by K. J. Parker
Halder nodded. ‘Hell of a flood,’ he said. ‘And the devil of it was, it came down so quick, they would all have been at dinner, first they’d have known about it would’ve been the water smashing through the porch doors.’
‘Bloody silly idea,’ muttered Rook, through chattering teeth, ‘building the house right in the bottom of the valley. Won’t make that mistake next time.’
Eyvind put a hand on Poldarn’s shoulder and gently eased him down onto a bench. ‘It went straight through the middle of the main house,’ he said. ‘Lifted it up like you’d pick up a basket or something. Took out everything standing in the yard – barns, sheds, cider house, trap house, the lot. All the stock in the long pen, all the stores, everything; all they’ve got left is what they were wearing.’
Poldarn nodded slowly. ‘So he got there in time, then.’
‘Sort of,’ Eyvind replied. ‘Actually, he was on the other side of the valley when it came down – fast as a galloping horse, he said – and he just had to stand there and watch. But of course they’d known he was coming; they got out and went up the other side of the valley with only moments to spare.’
No need to ask how they’d known, of course; a useful thing, this mind-reading. ‘How long did it last?’ he asked.
‘The rest of that day, and all night,’ Halder said. ‘Come first light, the water was going down, and by noon he managed to get across. Then it came down again, and he was stuck there.’
‘But that was only the start.’ Eyvind took up the narrative as if this was something they’d all rehearsed earlier, each of them knowing his cues. ‘We thought we were getting a lot of ash down here – it’s nothing compared with what they’ve been getting. A hand-span deep over everything, deeper in places; and sometimes it was coming down hot, like it’d just been raked off the fire.’
‘Nowhere to shelter, see,’ Halder said, ‘they were all out in the open, so they had to lie down on their faces and hope they didn’t get too badly burned. Nothing they could do about it, of course. There was one poor fool—’
‘Iat,’ Eyvind said, ‘who worked in the dairy. He got hit with a lump of hot ash and his hair caught fire, so he ran down to the water and jumped in. Drowned, of course, the bloody fool. Too quick for anybody to stop him.’
Poldarn sighed, though he hadn’t heard of this man Iat before. These things happen, he told himself; however bad things may be, human ingenuity and human determination will always find a way of making them worse.
‘That was when it started raining,’ Eyvind said.
Under his pile of blankets, Rook shuddered. Probably the cold.
‘It happens like that,’ Halder went on. ‘It’s because they’re tight in to the foot of the mountain there; they get sudden flash rainstorms coming in off the hillside when the rest of us are having broad sunshine.’
‘And all the steam,’ Eyvind pointed out, ‘from where the snow had melted; all that low cloud we could see from back here. Quite a downpour, even by their standards. Needless to say, it had to wait till the whole mountain was covered in ash.’
Maybe it’s catching, Poldarn thought; because he knew what was coming next. ‘Mud,’ he said.
Halder nodded. ‘That’s right. Black mud, coming down off the slopes in a bloody torrent. At one point, it was actually moving faster than the flood water had done, if you can imagine that. God knows why, there’s probably a simple reason. Anyhow, it filled up the valley right down as far as the lower bridge. In fact, valley’s not the right word any more, it’s a flat black plain.’
Eyvind shook his head. ‘It’s just like builder’s mortar,’ he continued. ‘Same consistency, and it dries hard, not like ordinary mud. A few days of sun and that whole valley will be filled in with solid rock. Unbelievable,’ he added, ‘it’s changed the country for ever. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realised what it meant; they hadn’t just lost their house and their animals and their stuff, their land’s gone too – all the fields and meadows and orchards, buried under ten feet of black stone. You simply wouldn’t credit it, outside of a fairy story.’
Quite so, Poldarn thought, the end of the world; and what we don’t burn, we’ll bury. His mind kept being drawn back, in spite of the atmosphere in the hall, the dead silence, the intense drama, to another issue, smaller but just as important to him personally; why on earth had he done that horrible, cruel thing to that crow, back in the forge? The more he thought about it, the more impossible to explain it became, and yet he could remember that at the time it had seemed logical, sensible, absolutely the right thing to do.
It went without saying that there couldn’t possibly be a connection.
‘Anyway,’ Halder went on, ‘soon as it stopped raining, Rook here sets off the long way round, over the hog’s back, down to Callersfell and back up our river – on foot, mind, he couldn’t get his horse across the flood, which is why it’s taken him so long, and why he’s frozen half to death, crossing the hog’s back this time of year—’
‘And his clothes all burned in tatters, don’t forget,’ Eyvind pointed out. ‘It’s bad enough up there if you’ve got a good fur coat and warm boots. But he knew we were worried about him and wanted to know what’d happened, so – well, here he is, just about. And bloody lucky too, if you ask me.’
Long silence; though, Poldarn knew perfectly well, it was only a silence as far as he was concerned. No doubt the rest of them were having a lively debate among themselves. Quite apart from everything else, it was such bad manners.
‘So,’ he said aloud, ‘sounds like it’s up to this house to do something for the Lyatsbridge people.’
Halder nodded. ‘Us and Colscegsford,’ he said. ‘Assuming they were high enough up not to get a dose of the same.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘And what about them?’ he asked. ‘Colsceg and Elja, I mean. If the river was right up and then the mudslides after that—’
‘They’re home,’ Rook broke in, ‘and safe. They heard what was going on, and took a detour through the Wicket Gate—’
‘That’s a sort of gap in the hog’s back, on our side of the river,’ Eyvind explained. ‘They got home before the mud-slides came on; and anyway, nothing came anywhere near them.’
Halder grunted. ‘They’ve sent over blankets and sawn lumber,’ he said, ‘and food and beer, and a few changes of clothes. But it’s more than they can spare; we’d better get something sorted out ourselves. I’m thinking it’d make more sense to bring the Lyatsbridge people here, rather than taking the stuff over to them. We’ve got room, and our fires get lit anyway, it’d make more sense, if this state of affairs is going to last any time. Being neighborly is all very well, but better not to waste fuel and food we might end up needing ourselves.’
Judging from the expressions on the faces around him, Halder was speaking in his capacity as spokesman for the whole farm. Not that Poldarn would’ve argued against the idea or the reasoning behind it, even if he’d had the option.
‘There’s another thing, though,’ he said, thinking aloud as much as anything. ‘If this mud stuff’s blocked the river and filled in the valley, how’s that going to affect us? What I mean is, next time there’s a heavy burn and more snow gets melted, where’s the flood water going to go, without that river to draw it off? You’ll have to tell me, I don’t know the country. Is there any danger it’ll change course and come this way?’
They hadn’t considered that, and in consequence nobody said anything, or had anything to say. Eventually Eyvind (interesting that it should have been him) broke the silence. ‘It’s difficult to say,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, at least I wouldn’t have thought this place was in any danger. But I’m thinking about our place; we’re on the other side of the spur ridge, and lower than you are here. I’m not too bothered about floods, but what if there’s a heavy rainstorm and one of these mudslides comes down? It’d only take a fall of rocks or something like that blocking the neck directly above our house, and anything that wo
uld’ve come down on Lyatsbridge could end up running off the other side of the spur and ending up in our yard. And if it moves that quickly—’
Halder nodded. ‘Normally I’d say wait till morning, but if it carries on like this, it won’t be any lighter then than it is now.’
‘You’re right.’ Eyvind stood up. ‘Sorry to abandon you like this,’ he said to Poldarn, ‘and I’ll be back as soon as we’ve had a chance to figure things out at home. Till then – well, thanks for the warning. I wouldn’t have thought of that if you hadn’t mentioned it.’
Curious, Poldarn thought after he’d gone; is it possible that this wise and perceptive man whose foresight has saved so many lives is the same person who killed the crow? Oh, wouldn’t it make everything so much easier if only I knew which of them was me.
The next morning, Poldarn woke up before everyone else and ran to the door, digging his feet into the ribs of several sleepers on the way (but they didn’t wake up, of course). He was still full of undigested sleep, and it took him over a minute of cack-handed fumbling to cope with the bolts and the bar.
The mountain was on fire. All down the southern slope, he could see black and red clouds, like some kind of exotic flowering lichen on the trunk of a dead tree. He assumed it was morning, simply because he was awake; the only light came from the dull glare of the fireclouds, but they lit up surprisingly well. He had no idea how long he stood in the porch staring – no sun meant no sense of time – but it was long enough for the cold wind to numb his hands and make his bare feet ache.
The first he knew of the next development was a gentle pattering sound, like rain. Bad, he said to himself, thinking of the mudslides; but it wasn’t rain, it was cherry-stone-sized nuggets of black ash, and when one of them hit him on the forehead he found out that they were hot.
That woke Poldarn from his trance. The thatch, he thought; how hot did the ash nuggets have to be before they’d set the roof alight, and burn the house down with everybody in it? He made a solemn resolution that that wasn’t going to happen, and ducked indoors.
‘Grandfather,’ he shouted, ‘wake up, it’s raining hot ash!’
Nobody even stirred, which was infuriating. But he knew what he had to do; he ran back the length of the hall – it didn’t matter how many heads he kicked or hands he stood on, they weren’t going to wake up until it was time – and through the double doors into the back room where Halder and Rannwey slept in magnificent privacy. If he could wake them up, he guessed, everybody else would come round too. Only logical.
Halder snapped awake and sat up as soon as Poldarn opened the doors. The older man stared at him as though he’d lost his mind.
‘Hot ash,’ Poldarn mumbled (Halder and Rannwey slept naked, he realised, and even with the world coming to an end all around him, he was still capable of acute embarrassment.) ‘There’s hot ash dropping out of the sky, and the thatch—’
‘Bloody hell,’ Halder growled, ‘won’t it ever stop? All right, I’m coming. Just let me get some trousers on, will you?’
Poldarn backed out of the room and shut the doors firmly. He wasn’t in the least surprised to find that the entire household was sitting up, reaching for their boots.
‘Bloody mountain,’ someone grumbled over to his left. ‘Sneaking up on us while we’re asleep. That’s low, that is.’
He knew what the man meant. If it really was the divine Poldarn doing all this, he didn’t think much of a god who attacked by night, trying to burn a sleeping house. A god should have more self-respect.
‘All right.’ Halder was standing in the doorway, mercifully betrousered, with his coat on but no shirt. ‘You’re the volcano expert – any suggestions?’
Poldarn was about to make it clear, yet again, that he didn’t know any more about volcanoes than Halder did, when some voice inside his head told him exactly what to do. ‘If I were you,’ he said, ‘I’d get every bucket and basin we can lay our hands on, and the long ladders from the hay barn. If we’re quick, we should be able to save the house, at the very least.’
Halder scowled at him. ‘Screw the house,’ he said. ‘We can’t eat carpets or milk or furniture. What matters is the barns and the sheds.’
While he was speaking, the household was already snapping to it. In spite of the emergency, Poldarn couldn’t help being amazed at the wonderful way they all managed to get out through the porch doors, just wide enough for two abreast, without any colliding, pushing or shoving. Instead, they timed their movements to perfection. How the hell do they do that? he wondered.
By the time he got outside, his original plan had been modified, rather intelligently; instead of just scrambling up ladders and sloshing buckets of water onto the thatch, they’d dragged out some heavy leather sheets – which were used to cover the hayricks – and the sails of Halder’s ship. Normal people couldn’t have done what came next, not unless they’d practised it as a drill for years under the command of exceptionally talented and cool-headed officers; but the Haldersness farmhands carried out the entire operation flawlessly, astonishingly quickly, and in total silence.
While the men unfolded the sheets and sails in the yard, the women were drawing buckets of water and passing them down a human chain that had apparently formed instantly while Poldarn’s attention was elsewhere for a second or so. In consequence, it took no time at all to get each sheet thoroughly wet, ready for the next step.
The men spontaneously divided into two teams. One team brought up the ladders, while the others roped up the sheets. The ladders were laid up against the long barn, placed so that their topmost rungs were a foot or so clear of the top of the roof; this meant that the ropes could be drawn over the ladders without dragging on the thatch and ripping it out. Bracing the ladders while the sheets were being hauled turned out to be the hardest part of the job, but with the women and children helping as well, they managed to keep them in place until the sheets were lying astride the roof-tree, at which point the ladders were withdrawn and the ropes made fast. Later on, Eyvind told him that that was how they were used to covering hayricks, and the only difference was that the barn was somewhat taller and a whole lot longer; it was no big deal, Eyvind said, and Poldarn was prepared to believe that that was how he saw it.
After a few half-hearted and counterproductive attempts to make himself useful, Poldarn retired to the shelter of the turnip shed (which was one storey high and had a turf roof) and watched the show from there. He couldn’t decide which was more impressive, the way they all worked together without having to stop and debate every step or be told what to do, or their apparent imperviousness to the hail of cinders that burnt holes in their coats, frizzled their hair and scorched their hands and faces as they hauled ropes and handled buckets. For the first time he understood what it was about them that made it impossible for the Empire’s best generals to win or even survive a pitched battle against them. And yet, he remembered, when he’d woken them up and they’d realised what was happening, they’d stood gawping, faces blank, completely out of their depth when faced with something new and outside their experience; it was only when Poldarn had made his suggestion to Halder and Halder had, presumably, considered it and thought of something better that the entire household had suddenly burst into immediate, perfect action. That was a scary thought, possibly even more disturbing than the possibly impending end of the world; because when Halder was gone, the new head of the household would be the one man on the island who couldn’t read minds or have his own mind read. Would they even be capable of waking up in the morning, Poldarn asked himself, let alone doing something like this?
Between completing the covering of the long barn and starting on the middle house there was no perceptible delay – the first team was already setting the ladders up while the second team were still pegging the guy ropes. In spite of the quite astonishing speed at which they worked, it was obviously going to be a long day, and there was still a depressingly large area of unprotected thatch for an unusually hot cinder to nest in. M
ore than anything else, Poldarn wished there was something he could do to help, because he’d never been lonelier than he was now, crouched in a doorway on the edge of the yard. He’d saved the day again, of course; if he hadn’t woken up when he had and realised the danger, the whole farm might be ablaze by now. But that didn’t console him in the slightest. Of course, nobody was going to reproach him for lounging about gawping while everybody else was breaking their backs. They understood, they were happy to make allowances, until such time as he snapped out of this lost-memory business and started acting normal again. They couldn’t be more tolerant or patient. That didn’t make it any better; quite the reverse.
As if to make the point that the danger was real and immediate, the cider-house roof caught fire, just as the ladders were going up against the side wall. Instead of trying to put the fire out with buckets of water, they carried on hauling and laid a sopping wet sail on the blazing thatch. Of course the sail was ruined, but it put the fire out (and it’d be far easier to patch a sail than build a new cider house, not to mention the loss of a whole season’s apples, the press and all the cider-making gear). That aside, they got the job done without any further damage, while the cinders continued to fall. They were getting larger, Poldarn noticed – some of them were now the size of pigeons’ eggs – and the thick carpet of hot ash they made on the yard was now over a finger’s length deep in places. Never mind about the thatch, the buildings themselves were timber-framed and timbercladded. How much heat could they take before they started to burn?
One damn thing after another, he told himself; but he wrapped a couple of empty turnip sacks round his head and shoulders, twisted the corners over his hands, and went to find Halder.
‘Good point,’ Halder said, when Poldarn explained what was on his mind. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. When we’ve done putting on the covers, we’d better make a start on damping down the walls. Bloody thing isn’t going to give us a moment’s peace, I can see that.’
