by K. J. Parker
Poldarn slept badly out in the open, and woke up with a stiff neck. Halfway through the next morning it came on to rain, and he realised he’d come out without a proper coat. The horse blanket, draped round his shoulders and tucked in under his chin, made him feel happier for a while, until it soaked up so much water that its presence became a nuisance rather than a help. Half an hour before he reached Ciartanstead it stopped raining and the sun came out, filling his nose with the stench of drying blanket.
He remembered a small patch of dead ground not far from the house, with a tree he could tie the horse to. From there he walked slowly and carefully, making sure he kept just below the skyline. At some point in his career – at Deymeson, presumably – he’d learned how to make himself inconspicuous in a rural landscape. If anyone saw him as he approached the farm, he wasn’t aware of it.
The closest cover was the cider house. Leaning against the wall was a stack of long poles; he crept in behind it and looked up the sky. Not far off noon; in which case, Carey would be fetching water from the spring. That meant crossing the yard, and there were bound to be people about. Fortunately, he appeared to have covered that part of the syllabus, too. He found a bucket, picked it up, and crossed the yard briskly and openly. Nobody ever takes any notice of a man with a bucket who looks like he’s working.
Just for once, he’d got it pretty much right. Carey was at the spring, stooping down to fill his own bucket. Another part of the course must have dealt with sneaking up behind people without being heard, because the first Carey knew about Poldarn was the edge of Boarci’s axe, pressed against the side of his neck.
‘Hello,’ Poldarn said; quiet, ordinary speech, in a pleasant tone of voice, because few things are as conspicuous as whispering. ‘Why did you steal my horse?’
Carey had the sense to stay very still. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was Eyvind’s decision. Just happened to be my turn to go, is all.’
‘I understand,’ Poldarn replied. ‘I don’t blame you, it’s not your fault. Where’s the horse now?’
‘In the stable,’ Carey replied. ‘Fifth stall on your right from the door.’
‘Thanks,’ Poldarn said. ‘Out of interest, why did Eyvind decide to steal my horse?’
Carey sighed. ‘He didn’t want to,’ he said. ‘But Melsha – you know, Orin’s daughter; Orin, the man Boarci killed – Melsha was making trouble, said it was wrong how he’d put aside Orin’s death without a settlement, when he hadn’t been doing anything wrong. She kept nagging Eyvind to do something, Eyvind said no, she said there had to be a settlement, even if it was just a gesture, and they decided on taking a horse. Nobody’s happy about it. Eyvind reckoned it’d cause trouble, and he doesn’t want that.’
Poldarn frowned. ‘He should have thought of that when he turned me out of my house,’ he replied, and drew the edge of the axe firmly across Carey’s jugular vein.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The spurt of blood splashed him before he could duck out of the way. It was humiliating, like being laughed at by the rest of the class for getting the exercise wrong. He felt a fool as he wiped the warm, thick stuff out of his eyes.
Now then, he thought, looking down at the dead body (lying on its face half in and half out of the water, which was brown with disturbed silt and red with blood; here we are again, back at the beginning): what did I go and do that for? It was a good thing that the face was mostly submerged, because he’d known Carey, though only for a short while, and now he was gone, his life had broken out of its pen and escaped, and there was no chance of catching up with it and bringing it back. There were things he’d have liked to have asked him, and he couldn’t now.
Then he remembered; of course, Eyvind and the stolen horse and the stolen house, the broken settlement, the act of war that he was obliged to take notice of. He hadn’t really had any choice in the matter, once he’d been told about it and the sharp facts had embedded themselves in his memory, in over the barbs and up to the socket. You can’t ignore stuff like that when you’re the head of a house, or what would the world come to?
Pity, though; he’d neither liked nor disliked the man, but now Carey was firmly planted in his memory, a fixture in his mind for ever, or until his own life flew the coop. He wondered which bloody fool it was who’d put such a vulnerable thing as the jugular vein in such an exposed position on the neck, where any vicious bastard with a sharp edge could just reach out and snip through it, easy as picking apples. If it was the work of some god, he wasn’t impressed. To him it suggested carelessness or outright malice, and either of those was good grounds for contempt.
Well; it wasn’t very smart to stand out here in the open, at midday, a known enemy of the house, with a dead man at his feet and blood all over his face. If he’d done that back at Deymeson, they’d have made him stand in the corner for the rest of the lesson.
First, it’d be a good idea to get rid of the blood. He dropped to his knees and plunged his hands in the water, tearing apart his own reflection (which was fine by him, it wasn’t something he wanted to see at that precise moment). It didn’t take him long to scrub the blood out of his eye sockets with his balled fists, and that would have to do to be going on with. A quick scout round in case anybody was watching, then a brisk but relaxed walk across the open ground between the pool and the trap-house; brief pause for another look round, then across the yard to the rat-house and the sanctuary of his nest of leaning poles.
Time to think sensibly about the next step. If he was going to do this thing properly, he ought really to go over to the stable and retrieve his stolen horse. That would be the right thing to do, and if he didn’t, killing poor old Carey would begin to seem less like a tactical necessity and more like cold-blooded irrational murder. By the same token, stealing the horse was the most effective way he could think of to sign his name to the killing; and then there’d be retribution, and the cycle would gather speed, the pattern repeating, until one side or the other was wiped out. If he were to sneak quietly away without being seen, that might not happen; sure, Eyvind would suspect him and his house, he couldn’t help but do so, but he’d have no proof and so wouldn’t be obliged, or able, to take the matter further. That was all very well; but he’d come here to deliver a message. He’d done that, but did a message really count as having been delivered if you whispered it in the other man’s ear while he was asleep?
Furthermore, he thought, if I show up at Poldarn’s Forge with the missing horse, and a day or so later Eyvind’s men arrive, my people will know for sure that it was me who killed Carey – and I’m not entirely sure I want them to. They’re the ones who stand to suffer most if this turns into a regular killing feud, simply because there’s so many more of Eyvind’s lot than there are of us.
At times like this, duty to those one leads and to those who are under one’s protection must be the overriding consideration. Otherwise, what would become of us all?
He frowned; and then he knew what to do. It came into his mind by intuition, or he remembered having been at this point before; it was like suddenly remembering how to do the forge-weld, or how to use a scythe properly.
But that was some way in the future. Right now, there wasn’t really all that much he could usefully do here – and besides, it was his unshirkable duty to keep from getting caught and killed, because who else was there who could run things at the Forge? Better that he should go home, keep his face shut and quietly figure out a defence strategy that’d give his side even a remote chance of surviving if Eyvind saw past his anonymous act and took the next step. After that, of course, he knew exactly what had to be done, so there was no need for detailed planning.
Forget the horse, then, and concentrate on getting out of there in one unobserved piece. That was a tough enough assignment to pose a worthwhile challenge for anybody.
Just strolling along with a bucket had been enough to get him in, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that it couldn’t be relied on to get him out again. On the way in, he h
adn’t done anything wrong yet, and so the worst he could have suffered was embarrassment. If he was stopped and detained now, they’d find the body and that’d be that: worst possible outcome.
A diversion, then, so they’d all be looking the other way. That was the classic approach; unlikely that he’d be able to better it by figuring out something from scratch. Quickest, easiest and best value in terms of effect would be to set fire to one of the buildings – but he knew for a stone-cold certainty that if he tried that, he’d be a quarter of an hour trying to get a spark to catch in the tinder, and even then it’d smoke feebly for a few seconds and then go out. Even with charcoal and a big set of bellows it was still always a pleasant surprise when he managed to get a fire going in the forge. Out here, in these circumstances, with the materials available to him – forget it.
Not a fire, then. He could go over to the stables and turn out all the horses; but that’d leave him exposed, in the middle of all the confusion, and someone would be bound to see him. He could chop through the rafters of the barn roof and collapse it, but that’d take too long, and the roof would probably fall on him. He could yell ‘Fire!’ and hope someone believed him. He could kill someone else, to divert attention from the first killing . . .
None of the above. He slumped against the wall, furious at his own lack of ingenuity. It was a bad time to have his mind go blank. If only—
He looked up sharply. A thump, so loud that it made the ground shiver under his feet, filled the air, and instinctively he looked up towards the mountain. He knew what he was going to see: a red glow under a black cloud near the summit. He might not be much good at causing diversions, but the divine Poldarn had a flair for it.
At once the yard was full of people, running out to stare. As on every previous occasion they stood still, eyes fixed on the skyline, no words. Well, he thought, no point in hanging about; certainly no point in standing there gawping like the rest of them. As he walked quickly away from the yard, he couldn’t help reflecting on that. Here was the sight everyone in the district dreaded most, and here was one man, not like the rest of them, who was looking the other way.
Once he was a safe distance from the yard, screened from it by the lie of the land, he stopped and did some gawping of his own. Compared to the previous outbursts it was fairly small-scale, a little cut instead of a gaping wound; but red-hot molten rock was gushing out of the mountainside like blood from a severed vein, spurting and dribbling down the neck of the mountain, and he’d have had to be deaf and blind as well as stupid not to get the gist of what the divine Poldarn was trying to tell him. When the god under the mountain chose to deliver a message, he didn’t whisper.
Bloody hell, he thought; I’ve got to go home past that.
It was, of course, far too soon to hazard a guess as to where the fire-stream was headed. It looked as if it had burst out just above the place where the hot springs had once been but he didn’t know the upper reaches of the mountain well enough to be able to visualise the area in detail and extrapolate the stream’s likely route. He wondered if Eyvind would feel obliged to try and do something about it, so as to eclipse the memory of his predecessor in title. It would be hilarious, screamingly funny, if Eyvind led a party up there with drills and goatskins and buckets to divert the course of the stream, and inadvertently sent it tumbling down onto Poldarn’s Forge, smashing and burning the house, burying the fields. Seeing Eyvind’s face under those circumstances would be better than a day at the bear-baiting.
He retrieved his horse, turned his back on Ciartanstead and rode towards the mountain. By now the road was as familiar as an old coat, and he made good time. As far as he could tell at this stage (and it really was too early to judge) the fire-stream was headed down the Ciartanstead side of the mountain, but slightly further west than it had been before, when its threat had prompted him to divert it. He tried to plan out the route in his head. At the moment, the red smudge was working its way down towards a trough and ridge; once it hit that, it would have to follow the line of least resistance, which would lead it further west to a steep drop. That would make it gain pace and momentum, so that when it reached the bottom of the escarpment it could very well have enough impetus behind it to jump over the little lip just below and carry on in a straight line until it hit the long, flat decline directly underneath; and that would carry it, smooth and quick as a paved street in Boc Bohec, directly onto the roof of Haldersness.
He frowned, startled by the coincidence; then he shrugged. They’d have several days’ notice, so there was no real danger to the household there. They’d evacuate to Ciartanstead in good time, taking with them a judicious selection of their goods and chattels, only those things that would be less trouble to find space for than to make again. It’d be a tight squeeze in Eyvind’s new house – his people, the Ciartanstead household and the Haldersness refugees as well – but it was wonderful how many people you could fit into a confined space if you really had to. All of them, together under one roof. From one point of view that would be a definite advantage, the divine Poldarn helping him to cover an angle he’d overlooked in his original concept. From another point of view it was rather a pity, but it certainly wasn’t his fault, not this time.
(Well, maybe it was. Maybe it was because he’d diverted the previous outburst that this one had broken out in exactly that spot. Or maybe it was the fault of the god under the mountain. Or both.)
In any event, if the fire-stream followed the route he’d figured out for it, it oughtn’t to cause him any problems in getting home; a slight detour, over marginally rougher ground, perhaps adding an extra hour or two but no more. As far as that side of it was concerned, the divine Poldarn had been delightfully considerate. As was only right and proper, of course.
As it turned out, the detour shortened the journey home by at least three hours, though he had more than one awkward moment as he picked his way across sloping beds of deep shale. That was good. Almost certainly, Eyvind had found the body by now. If he’d found it fairly soon after Poldarn had left, and had immediately come to the conclusion that Poldarn had been responsible, there was a chance that retribution was already on its way. Once again, the divine Poldarn was on his side, since by the time the putative expeditionary force reached the mountain road, the fire-stream would be an hour or so further on its way, cutting off the route he’d taken himself and forcing them onto a longer, slower track. Even so, the extra three hours he’d shaved off the trip would come in handy, just in case.
They came out to meet him, clearly aware that something was wrong. At first he assumed it was the mountain that was bothering them – he was feeling quite blasé about it himself, and as he drew close he started to figure out what he’d say to put their minds at rest. But it wasn’t the mountain, as it turned out; because Elja’s first words to him were, ‘Where have you been?’
‘Ciartanstead,’ he replied casually. ‘I told you, I had some business over there.’
Elja looked at him steadily, as if she already knew what she was looking for. ‘There’s dried blood all over your shirt collar,’ she said. ‘But I can’t see any cut or anything, so I’m guessing it’s not yours.’
‘No,’ he confessed. ‘It’s not.’
‘Has it got something to do with the business you had at the old house?’
He nodded. ‘Quite a bit to do with it, yes.’
‘I see.’ Elja didn’t look surprised, or angry, or disappointed, or even pleased. ‘Did it go the way you wanted?’
He nodded. ‘The mountain breaking out again was an unexpected help,’ he said. ‘It got me out of there without any bother at all.’
‘Glad it’s turned out useful for something,’ Elja said, looking straight at him. There had been a time when a look like that would have bothered the hell out of him, but he couldn’t spare attention for it right now. Maybe later, but probably not.
‘I think we’d better make ourselves scarce for a while,’ he said, sliding off his horse and stumbling as his cramp
ed legs buckled under him. He straightened up and waited for the strength to come back. ‘Just a precaution,’ he added. ‘I think they’ll have other things on their minds right now. But I may be overestimating their intelligence, so we’d better play it safe.’
Asburn said: ‘You’ll be wanting a lookout, then.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That’d be a sensible idea. You volunteering?’
‘I’ll go up the side of the mountain, to where there’s that fallen-down old hut,’ Asburn said. ‘If anybody can spare the time to bring me up some dinner later on, I’d appreciate it.’
‘Actually,’ Geir put in, ‘we could all do worse than head up there, if there’s a chance trouble could be on the way. We’d see them long before they could see us, we’d be able to get out of there and scatter up the mountain before they could get up to us, and at least there’s the best part of a roof on there if it comes on to rain while we’re waiting.’
Poldarn agreed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you get together whatever we’re likely to need and head on up there; take the horses, just in case. I’ll join you in a short while, there’s a few things I need to see to first.’
‘Such as?’ Elja asked him, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he hurried away to the barn, where he reckoned he’d be able to find pretty much everything he’d need. The errand took longer than he’d expected – there was never a ball of strong thatcher’s twine around when you really needed one – but eventually he had everything neatly piled, bagged and stashed where he’d be able to find it in a hurry. Then he trudged up to the ruined hut; slowly, because by now he was very tired. He hadn’t really been able to sleep the previous night, perched on a ledge on the side of the burning mountain, and what little sleep he’d managed to get had been spoilt by a bad dream.
