by K. J. Parker
‘Not really.’ Eyvind shook his head. ‘Some days there’s more than others, that’s all. Why, has somebody been trying to scare you?’
‘No,’ Poldarn said, ‘unless you count what you just said. What’s there to be scared of?’
‘Nothing.’ Eyvind smiled. ‘It’s just that some of the old jokers around here would have you believe that once every so often – about a hundred years, on average, which means it’d have happened exactly twice since we’ve been here – the mountain starts sneezing fire and blowing out great big rocks and dribbling rivers of red-hot cinders – like a bad cold in the head, except with burning snot. In case you’re inclined to listen to them, these are the same people who tell stories about man-eating birds and islands in the middle of the sea that turn out to be sleeping whales. I thought maybe they’d been picking on you because suddenly there’s someone on this island who might actually believe them.’
‘Oh, I see. So that’s all right, then.’
Eyvind nodded. ‘There’s a whole lot of things to be afraid of in this life,’ he said, ‘but an exploding mountain isn’t one of them.’
That was reassuring enough, but there was still an itch at the back of his mind, a sore patch where a buried memory might be trying to work its way through before bursting out in a cloud of white steam. Perhaps it was just the name of the mountain that bothered him so much; and because, out of all the kind and helpful people and solid, reliable things he’d encountered since he’d been here, the mountain was still the only one he really trusted. ‘One of these days,’ he said, ‘will you take me up there to see the hot springs? I’ve heard a whole lot about them but I can’t really imagine it. Sounds too good to be true, all that boiling hot water just coming up out of a hole in the ground.’
‘Sure,’ Eyvind replied, ‘though it’s a hell of a climb, and most of the way you’ve got to walk. It’s always struck me as a hell of a long way to go just to see some hot water you can’t actually use for anything.’ He shrugged. ‘When I want hot water, I fill the copper and put it over the fire. Takes a while to come to the boil, but it beats hay out of all that walking.’
Poldarn nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I’ll hold you to that.’
‘Please do; wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it. Well,’ Eyvind went on, glancing up at the sky, ‘you may not have any work to do, but I’ve got a bucketful.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Catch you later, probably.’
Poldarn got up as well. ‘Can I come and help?’ he asked.
‘You don’t know what the job is.’
‘True. But I’m bored stiff with sitting around.’
Eyvind shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather’s given our house two dozen barrels of river gravel, for metalling the boggy patch at the bottom of our yard. All I’ve got to do is collect it and take it away.’
A slight twinge in Poldarn’s left shoulder seemed to urge him to back out now, while he had the chance. ‘I reckon I’m on for that,’ he said. ‘So, where is it now?’
Eyvind laughed. ‘In the river, of course; that’s where river gravel comes from.’
‘Oh.’
‘Thought you’d say that. First, we get a few long-handled shovels and dig it out, then we load it into barrels, which Halder’s kindly lending us for the purpose, then we load the barrels onto a couple of carts, job done. It’s bloody hard work and it’ll take the rest of the day.’ His face relaxed a little. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Turburn and Asley’ll give me a hand.’
Poldarn knew who they were. Turburn was a huge man with a bald head and with shoulders as wide as a plough yoke; Asley looked like Turburn’s big brother. Either of them could pick up a three-hundredweight barrel of gravel and walk right round the farm carrying it without realising it was there. ‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I don’t mind, I need the exercise.’
Eyvind was looking at him as if he was a troll or a merman, some strange supernatural being who happened to look a bit like a human. ‘That’s something I’ll never get used to,’ he said. ‘You say one thing, and you mean the exact opposite. I don’t know how the hell you can do that. I couldn’t, to save my life.’
Poldarn sighed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘obviously I’m not very good at it, if you can read me so easily.’
Judging by Eyvind’s expression, he’d touched on some kind of important topic here, one that his friend didn’t want to start discussing right then. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Eyvind said. ‘All right, if you’re dead set on volunteering, you come on. At the very least, it’ll teach you never to do it again.’
It turned out to be an unspeakable job, back-breaking and shoulder-wrenching; and Poldarn made matters far worse by trying to keep up, at least to begin with, until he’d frittered away his strength and stamina, leaving fifteen barrels still empty. After that, all he could do was disconnect his mind and keep his arms and legs moving. He was painfully aware that he wasn’t really contributing – his shovel pecked at the river bed, and he spilled most of what he dug up before it reached the barrel. Furthermore, his boots were letting in water, his knees had given out, and the strip of rag he’d bound round his hand wasn’t really doing much to protect his blisters from the shovel handle. Anyone with any sense would’ve admitted defeat and crawled back to the house, but it appeared that he’d misplaced his brains along with his memory. It was lucky he didn’t cause an accident when it came to hefting the barrels up onto the cart; he couldn’t take the weight, and more than once the barrel nearly twisted out of his grip and fell on Turburn’s leg. In the end, though, the job got done in spite of him, and he collapsed against the side of the cart, sitting down squarely in a pool of churned-up mud. Didn’t matter, he was already filthy from head to toe. The other three weren’t, of course.
‘Thank you,’ Eyvind said, and although all Poldarn’s instincts insisted his friend was being facetious, chances were he really meant it. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a beer. Coming?’
Poldarn nodded, and didn’t move. It was nearly dark (they’d have finished long since without him, and the carts would’ve been on the road by now; as it was, they’d have to wait till morning, and the routine at Bollesknap would be out of joint for days), and the white clouds hanging over the mountain showed up as a dull, flat grey; on the opposite horizon, the sun was going down in fire. ‘You go on,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you up. Think I’ll just sit here for a bit.’
Some time later, when he’d got the use of his head back, it occurred to Poldarn that here he was again, sitting in the churned-up mud beside a river, still not really knowing who he was or what the hell he was supposed to be doing. He’d come a fair way since that first river – across a huge ocean, to an enormous island in the far west that the people back in the empire didn’t even know about; couldn’t come much further than that – and at least on this occasion he wasn’t sharing the mud with any dead bodies. That said, he could close his eyes and it’d be the same river – that wasn’t too hard to arrive at, if he supposed that the Bohec ran into the sea, the sun drew up water from the ocean and dumped it on this island as rain, it could easily be precisely the same water that he’d woken up beside – and the only change would be in his perceptions, because he hadn’t known anything back then; for all he knew, he’d been digging gravel out of the Bohec when the unknown enemies attacked—
My perceptions, he thought. Well, for one thing, I perceive that I’m covered in mud, so I’d better have a wash before I go indoors. Taken one step at a time, any riddle you like can be broken down into little easy pieces; the trick is in putting them all back together again afterwards.
Getting his bum out of the mud was one of the hardest things Poldarn had ever had to do. All the engineers in Torcea couldn’t have made it easy.
The place to wash was a little pool behind the house, where the stream collected in a natural stone basin before falling down the side of the combe on its way to join the river. It served the house as a
combination bath house, laundry and mirror, performing all these functions rather better than any of the artificial facilities he’d seen in the crowded cities of the Bohec valley. The water was perishing cold, of course, but that was all right, it helped you wake up in the morning and gingered you up when you were tired at night. Like everything in this extraordinary place, even the disadvantages had their advantages.
Poldarn stood for a moment and looked at his reflection, backlit in sunset fire and blood, before smashing it to pieces with his hands; but, as usual, there was nothing to see except his face, no additional information. Maybe it was a true reflection, the only accurate mirror in the world, showing you what you really were: head, neck, shoulders and no past. He bent at the waist and dipped his hands through his face into the water. It was ice cold, and so clean it was hardly there at all.
When Poldarn reckoned he’d done about as much as could be achieved by way of damage limitation, he straightened his back, shuddered at the pain and hobbled back towards the house. Someone had said something, he seemed to remember, about beer.
Meet the Author
K.J. Parker is a pseudonym. Find more about the author at www.kjparker.com.
Also by K.J. Parker
THE FENCER TRILOGY
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
THE SCAVENGER TRILOGY
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
THE ENGINEER TRILOGY
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
The Company
The Folding Knife
The Hammer
Sharps
Table of Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Preview of Pattern
Meet the Author
Also by K.J. Parker
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2001 by K.J. Parker
Excerpt from Pattern copyright © 2002 by K.J. Parker
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.
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Published by Hachette Digital 2009
First e-book edition: May 2013
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ISBN 978-0-316-23304-0
