by K. J. Parker
Falx shook his head. If Poldarn didn’t know better, he’d have imagined his new master was intimidated by the old man. ‘I’ll be getting on, then,’ he said. ‘There shouldn’t be anything for you for a day or so, so you just settle in.’
Eolla looked at him and dipped his head again, as if to say dismissed. Falx withdrew briskly, shutting the door behind him. ‘You’re right,’ Eolla said, as soon as the latch dropped, ‘he’s scared stiff of me. Good reason. Made his life hell when he was a boy.’ He turned round – not just his head, his whole body – and looked Poldarn over from head to foot in a single long glance, the way Acka had looked over the stolen horse. ‘And if you’re from Thurm I’m the king of the pixies,’ he went on. ‘Not that I could give a damn where you’re from. Doesn’t matter where you’re from, it’s where you’re at that counts.’ He held the stare a moment or so longer. Poldarn stared back. Eolla laughed. ‘You’re all right,’ he said, and held out a hand, which Poldarn took. ‘Like he said, I’m Eolla. Actually, I’m not; my name’s Eola Catariscas, but Falx Garaut – that’s the old man – he could never be bothered to say it right, and Falx Roisin, don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to him to check, no reason why it should. So I got used to being Eolla. Doesn’t bother me, been called a lot worse. Where are you really from?’
Poldarn grinned ruefully. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Eolla raised an eyebrow. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s a new one. Why don’t you know?’
‘I had an accident,’ Poldarn replied, ‘about five years ago. Don’t ask me what happened; all I know is that I woke up in a ditch with a lump on my head the size of an apple. The first town I came to I asked them the name of the place and they told me it was called Josequin. So I guess you could say I’m from there.’
‘Is that a fact?’ Eolla shrugged his broad, thin shoulders. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘And what’ve you been doing with yourself since?’
Poldarn laughed. ‘Nothing very exciting,’ he said. ‘As soon as I figured I wasn’t going to get my memory back in a hurry I started looking round for work, something to do, a place to live, all that. No skills, of course, but it wasn’t long before I realised I had what you could call an aptitude for fighting; whether it’s training or just a knack I was born with I have no idea. There was a living to be made at it in Josequin.’
Eolla nodded; he seemed to do that a lot. ‘Guild town,’ he said. ‘Stands to reason. Never went there, never will now, of course. Can’t say I’m bothered. You were lucky, then, being out of town at the time.’
‘I’d left Josequin a few weeks earlier,’ Poldarn replied. ‘For my health.’
That seemed to constitute a satisfactory answer. ‘Anyway,’ Eolla said, ‘you follow me, we’ll go out the back and get you fitted out. Let’s see, now. Two changes of clothes, three pairs of boots, two hats, one hood, two belts, loaded staff, plain staff, big and small satchel, plate, cup, big and small knife, lamp, oil, wick, tinderbox, three blankets, leather bottle, heavy coat and gambeson since you’ll be on the road, and you can choose a weapon from the rack.’ He grinned. ‘Takes most people a lifetime to gather that much stuff, and here it’s all given to you, compliments of the house, a whole life. Secondhand, of course,’ he added. ‘Falx house is generous, but we’re not made of money. This way.’
One wall of the back room was lined with tall wooden bins; they walked down the line and Eolla rummaged about in each one in turn until he found something he reckoned would suit or fit. ‘Practice,’ he explained. ‘Fifty years in the stores, I can tell a man’s size the moment I lay eyes on him. Sorry,’ he added, ‘we’re low on hats right now, this’ll be too big, so you’ll need to stuff some straw in the crown.’
Eolla didn’t offer any account of where it had all come from, and Poldarn didn’t ask. One of the shirts had a brown stain between the shoulder blades, but it had been neatly and carefully darned; a critical and final moment in one man’s life, patched up with wool and issued to someone else. It was all good, serviceable stuff, none of it frayed or worn out. It occurred to Poldarn as he watched the old man skimming through the contents of the bins that he seemed to know each piece individually, then he realised that quite probably he’d issued most of them before, to some other new associate of the Falx house, two or twenty years ago. People come and go, but the things go on for ever, going out of the bins and being put back there.
‘Properly speaking,’ Eolla was saying, ‘helmet’s not included since you’re not regular guard squad, but if you don’t tell anybody, I won’t. Try this.’ He reached under a bench (without looking; he seemed to know by touch where everything was, like a blind man) and produced a narrow-brimmed brown felt hat. It was too heavy to be what it looked like, and when Poldarn turned it over he saw it was lined with neatly butted steel plates.
‘Far as I know, never been tested,’ Eolla said, ‘so I can’t promise it works. But it’s most likely better than nothing.’
Poldarn put it on; a surprisingly good fit, maybe slightly too big. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Pleasure,’ the old man replied. ‘That was made for Falx Garaut’s brother Tocco – nervous little man, he was, always fretting about getting beaten up or stabbed. So the old man got him a first-class gambeson – more a coat of plates, really, nothing but the best – and a collar lined with steel splints, and that hat. Did him no good in the long run, mind, but it was a kind thought.’
Eolla didn’t seem inclined to enlarge on the fate of Falx Tocco, and Poldarn wasn’t inclined to ask; but the hat seemed a good idea, regardless of its origins. He added it to the pile of his newly acquired possessions, which had grown to a substantial size.
‘Right,’ Eolla said, ‘that’s everything except weapons, they’re in the locker here. Oh, unless – can you read?’
Poldarn nodded.
‘Always a good idea, very useful.’ Eolla stooped down and pulled out a big wooden trunk. ‘Falx Roisin, he’s very keen on reading, likes to encourage it in the house.’ He raised the lid and let it drop; the trunk was full of books. There were bound books, in wood and leather covers, and rolled books, in handsome brass tubes. ‘All religious, of course,’ Eolla added with a slight sigh. ‘But you’re allowed two, since you’ll be on the road. Falx Roisin figures it helps pass the time, keeps a man out of mischief.’
‘Right.’ Poldarn looked at the contents of the box. None of them had titles. ‘What do you suggest?’ he said.
Eolla shrugged. ‘Haven’t a clue,’ he said. ‘Not bothered, myself. If I were you, I’d go for the biggest, since you’re getting them for nothing.’
That seemed entirely logical to Poldarn, so he picked out two bound books, both of them a full hand’s span thick. ‘Wrap your coat round one,’ Eolla pointed out, ‘makes a decent enough pillow. Worth thinking of these things if you’re on the road all the time.’ He pulled open a door that Poldarn hadn’t noticed before and disappeared through it. Poldarn followed and waited for him to light the lamp with his tinderbox.
‘Weapons locker,’ Eolla said, superfluously. One wall was covered with racks for polearms – halberds, guisarms, bardiches, pollaxes, glaives; in the near corner there was a big barrel, with the hilts of long straight-bladed swords sticking up like roses in a vase; on another wall there was a rack of axes and two-handed swords, heads and points downwards. In the far corner was another trunk, similar in size and shape to the bookbox.
‘What’s in there?’ Poldarn asked.
Eolla chuckled. ‘Good question,’ he replied. ‘Nothing to do with you’s the short answer. Still, you can take a look if you want.’
‘I was just asking,’ Poldarn said. ‘If they’re not on offer—’
‘Ah go on, take a look,’ the old man interrupted. ‘Not something you’re likely to see every day.’
So Poldarn lifted the lid and looked inside. He saw two dozen swords, all more or less the same. For a moment he wondered where he’d seen the like before; then he remembered. The wall painting at the
Charity and Diligence. His namesake, the god in the cart, had been waving around something fairly similar.
‘Pick one up if you like,’ the old man said. ‘Go on.’
Poldarn didn’t want to seem rude, so he did as he was told. It was as long as his arm, from the point of his shoulder to the tip of his outstretched middle finger, though nearly a third of that length was the two-handed grip, protected by the spectacular inward-curving horns on the blade side that swept out above and below the hand to form the pommel and hand-guard. The blade itself curved sharply forward and down (I may have seen one of these before, he thought), making the sword look as if it was the wrong way up, until it flicked back up again a finger’s length from the point to form a swan’s beak. Underneath the edge flared out, widening as it followed the inward curve, ending in a thin, flat cutting section nearly a palm’s breath across, at which point it followed the upwards sweep of the topside, giving the blade the appearance of a dolphin leaping. Just below the spine of the blade was a broad, shallow fuller that followed the profile of the curve, lightening it without sacrificing strength and throwing the centre of percussion forward into the pit of the hook. Neat, Poldarn thought.
‘Like it?’ Eolla said.
‘Yes,’ Poldarn replied.
‘Tough.’ The old man laughed. ‘Not for issue, those. You know what they are?’
‘Swords,’ Poldarn said. ‘Or do they have a special name?’
‘Probably,’ Eolla said. ‘But nobody knows what it is, or nobody that’s telling. They’re raider backsabres. Been there ten years, to my certain knowledge. God alone knows how the old man came by them. Anyhow, they don’t leave this room, and I know exactly how many’s in there, in case you were wondering.’
Poldarn shrugged and put the sword back where he’d got it from. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be happy with what I’m given, thank you very much.’
‘That’s the ticket,’ Eolla said, closing the lid. ‘Well, in that case, let’s see what we’ve got.’ He reached down into the sword barrel. ‘Try this,’ he said. ‘Now this is a nice piece. Religious, look, just right for indoors and cramped spaces – like the box of a cart, for instance.’
Poldarn took the sword. It was short, less than two feet long, curved and single-edged, with a grip just about big enough for two hands. He drew it an inch or two from the scabbard. The blade was polished like a mirror, or the surface of a pool on a still day, except for a wavy, cloudy line running parallel to the cutting edge about a finger’s width in.
‘Religious?’ he asked. ‘What does that mean?’
Eolla looked at him. ‘Must’ve been a smart old bang on the head you took,’ he said. ‘Religious, like the temple fencers. Don’t worry about it,’ he added, as Poldarn carried on looking bewildered. ‘It means it’s a nice piece of kit, too good to be in the barrel, by rights, but I like to have a few bits and pieces for a good cause. Will that do you?’
Without thinking Poldarn had undone his belt and wrapped a double loop round the mouth of the scabbard. ‘I think so,’ he said, tightening the buckle, and his hand dropped to the hilt and he drew—
‘Very sweet,’ Eolla said, frowning slightly. ‘Where’d you learn to do that? Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know.’
Poldarn had sheathed the sword without realising. ‘You do, though,’ he said.
The old man shrugged. ‘I’ve seen men who can draw that fast before. Temple fencers. If you can do that – well, figure it for yourself. Of course, you could’ve learned it somewhere else. Maybe you picked it up from a book, or worked it out for yourself, I don’t know.’
Poldarn took a step closer. It seemed to him that the old man didn’t like that much. ‘But you don’t think so,’ Poldarn said.
‘No,’ Eolla replied, stepping sideways towards the door. ‘If you want my opinion, you learned that in the temple.’
‘What temple?’ Poldarn asked.
Chapter Nine
‘Good afternoon,’ the brother called out, leaning forward a little in his saddle and wiping rain out of his eyes. ‘I wonder, can you tell me if I’m on the right road for Cric?’
The two rubes looked up at him as if a trapdoor had just opened in the sky and he’d stepped out of it, silhouetted against a dazzling mandala of pure white light. ‘You what?’ the older man said.
‘Cric,’ the brother repeated, slowly and loudly. ‘There’s a village by that name somewhere around here, isn’t there?’
What the hell the two rubes thought they were doing, scrabbling about on their knees in the peat-mud in the driving rain, he couldn’t begin to imagine. At least, they were building a dry-stone wall; but in weather like this, with the rain lashing down on them? On the other hand, they gave every impression of not having noticed the rain, or the wind.
The older man nodded, tipping water off the brim of his tatty leather hat. ‘Keep on the road an hour, maybe two, that’ll fetch you to Cric.’
‘Thank you,’ the brother said. ‘I should make it there by nightfall, then.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is there an inn there, somewhere I can put up for the night?’ the brother persevered.
‘No.’
‘I see. Thank you, you’ve been incredibly helpful.’ He turned his face back into the rain and nudged his horse on with a slight pressure of his heels. He could feel the rubes staring at his shoulder blades all the way to the skyline.
The lousy weather cut visibility down to spitting distance and he was sure he didn’t see a single living thing on the road, so how everybody in Cric knew he was coming he had no idea. But they did; they were standing out under their porches or watching out for him from haylofts, dozens of them – women and children mostly, with a few old men and invalids peering over their shoulders. That was disconcerting for someone who’d spent a lifetime learning how to be too boring to be worth noticing. He looked round for some logical place to stop, an inn or forge or other community centre, but there wasn’t one, just a miserable-looking tower at the far end of town, which was bound to be cold and damp and foul-smelling. What he wanted was a nice extravagant fire, some hot soup and warm spiced wine, if possible a bath hot enough to scald the feathers off poultry. No chance.
Plenty of houses, nothing at all to choose between them. He scowled under his hat; there were times when he hated the very concept of choice. Doctrine wasn’t terribly keen on it either, he remembered – choice and doubt come between the hand and the hilt, they constitute fatal obstacles to the perfection of the draw; God neither doubts nor chooses, God’s thoughts and actions are simultaneous and identical. Lauctans, Fifth Homily of the Edge, XIV, 2. Stuff choice, then; he pulled up, jumped off the horse, tied it to the nearest porch post and banged on the nearest door.
Bearing in mind that he’d seen six women of various ages and a seven-year-old boy gawping at him from the loft hatch, it was pretty stupid of them to pretend not to be at home. He banged again, waited a little longer, then lifted the latch and walked in.
That stare, again; I really must do something about this second head, he thought as seven pairs of eyes stuck into his face like bradawls, it’s turning out to be a liability. Years ago he’d been to a place where they still had the quaint old custom of sticking the heads of criminals up on pikes in the market square. That was it; he knew he’d seen that expression somewhere before.
‘Excuse me for barging in like that,’ he said cheerfully, dislodging a small torrent of water on to the dried-clay-andcowshit floor as he took off his hat, ‘but I don’t think you heard me knock, and it’s raining. You wouldn’t happen to know of somewhere I could hire a bed for the night?’
The magic of the word hire unfroze them like the secret incantation waking up the sleeping giants in the old kids’ story. ‘Not round here,’ the oldest woman said. ‘But you could stop here, I s’pose. We got room.’
‘Splendid,’ the brother replied. ‘Would three quarters a night be enough, do you think? It’s probably only for tonight, but I may have to s
top over tomorrow if I don’t finish my work in time to get to the next inn by nightfall.’
There was a younger woman sitting next to the old matriarch whose face showed that she didn’t believe there was such a sum as three quarters in the whole world, unless you melted down the wheel tyres of the wagon of the moon and ran the bloom under a coining-press. ‘That’ll do fine,’ the old woman said. ‘And this is my daughter Melja.’
If Melja’s part of the deal, he thought, I’ll try my luck next door. Not giving offence is one thing, but there’s limits. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, with a slight bow. ‘My name is Monach.’
(Monach was, of course, just the word for ‘monk’ in southern pidgin Torcean, but it was easy to remember, and nobody had figured it out in all the years he’d been using it.)
He clinked four quarters in the palm of his hand, then put them down on the table. ‘Any chance of something to eat?’ he asked. ‘And I suppose a bath would be out of the question.’
He supposed dead right, but after a shocked silence the matriarch prodded Melja in the ribs and she vanished into the back room and came back almost immediately with the end of a loaf and a block of greyish cheese that looked startlingly like the medium-grit waterstone he used for sharpening halberds. Nothing to drink with it, but of course he hadn’t asked for it; the moral being, with rubes, specify exactly.
As it turned out, the cheese was too crumbly to have made a good waterstone, though the bread would probably have done the job at a pinch. ‘Is that all you want, then?’ the old woman asked when he couldn’t face any more. He nodded. She shrugged. ‘That’ll be just two quarters, then,’ she said.
He paid up, dipping his head to her in sincere respect as he did so. He’d been to a lot of places, been rooked and shaved by some of the best short-changers and cheese-scrapers in the business. This old woman, though, was something else.
