by K. J. Parker
‘So you keep telling us,’ Elja muttered. She was carrying two heavy buckets of water, covered with hides that had been tied down to prevent wastage by spilling. ‘And not just something.’
‘Forgotten to bring something we’re going to need,’ Poldarn said. ‘No chance of going back for it now.’
‘Then let’s hope it wasn’t anything important.’
On the other hand, this was as good a place as any to try out his idea – better, in fact, than most, because on the other side of the plateau, where the rocks formed a low wall, there was a plainly visible thin point, where it would be fairly simple to break through. Channelled through that breach, the tapped-off flow would run down an even steeper incline that would guide it straight across the other side of the mountain, following a deeply cut gorge to the level plain below, and from there into a deep wooded valley, a natural sump that would take a lot of filling before the fire-stream could continue on its way. There was a farm down there – Poldarn could just make out the tiny squares of the buildings and the subtly differentiated colours of the home fields – but it stood on high ground on the edge of the plain, a long way above the valley. If everything went according to plan, the fire-stream wouldn’t come any nearer to the farm than a mile and a half, missing the fields and the pasture completely. An ideal arrangement, in other words. He couldn’t have produced a more suitable landscape if he’d moulded it himself out of potter’s clay.
‘Well,’ Poldarn said, ‘we’d better get started.’
He’d brought everyone with him, women and children too, and nobody was empty-handed. He hadn’t had to order them to come, or plead, or even ask; they’d been ready and waiting for him when he emerged from the house, early on that first morning. Nobody said anything, but they’d managed to keep up a stiff pace all the way from Ciartanstead to the hog’s back; so stiff that at times he’d been hard put to it to keep up.
The first step was obviously to breach the wall, and that was a simple enough job, though more than a little strenuous. For that they used pickaxes, hammers and stout cold chisels, cracking and chipping the rocks away from the other side (extremely awkward, since there were precious few places where a man could stand upright and still do any useful work; ten men could squeeze in at a time, and the rest of the workforce could only stand by and wait their turn to relieve them). They used the spoil to bank up the sides of the breach, in case weakening the crust wall in one place caused it to break out elsewhere. From start to finish the work took six hours, rather less than he’d anticipated, and there was still an hour of daylight left when they finished.
Waste not, want not, Poldarn thought; although daylight wasn’t actually necessary, given the brightness of the fire-stream’s orange glow. One last despairing attempt to remember whatever it was he’d forgotten; then he picked up one of the new special drills and led the way into the breach.
‘I’ll go first,’ he announced, and nobody offered to take his place. ‘Who’s going to strike for me? Anybody?’
He’d been hoping Boarci would volunteer, but instead there was a long, awkward silence. Then Asburn shoved through to the front, picking up a heavy sledge on his way. ‘I’ll hold the drill and you strike, if you’d rather,’ he said. It was a tempting offer, sure enough; it was the man holding the drill who had to stand closest to the fire-stream, and he’d be the first to die if the crust gave way and the molten rock came spurting out before there was time to get clear. But Poldarn shook his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘you’ll be more use behind the hammer. I don’t think I could lift that thing, let alone swing it.’
Next came a rather ludicrous performance. Elja and a couple of the other women had soaked two large raw oxhides in water, and they proceeded to wrap them round him, tying them down at his wrists and ankles and swathing his face in loops of hide until only his eyes and the tip of his nose poked through. Then, for good measure, they splashed a few cups of water in his face and wrapped his hands with strips of sodden buckskin. Poldarn could feel water trickling down his cheeks inside the swathes, also down his chest and back into his trousers, gathering in reservoirs where the string was pulled tight around his ankles. Asburn had to put up with the same ritual humiliation, which gave some degree of comfort, but not much.
‘Here goes, then,’ Poldarn mumbled through the layers of wet leather. It wasn’t the most inspiring speech of valediction, and it came out sounding sillier still. ‘Get the next pair ready to take over as soon as we’ve had enough.’
He hadn’t considered the problem of steam inside his clothes; it was hot enough to scald him wherever they touched his skin, and probably the hardest thing he had to do was keep his eyes open as drops of water dribbled off his forehead and turned into uncomfortably hot vapour before they could soak away. But the precautions proved to be more than amply justified; he managed to cling on to the drill long enough for Asburn to deliver five bone-jarring thumps on his end of the drill before the heat forced him back, his nose and fingertips red and tingling. On his way back he crossed with the next two, similarly cocooned in saturated hides. They only managed three hits before giving way to the next pair. It seemed like no time at all before it was his turn again, and with each thump and chink of the hammer he was torn between two horrible possibilities: that the crust was far too thick, and they’d never get through it at this rate, not if they played this game for a year; or that the crust would suddenly give way at the next hit, and he’d trip over his absurd skirts as he tried to run, and the fire-stream would surge over him like daylight flooding a room, and obliterate him completely. Each time he came off duty – he made it a point of honour to stand for at least five hits, a whole ten heartbeats in the face of the fire – his swaddle of hides was as dry as old shoes and moulded round him like armour, springy and tough, so that it took three pairs of hands to peel it off him.
The first casualty was one of the Colscegsford field hands, a man called Scerry; he was holding the drill and tried to get a step closer in, so as to direct the blow more accurately. But that one step was one too many; his wrappings dried out instantly and caught fire, and the shrinking and hardening effect on the oxhide made it impossible for him to run. He tried nevertheless, toppled over and landed on the edge of the crust, burning up in three heartbeats. He must have been dead before the fire burned through the hides, because he didn’t make a sound. His replacement was in position before Scerry had finished burning, and the drill poked through his ashes to find the dent in the crust.
Hending, a Ciartanstead man, went out before the women had finished wrapping him properly. The bandages slipped off his face and it melted; his hammerman got him clear by grabbing the drill and hauling him in like a fish on a line. He died a few minutes later. Another Ciartanstead hand by the name of Brenny was hit on the side of the head by a splinter of rock – where it came from, nobody noticed; he was swinging the hammer for Carey, and someone else took his place in time for the next hit. A Colscegsford woman whose name Poldarn didn’t know got in the way of a drill as it was being pulled clear at the end of a shift; the red-hot tip dragged down her arm from the shoulder to the elbow, burning her severely, but she carried on working for some time, carrying buckets in her other hand. Rook went out to hold a drill wearing heavy leather gloves instead of wrappings on his hands, but the leather turned out to be too greasy to take in water – they were a pair used in the wool store for hauling ropes, and the wool-grease had worked into the palms. The heat in the drill set them alight, taking all the skin off Rook’s hands. Egil missed the end of the drill with the hammer head and hit it with the shaft instead. The head snapped off and went flying, hitting a Ciartanstead man between the shoulder blades; he was out of action for the rest of the day. Swessy, an old man who plaited ropes and weaved baskets for the Colscegsford house, took Rook’s turn at the drill after Rook got burned. In spite of the wrappings, the heat was too much for him and stopped his heart. He was dead by the time they were able to pull him clear. They had no idea whether t
hey were making any impression on the sidewall of the flow; there wasn’t time to examine it, and the red glow dazzled their eyes. They still hadn’t thought about what they could do as and when the wall finally did give way, but that possibility seemed too remote to worry about, compared to the other, more obvious dangers.
Finally, after two hours, they gave up and withdrew to the hog’s back to rest. The general impression was that things weren’t going too well. They’d already used up over half the water, and there wouldn’t be time to go back and get any more. The heat had shrunk, curled, stiffened and cracked the hides to the point where they were starting to shrug off water, and it was taking more and more ingenuity to cover the bare patches. Nearly all of the men had minor burns to their hands and faces, not serious enough to count as an injury but sufficient to slow them down or reduce the time they could spend in front of the fire-stream. They were too exhausted to do any more, but everyone knew without having to be told that if they rested for too long, the stream would move on, taking the weakened patch they’d made (such as it was) with it. If that happened, the flow would miss the gap they’d made, and all their effort would go to waste. They kept still for an hour, but that was as long as they dared leave it. It was dark, of course, but there was enough firelight to work by. Nobody said anything. They trudged back to the breach and carried on.
(The crows do this, Poldarn realised. When there’s danger they send out their scouts, and sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t, but the work, the joint effort of staying alive carries on. They don’t stop to fuss over their dead and maimed, and they know what to do without having to be organised or told. Perhaps we’re the crows this time, and I’m the mountain, an unknown quantity suddenly erupting into violence, changing everything. Maybe it’s wrong of me to be on both sides at the same time; but there, I haven’t known which side I’m meant to be on ever since I woke up in the mud beside the Bohec. The sensible thing would be to find a way not to take sides, but that’s a luxury I don’t appear to have. I’m lying on the anvil looking up at myself swinging the hammer.)
He was looking the other way when the crust finally gave way. It was only because some woman screamed that he looked around at all, just in time to see Barn, his stolid brother-in-law, drop his drill and spin round. But the breach in the sidewall opened up like a gate, releasing a flood of orange-hot liquid rock that moved faster than a galloping horse. Before Poldarn could catch his breath to shout the molten stone was round Barn’s ankles, like the tide on a beach. Then Barn simply wasn’t there any more, and his hammerman, a stranger, made a flamboyant standing leap for the built-up wall where the people from the two households were standing. Someone reached out a hand to pull him up, but they missed; he scrabbled at the rock with his fingers, apparently hanging off the sheer side of the wall like a fly, then he slid back down on his stomach, arms still flailing, and slipped into the fire-stream like a ship being launched. He made a very brief flare, but no sound.
But there were other things to look at besides the death of one stranger. For a very long heartbeat it looked as though the fire-stream had enough momentum to slop up the wall and push off the boulders they’d piled up to dam the flood. But it slid back, just as Barn’s hammerman had done, found the breach they’d so carefully made, and ducked down into it, surging forward before vanishing over the edge. Poldarn closed his eyes into a dazzled white blur. It was doing what they wanted it to, at least for now. It was little short of a miracle, but it looked like they’d managed to pull it off. Remarkable, Poldarn said to himself; who’d have thought it?
He edged his way along the crowded ledge until he could look down into the valley. Already the fire-stream was slowing down, driving a furrow through the loose rock, dirt and shale, no longer shining bright (like a piece of hot steel shrouded in firescale as it cooled). But it was still moving – walking pace now, but much faster than its previous imperceptible creep. Poldarn stood watching it for a long time, as if afraid that if he looked away even for a moment it would stop dead in its tracks. Then in the back of his mind he realised that something had gone wrong.
He looked out over the fire-stream to the other side of the breach, where at least half of his company were now effectively stranded. They didn’t seem to have realised it for themselves as yet; but there was clearly no way that they could cross the stream, either here, further up or down below. Unless they were planning on staying perched on the ledge for the rest of their lives, the only option open to them was to follow it round to the point where the slope behind them slackened off; from there, if they were very careful, they ought to be able to pick their way down onto the lower slopes and thence to the plain below, where Poldarn had noticed the farm. From there they’d have to go the long way round the base of the mountain to get back to Haldersness and Ciartanstead. If they managed to keep up a good pace, they ought to be home again in eight days or so.
It was a ludicrous position, and Poldarn found himself grinning, at least until he remembered that the last time he’d seen both Elja and Boarci they’d been on that side of the breach. That wiped the smile off his face, but it was hardly a disaster nonetheless. He looked round on his side, trying to spot familiar faces, but there weren’t too many of them. When he looked back, he saw Colsceg trying to attract his attention, with Egil beside him looking worried. He knew immediately that neither of them was aware that Barn was dead.
‘Ciartan,’ Colsceg shouted, ‘we’re cut off here, we can’t get across. We’re stuck.’
Poldarn took a deep breath. ‘I know,’ he called back. ‘You’ll have to go the long way round, down into the valley and round.’
‘Bugger,’ Colsceg yelled. ‘Should’ve thought of that before we broke through. Still, can’t be helped.’
That was true enough. ‘Will you be all right?’ Poldarn shouted.
‘Should be,’ Colsceg replied. ‘Got nothing to eat, but there’s a farm down yonder – we can last out till we get there. See you in a few days, I reckon.’
‘Longer than that, I’d say.’ Poldarn hesitated. He felt that he ought to tell Colsceg about Barn, but it didn’t seem right, howling the bad news at him across a river of fire; it would be a stupid, grotesque way of breaking the news, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘looks like we managed it, after all.’
‘Looks that way,’ Colsceg replied. ‘Bloody good job, too. I never thought for a minute it was going to work, glad I was wrong. See you back home, then.’
‘See you,’ Poldarn replied. It was too far for him to see the expression on Colsceg’s face, in the dark, with the air disturbed by the hot air rearing up from the fire-stream. He felt ashamed of himself, and his success didn’t seem to count for anything, achieved this way. It was as if he’d bought it at the cost of Barn’s life and didn’t care. ‘Sorry about this,’ he shouted, but Colsceg was looking the other way, talking to the people on the far side. There didn’t seem to be anything else he could do here, so he turned back to his own contingent and explained the situation as best he could. As far as he could tell, they’d already figured it out for themselves, which made the job a little easier.
‘When it gets light, you go on ahead,’ he told them, when he’d finished explaining. ‘I’m going to hang on here for a while, just to make sure everything’s going to be all right. I can’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be, but you never know.’
‘Please yourself,’ said Raffen. ‘Me, I’ve had enough of this place to last me. I’m shattered, and I’m going to get some sleep.’
That sounded eminently reasonable, and the rest of the party quickly followed suit. Poldarn stretched himself out on the ledge with them, but for some reason he didn’t want to close his eyes – maybe he knew he was too tired to sleep, or he was afraid of what he might see with his eyes shut. He lay for a long time staring up into the red sky, and when eventually he did drift into sleep, either he didn’t dream or he forgot it as soon as he woke up, in the first light of dawn, with the o
range glow of sunrise mirrored in the fire-stream.
Almost immediately, the two severed halves of the expedition team set about packing up and moving off. Poldarn tried to get a glimpse of Elja before she disappeared with the others; he caught sight of her briefly, but she didn’t see him, and his view was obscured by other people getting in the way. Not long after that he was alone, perched on the edge of the breach. Everything seemed to be all right; the diverted stream had covered a surprising amount of ground during the night, and was still moving fast enough for its progress to be visible – not quite walking pace now, but at that rate it wouldn’t be long before it reached the valley below, and the little wooded combe he’d aimed it at. Somehow it didn’t seem nearly as menacing, now that he’d imposed his will on it; as it waddled down the slope it put him in mind of a flock of sheep, bustled and bounced into going where it was supposed to go by a small but agile sheepdog. In a way he was almost disappointed; the work had been painfully hard and men had died, but outsmarting the enemy had been much easier than he’d anticipated, and he no longer had the feeling of being locked in battle with a worthy opponent. Not that he felt proud of himself, particularly; in fact, he told himself, since the solution had proved to be fairly simple and straightforward, chances were that they’d have thought of it for themselves even if he hadn’t been there. Quite possibly they’d have done it better without him interfering, maybe even without loss of life.
Poldarn shrugged. Looked at objectively, it was ridiculous to feel a sense of anticlimax. If he hadn’t taken charge, the one practicable opportunity would’ve been missed, and the fire-stream would be headed straight for Haldersness and his new house. Sure, he thought, but would that really have been so bad, compared with so many men dying? Barn and his hammerman, Swessy and the others (he couldn’t remember them all offhand, his mind was too ragged, but he promised to remember them later, when he was himself again). So; supposing the fire-stream had ploughed down into Haldersness, forcing the river out of its bed and obliterating his house – both his houses? So what? They were just timber arranged in a pattern, nothing that couldn’t be built again, and even the farm, the river, the land weren’t all that important; it was a huge island that they lived on – all they’d have had to do was pack up and move on, no big deal compared with what the first settlers here had faced, no big deal compared with the terrible malevolence of the fire-stream against human skin, the heat annealing all the memories out of their bodies, evaporating them, losing them for ever. It occurred to Poldarn that he’d made a very big, serious mistake, and that everything would have been better if only he’d left well alone.
