirming that if he went back in the wood he’d get hopelessly lost all over again and end up coming back here over and over again; then he’d have no choice but to stay and wait and see what happened. Even the prospect of a half-platoon of the enemy bursting out of the undergrowth didn’t bother him as much as it probably should have done. After all, if there were parties of them roaming about the edges of the battle, he’d be just as likely to run into them in the wood as out here, and if he stayed where he was there was some chance that he’d hear them coming long before they saw him, and he’d have time to hide or withdraw.
Maybe the battle was over by now. Maybe, depending on the outcome of the battle, the war was over, too; in which case, supposing the enemy had prevailed, the empire and civilisation and the world as he knew it would also be over, and staying here, learning how to snare rabbits, repairing and working the mill, would be a supremely wise choice. Perhaps he’d been brought here by the direct intervention of the divine Poldarn, who’d thereafter been at great pains to keep him here by rearranging the forest to prevent him from leaving. Poldarn, as everybody knew back home, worked in mysterious ways, to the point where the people of Thurm had stopped trying to figure them out and let the god get on with it. If the god had brought him here for a reason, stripped him of his responsibilities and the burdens of his previous life, it would be blasphemy to move from the shade of this tree. Maybe – it hadn’t occurred to him before – the crow sitting in the branches above his head, watching him with patent disapproval, was Poldarn himself, directing the flow of events from a high place like a general on a battlefield. And maybe these thoughts (and the dizziness and nausea) had something to do with the bash on the head the dead man had given him – the dead man who wasn’t here any more; even dead people can leave this misbegotten clearing, so why not me?
He fell asleep (and in that sleep, he wondered, is he dreaming of a man hiding in a coach-house in the back alleys of Sansory?) and when he woke up there were a couple of dozen men standing watching him, and another one kneeling beside him with a worried look on his face. For a moment he couldn’t remember who they were or who he was.
‘Cronan? Are you all right? What the hell’s been happening to you?’
Then he remembered, and the return of his memory was like the family coming home from the fair, lighting a fire in the hearth and pulling out chairs and tables for dinner. ‘I think so,’ he replied. ‘Who won?’
The man – his name was Feron Amathy and he was an ally, not a subordinate – grinned at him. ‘We did, of course. Beat the crap out of them. Caught up with Allectus a mile or so beyond the ford; he’s waiting for you back at the camp, or at any rate his head is. Cheer up, you miserable bastard, you’ve just saved the empire. Again.’
‘Have I?’ Cronan replied. ‘That’s nice.’ Then he was sick, all down the front of Feron Amathy’s mailshirt—
He woke up. It was pitch dark, and he had no idea where he was. Unaccountably, he had the feeling that recently he’d been walking in a forest, but that was obviously nonsense, because he was lying on stone and he could smell horseshit. Then he remembered. He was in a coach-house . . .
Chapter Eight
The horse had done him a favour. It was already starting to get light, and when he opened the door a little and peered through the crack he could see people moving about in the streets, carts and wagons and barrows complicating the flow of traffic. Wherever he was going to go today, he’d have to go slowly. There were too many people in the way to make sudden headlong flight a viable option.
He saddled up and led the horse out into the alley. The rising sun obligingly told him which way was east, the direction he’d decided to follow, but unfortunately the alley ran north-south, and he couldn’t remember offhand which way he’d come the night before. He didn’t really want to find himself back in the vicinity of the Charity and Diligence if he could help it. Most of the traffic in the alley was heading south, and at this time of day it seemed likely that they’d be going towards the centre of town; from there, he reckoned, he ought to be able to find the main east road. Of course, if the enemy were even slightly interested in him and if they knew what he looked like (he had no idea, of course, whether they did or not), they would almost certainly be watching all the gates, and probably the market district as well. On the other hand, if Cleapho and his people were his friends and if they’d secured reinforcements, they’d still be watching the gates for him too.
Obviously I don’t want to be caught. Maybe I don’t want to be rescued either. The more tiny scraps of his past he accumulated, the less he liked the smell and taste of it. He thought about that as he threaded his way through the streets, following the general tendency of the traffic. He thought about the gods he’d seen painted on the refectory walls; perhaps one of them had taken pity on him and snatched him out of the hands of his enemies, painting over his past and knocking a window through his future. Maybe he ought to take the hint.
Leaving town, he decided, probably wasn’t worth the risk, at least for now. That simplified things. The alley joined a main thoroughfare, and he followed that for a long time, until he caught sight of a large open-air ring off to his left. It was crowded with men and horses, and money was changing hands. That gave him an idea.
It was, of course, a stolen horse, but in any market in a city this size, it stood to reason that there’d be plenty of people who specialised exc
lusively in stolen horses. He wandered round the ring for a while observing faces and eavesdropping on negotiations, until he was satisfied he’d found one.
‘I want to sell my horse,’ he told him.
The man looked at him, then at the horse, and rubbed his chin. ‘Not sure,’ he said. ‘What are you asking?’
Poldarn smiled. ‘Make me an offer,’ he said.
The man frowned. ‘Just a moment,’ he replied, then, without looking round, he bellowed, ‘Acka!’ at the top of his voice. A few seconds later, he did it again.
Acka turned out to be the name of a woman, his wife or just possibly his mother. She trudged back from the rail, where she’d been talking to another woman, and scowled at him. ‘What d’you want?’ she asked.
‘Man wants to sell his horse.’
Acka shrugged, as if to say that with people like that, what can you expect? She gave the horse a very quick glance and said, ‘How much?’
‘Won’t say. Says I should make him an offer.’
Acka rubbed a sore-looking patch on her ear with the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’re overspent as it is.’ She walked round the horse a couple of times, looking very sad. ‘If it was a skewbald,’ she said, ‘that’d be different. That man from the cavalry was back yesterday, wanting skewbalds. I’m not sure,’ she concluded. ‘It depends how much he wants for it.’
‘Make me an offer,’ Poldarn repeated.
The woman pulled up one of the horse’s front hooves and glanced at it. ‘Wants shoeing, too,’ she said. ‘It’s all money. Tell him we can’t go above thirty.’
From what he’d gathered during his scouting tour of the market, thirty wasn’t bad. ‘Thirty-five,’ he said. ‘And I keep the saddle and tack.’
The man looked at Acka; Acka shook her head. ‘Thirty-five all in,’ she said, ‘and we’re not doing ourselves any favours. Girth’s nearly rubbed through, look, and the snaffle’s not worth having.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘All right,’ he said, holding out his hand for the money. ‘You’re a tight-fisted bunch in these parts, though.’
Acka fumbled in her apron pocket and produced seven silver coins. ‘Ought to count himself lucky, instead of complaining, ’ she said, taking a firm grip of the reins. ‘We’ll be lucky if we see our money back on this one inside of a month.’
Poldarn took the money, nodded politely and walked away, taking care not to look round. He wasn’t sure how much money thirty-five quarters was, but it was thirty-five quarters more than he’d had the night before, and he’d got rid of a piece of potentially incriminating evidence against himself, all without killing anybody, or even drawing blood. Already he was finding his new life rather more congenial than his old one.
The next thing to do was get out of sight, or at least off the streets, where there might be a risk of running into his enemies or his friends. Where there’s a livestock market there’s always at least one inn; in Sansory, it was called the Integrity and Honour, and of course it was full of farmers and horse traders and other similar people with loud voices and a good deal of personality. He bought a small jug of beer and some bread and cheese for two quarters, found an empty corner of the settle, just big enough for a crow to perch on, and sat down.
The men next to him were talking about some war or other. One of them, a small, thin man with very bony wrists, was saying that General Cronan had beaten Allectus, he’d beaten General Taino, and if anybody could beat the raiders, it was him. The old man to his right didn’t agree; Cronan wasn’t bad for a southerner, but nobody could beat the raiders; Allectus might have done it if he hadn’t gone to the bad, he’d had imagination, not like the rest of them. Cronan, in the old man’s opinion, didn’t have imagination, and the raiders would chop him up and feed him to their children.
A round-faced man with a short beard and a new-looking blue wool shirt figured that Cronan might be able to beat the raiders if he ever got the chance, but that was hardly likely; with two major victories to his name, with the confidence and loyalty of the army and the love of the people, he was clearly too much of a security risk to be let loose in the provinces. Even if he didn’t want to seize the throne and become emperor, nobody would ever believe that he didn’t; in fact, as far as the man in the blue shirt was concerned, Cronan’s days were numbered, and he’d been living on borrowed time ever since he won against General Taino.
The thin-wristed man and a number of the others in the group agreed with that, and even the old man nodded a couple of times. It was a tragedy, the blue-shirted man went on, but it was inevitable given the state the empire was in. Meanwhile, if anybody was going to take on the raiders and stand a chance of beating them, it would almost certainly be Feron Amathy.
A moment later, it became apparent that the blue-shirted man had said something controversial, if not downright offensive. The old man scowled and shook his head; someone else just out of Poldarn’s line of sight made a rude noise and called Feron Amathy a bastard and a couple of other things Poldarn didn’t catch. Nobody seemed inclined to disagree, or if they did they weren’t about to risk saying so in a public place. The blue-shirted man held up his hands; all right, he said, he could understand how they felt, he felt pretty much the same way; and no, of course he didn’t hold with some of the things the Amathy house had done over the years, nobody in their right mind could. The fact remained: Feron Amathy was at best a freelance, at worst a bandit chieftain and mass murderer, but he was also a first-class soldier, and since the empire had a habit of locking up its own first-class soldiers or making sure they met with accidents, who else was there? Besides, he went on, having quietened down his audience, to fight the raiders you didn’t want a decent, honourable type who followed the rules of war, you wanted an evil bastard; and nobody fitted those specifications better than Feron Amathy. Of course, he added after a short pause, whether a victorious Amathy house would prove any easier to live with than the raiders was another matter entirely, the only ray of hope in the gloom being that if he did win, he’d be that much more likely to turn his thoughts towards the rich, fat cities across the bay, and with any luck he’d bugger off over there and leave the northern provinces in peace.
The old man pointed out that Feron Amathy was an evil, murdering something or other that Poldarn didn’t quite catch, and furthermore he had it on good authority that a fair few of the burnings and mass slaughters blamed on the raiders were the work of the Amathy house, who thought nothing of butchering women and children to make sure there weren’t any witnesses. A young man with big ears said he wasn’t sure he believed that, but Feron Amathy was definitely a nasty piece of work, and entrusting the safety of the province to him would be like setting a wolf to guard the chicken shed. The man in the blue shirt said he wouldn’t put anything past the Amathy house, and that all the free companies were pretty well as bad as each other, though the Amathy house was probably the worst of the lot, but take away the imperial army and the free companies and who did that leave to fight off the raiders? Well?
There was a short, resentful silence. Then the old man said that it was Feron Amathy who did for Allectus by changing sides halfway through the battle, though nobody could tell him he hadn’t fixed it with Cronan well in advance; it was a tragedy for the empire, what had happened to Allectus – nobody had ever really proved that he’d decided to try and seize the throne, and even if he had he’d surely have made a better fist of the job than the halfwit they had doing it now. Allectus, he maintained, wouldn’t have been afraid of the raiders, or the free companies, or anybody.
A big man in a soot-blackened leather apron coughed nervously and suggested that the reason why nobody could stop the raiders was that they were a judgement visited on the empire by the gods. That remark had the effect of killing the conversation stone dead for quite some time as the rest of the company tried to make up its mind whether they should ignore him or refute his line of argument. Before they could reach a decision, the nervous man added that it was all very
well them laughing and saying it was all a parcel of kids’ stories, but what about the god in the cart who turned up at that village and predicted the fall of Josequin, exactly the way it turned out to have happened?
The man in the blue shirt replied that it was a coincidence, nothing more. The nervous man didn’t agree; not only had the god foretold the destruction of the city, he’d also healed the sick and raised the dead, and they didn’t have to take his word for it, they could go and ask Bigal the drover, whose nephew had gone through that village a fortnight later and heard all about it from the villagers themselves.
Apparently Bigal the drover’s credibility was good with some of the company, because they looked thoughtful and didn’t say anything. The blue-shirted man, however, shook his head and chuckled; as it happened, he said, a neighbour of his had been talking to a carter who’d seen this so-called god not once but twice; once at the village outside Josequin, and once about six weeks earlier, in a town whose name he couldn’t remember offhand on the other side of the Mahec; and the curious thing was, the god in the village outside Josequin hadn’t looked anything like the god he’d seen up north; so it stood to reason that one of them was a fake, and as far as the blue-shirted man was concerned, it was the one who was supposed to have predicted the fall of the city. Furthermore, he added, the fake god hadn’t healed all the sick and raised the dead; according to his neighbour’s friend the carter, it was just a couple of dead people and a dozen or so of the sick, and their friends and families had paid the priestess pretty well for the privilege.
