Pattern s-2

by K. J. Parker

  Poldarn nodded. 'Of course not. I mean, most of the time they treat me like I'm a kid or something. That's when they even acknowledge I exist.'

  'They keep their distance, you mean. Actually, they talk to you far more than they talk to each other, or hadn't you noticed? That's another scary thing, you're always at them, asking questions, like you're interrogating a prisoner. If you were in their shoes, wouldn't you be scared?'

  Poldarn thought about that. 'Not really,' he said. 'I might want to smash my face in from time to time, but I wouldn't be scared. Still, I guess I know me better than they do.'

  Elja laughed. 'Are you sure? It strikes me that you know you less well than anybody. After all, you've only known you for a few months. Some of these people have known you forty-odd years, off and on.'

  'True,' Poldarn replied. 'But I get the impression I've changed a bit since then.'

  'Maybe. How would you know?'

  'I don't,' Poldarn admitted. 'But anyway, that's not the point. I don't really give a damn whether they're scared of me, or they like me or hate me or whatever; not right now, anyway. What's important right now is doing something about the mountain. Just sitting there as though nothing was wrong-how can they do that?'

  Elja smiled at him, quite tenderly. 'You poor thing,' she said, 'you really don't understand. They're scared of you, but they're absolutely terrified of the mountain. It's far more frightening than the thought of getting killed, or anything like that. They know about death, it happens every day, it's one of those things you live with your whole life. But the mountain is new. They've never even heard of anything like it before, not even in stories. And here you are, telling them they've got to go and fight this terrible thing. No wonder they just sat there. There aren't any words to say what they're all thinking right now.'

  'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'And what about you, then? You seem pretty cool about it all.'

  'Me?' Elja frowned. 'I don't really know, I hadn't thought about it. For some reason, I'm not frightened at all. I'm not frightened of you, or the mountain.'

  'Good,' Poldarn said.

  'Not really, no. I ought to be. I don't understand either of you. I just know that you aren't going to do me any harm. I know it's all going to be very bad for a while, and this plan of yours sounds absolutely horrible, but it's not going to hurt me. Something very bad is going to happen sooner or later, but not this.'

  Poldarn leaned forward, not looking at her. 'You sound very sure about that.'

  'Yes,' Elja said, 'I do. It's not a guess or even a conclusion I've reached-I just know it; like you know something you remember, because it's already happened. Does that make any sense to you?'

  'Oddly enough, it does,' Poldarn said quietly. 'It's how I felt when we were building this house. I knew we'd be able to do it, because I felt I'd done it before-no, that's not it. I felt like I'd done it already, if you can see the distinction. I'd done it already, so it was already done and so it had to turn out right. The house couldn't not be built because I'd already built it.'

  Elja nodded. 'You're weird,' she said. 'I hadn't realised quite how weird you really are.'

  'Oh. So that's not how you see this, then.'

  She shook her head. 'It's exactly how I see it,' she said. 'I never said I wasn't weird, did I?' She pushed her hair back behind her ears. 'Look at it from my point of view. I get this really strange, crazy feeling, it's so crazy it worries me. And then you say it's exactly how you felt when you were building the house. Now you are beginning to scare me. I mean, we mustn't both be crazy. Think of the children.'

  Poldarn laughed. 'I think it's simpler than that. You love me so much you're absolutely sure I'll succeed and the fire-stream will go away. You have faith in me.'

  'Oh, sure.' She rested her head on his shoulder. 'I worship you like a god, that goes without saying, I'm practically your high priestess. All you've got to do is snap your fingers and the fire'll crawl back into its kennel like a dog that knows it's been naughty.' A moth whirred past them and started to circle the pottery lamp beside the bed. 'Do you really think it could work, this idea of yours?'

  'It could work,' Poldarn replied, 'but if you're asking whether I can make it work, that's another matter entirely. It could work, but only if we get a whole lot of difficult things right. Maybe we'd have a reasonable chance if we'd done it all before and we knew how to go about it. Getting it to work the first time, when we're making it up as we go along; that's a lot to ask, isn't it? We only get one try, after all.'

  Elja yawned. 'It'll be all right,' she said. 'Trust me.'

  'Why?'

  'Because,' she told him, and snuggled down under the blankets. 'Now shut up and go to sleep. You've got a big day tomorrow.'

  He pinched out the flame of the lamp and lay still in the dark. Somewhere in the room the moth was fluttering round, trying to find out where the flame had gone. Stupid creature, Poldarn thought, I've probably saved its life and it doesn't even realise, let alone feel grateful to me for the exercise of my divine clemency. I'm glad I'm not a god; it must be soul-destroying, putting up with that sort of thing.

  Next morning, early, he went to the forge. Asburn was already there, and a good fire was blazing in the duck's nest.

  'These drills,' Asburn said. 'What did you have in mind?'

  Poldarn couldn't remember having mentioned the drills to anybody except Boarci but he guessed that Boarci had told Asburn about them. 'Something like this,' he said, chalking a sketch on the face of the anvil. 'What do you think?'

  Asburn nodded. 'Oughtn't to be a problem,' he said. 'Only, they've got to be drawn hard. Have we got anything long enough?'

  Poldarn shook his head. 'I was thinking, make the shafts out of iron and weld a steel tip on.'

  'That ought to do it,' Asburn said. 'In that case, we can draw down those old mill shafts.'

  Poldarn stifled a groan, because that would mean several hours of swinging the big hammer, and he felt stiff and raw after his adventures on the mountain. 'Fine,' he said. 'Good idea.'

  'I'll strike, then,' Asburn said, much to Poldarn's surprise. He'd assumed that he'd be striking, while Asburn did the skilled work. 'All right,' he said. 'If you don't mind.'

  In spite of Poldarn's reservations, the drills more or less shaped themselves. First they drew down the shafts, reducing them in diameter by a third. Then they forged flats into the round bars, forming them into hexagons; Poldarn wasn't quite sure why this was necessary, but he knew it was the right thing to do-neither of them suggested it, they just did it as soon as they'd finished drawing down. In order to get the iron to work, they took a ferocious heat, almost white, and Poldarn's skin ached where the flare of the fire-stream had burned it. Next he cut lap scarfs into the tip of each drill with the hot sett, dressing them out clean with the hot and cold files, and smothered the scarfs with flux to keep the scale out while they were welding. As soon as the flux powder touched the hot metal it melted into a glowing yellow liquid, more or less the same in colour and texture as the bed of the fire-stream. They put the drill bodies in the edge of the fire so they'd hold their heat until they were needed, and jumped up some flogged-out old rasps to form the cutting tips. When these were ready they went into the fire until they were yellow, whereupon Poldarn fitted them into the scarfs in the shafts and peened them round to keep them in place as he brought the piece up to a full welding heat, turning them widdershins in the fire to keep the heat even. He raked the fire deep for this part of the process, which meant the metal was buried under burning coals and he had to rely on hearing the fizz as the surface started to burn in order to judge when it was ready to weld. He couldn't have been far out, because when he pulled the first drill out it was snowing fat white sparks. Asburn turned the shaft slowly, while Poldarn patted it smartly and evenly with a two-pound ball-peen. He could feel the iron and steel fuse together under the hammer, a curious scrunching sensation, like treading on a deep drift of virgin snow.

  As soon as they'd finished one drill they started on th
e next, and by the time they'd hardened and tempered the blades and ground them to a cutting edge it was mid-afternoon. Poldarn left Asburn to finish up, and made a round of the other preparations. There weren't going to be nearly as many buckets as he'd have liked, but fortuitously there were plenty of skins, since nobody had got around to tanning the hides from last winter's slaughter. He found more than enough hammers, chisels, crowbars and axes in store, along with a reasonable quantity of rope, though not as much as he'd have liked. By the time everything had been stowed on the wagons, there was only just enough space left for the drills. Anything else-and he was bound to have forgotten something-they'd have to do without.

  'That's the lot, then,' he announced, with rather more confidence than he actually felt. 'We'd better all get a good night's sleep,' he added, 'I want to get started first thing in the morning.'

  Easier said than done. Poldarn lay awake most of the night, trying to visualise the job that lay before them, but the picture evaded him like an unreliable memory. When at last he slipped into a restless doze, the mountain was still there in his dreams-his mountain or another one very like it, only taller and steeper, coughing up fire like a dying man bringing up blood. The most vivid image in his dreams was the hot spring he'd seen so many years ago, with Halder beside him, except that now it was gushing fire instead of water. Somehow that seemed quite natural, as if his previous recollection of the scene had been at fault, and he'd only just corrected the mistake.

  The fire-stream had put on a disconcerting turn of speed while Poldarn had been away. Its pronounced snout of rocks, shale and other debris now stood on a small plateau above a steep drop, with very little in the way of obstacles between it and the long, even slope that led directly to the mouth of the Haldersness valley. Once it made it over the edge, Poldarn couldn't see any force on earth stopping it. To make matters worse, the fissure in the side of the mountain was perceptibly wider, allowing a stronger flow. If this scheme didn't work there wouldn't be time to go home and think of something else. Whether he liked it or not, he was committed to his chosen course of action. This struck him as an unfortunate state of affairs, since the more he thought about it, the more fatuous it seemed.

  'I'm sure I've forgotten something,' he complained, as they came over the hog's back.

  '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 they 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.