Pattern s-2

by K. J. Parker

  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 orange 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 gro
und 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.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  At first he assumed he was back in the peafield, and that the bodies lying out on the dry earth were the crows he'd killed. He could feel the pain in his knees-a pity I can't change the past, he thought, I'd get up and stretch my legs at this point, maybe save myself five days of misery-and the weary ache in his right shoulder. But then he realised that he wasn't alone in the ditch. It was full of men, in armour, clutching weapons and crouching low to keep their heads out of sight. Oh, he thought, I must be somewhere else.

  He glanced sideways, doing his best not to be obvious about it. Whoever these people were, he had a feeling that they were under his command, and therefore had a right to feel confidence in their commander. It wouldn't do for him to start asking disconcerting questions, like Where are we? and What the hell's going on here? They might get the impression that he wasn't in complete control of the situation, and that would never do.

  I must be dreaming again, he thought. In which case it's probably all right, nothing really bad can happen to me in the past, because if I'd died or lost an arm in this battle, I'd know it for sure back in the present. So that's all right, he added. This is just a holiday, a guided tour of some momentous event laid on for my benefit, as a reward for beating the volcano.

  If he was dreaming, he rationalised, it seemed reasonable to suppose that he wasn't really here, and nothing he did could have a bad effect on the outcome; so he wriggled round to the point where he could put his weight on his feet and pushed up, just enough to let him see over the top of the ditch.

  A column of soldiers was approaching. They looked remarkably like the soldiers next to him, as far as clothes, armour and equipment were concerned; the only difference he could see was that they were armed with straight-bladed swords, while in his own right hand he held a curved-bladed object that he recognised as an enemy backsabre (No, not enemy; at least, not as far as the present is concerned. The backsabre is our special design, unique to our people on the island. How he'd come by it, of course, he had no idea, but one of his men in the ditch seemed to have one, which suggested it was some kind of special trophy, an appropriate sidearm for a dashing and popular leader-)

  There were, he realised an awful lot of soldiers drawing near, enough to make him very glad that he wasn't really there. Of course, he had no way of telling, crouched down there in the ditch, how many men he had on his side. For all he knew, there could be thousands of them, not just the couple of hundred in the ditch but other units hidden with equal skill and cunning, behind hedges, among the trees, maybe even hunkered down in cleverly disguised pits dug in the field. Since he had no idea just how wonderfully imaginative and inventive he was when it came to laying ambushes and conducting battles, all he could do was keep very still and hope for the best.

  There didn't seem to be anything else he could glean from the approaching soldiers, so he turned his attention to the dead bodies. They weren't soldiers. Most of them weren't even men-there were a few old men, some boys, but the bodies were mostly those of women of various ages. All dead, of course, unless they were making a very good job of just shamming dead; but he didn't really think he was clever and imaginative enough to have staged that. Some of them at least were quite palpably dead: heads chopped off or necks slashed half through, ribcages opened, the sort of thing you couldn't really fake. The implication was that someone had massacred two or three hundred helpless civilians. He hoped very much that it hadn't been him, because the sight was pretty grim. The approaching soldiers didn't look too happy about it, for one thing, and they gave every indication of wanting to get their hands on whoever was responsible. That didn't bode well, particularly if he didn't have an extra thousand or so heavy infantry concealed about the place. He wasn't sure he cared much for this dream, after all.

  The soldiers carried on advancing; they were no more than a couple of hundred yards away by now, rather too close for comfort. He wondered if he ought to be doing anything, or whether whatever was going to happen next could be left to take care of itself. Probably not. If he really was the leader of the men in the ditch, it'd be up to him; to give the order to attack-assuming that they were planning an ambush and not hiding, though if these few with him were all there were that could well be the case. Really, it was no better than being awake, the frustration of not knowing who he was or what he was meant to be doing. He could get as much of that as he wanted just by hanging round the farm, without having to travel back in time for it.

  The man next to him budged him in the ribs. 'No offence,' he muttered, in a tone of voice that suggested the exact opposite, 'but you're cutting it bloody fine.'

  'I know what I'm doing,' he replied, much to his own surprise (but that was the other man talking, the one who had a right to be here). 'Shut your face and wait for my mark.'

  The man next to him froze, as if he'd just been hit across the face. He felt ashamed and embarrassed-the poor fellow had only been trying to help, and as far as he could see, the man had had a point, the enemy were getting closer all the time and it wasn't going to be easy getting out of this bloody ditch. By the time they'd scrambled up the bank and retrieved their weapons and kit, there wasn't going to be much in the way of an element of surprise. Still, he thought, there's no logical reason to believe that the momentous event I've come here to see is a victory. For all I know we're about to make a horrible mess of it and get slaughtered. He stole another look at the dead women and children scattered about the field like decoys, and added, Serve us right.

  Then he realised what he'd been waiting for. The enemy, having come right down the field, within fifty yards of the ditch, were turning to the right, from column to file, with a view to marching off somewhere. You'd never try such an unwieldy manoeuvre on a battlefield in the face of the enemy; but they didn't know there was anybody in the ditch, so it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Obviously he'd fo
reseen that, his remarkably perceptive tactical brain allowing him to read the enemy commander's mind, right down to the minutiae of timing and procedure. He couldn't help admiring He was on his feet, clawing at the grass with his left hand to pull himself up the steep bank. On either side his men were doing the same thing, most of them rather more athletically than him. Already the first few dozen were up and on the move, hurling themselves against the enemy flank with a cold fury that argued a definite sense of purpose-probably they had a score to settle, some grievance that justified killing women and children, and prompted them to such a display of aggression. As for the other side, they didn't know what was happening. (By now he was out of the ditch, hands and knees filthy with mud, catching his breath and straightening his cramped back like an old man while all around him his soldiers were charging.) For one thing, it seemed, the other soldiers couldn't figure out why their own people were attacking them; they didn't seem to want to fight or use their weapons, not until they'd given away the advantage and lost all semblance of order and cohesion. Meanwhile, there was more movement going on in other parts of the field-he'd been right, there was a large contingent of his men tucked away behind the far hedge, another lot were rising up out of the ground like sprouting corn (another ditch, he assumed, or something of the sort) and it was soon pretty obvious that he had as many men as the other lot, if not more. That was a relief, at any rate. In fact, the result was already a foregone conclusion, if his instincts were anything to go by. He had the enemy in flank and rear, with another unit rushing up to block their front and complete the encirclement. His lot, the men from the ditch, were in the process of cutting the enemy column in two, which he was fairly sure was a very good thing in a battle. All things considered, the other lot didn't stand a chance, and all that remained was the tedious job of chopping them down where they stood. He was pleased to see that he, the leader of the winning side, was apparently content to leave the actual killing to his subordinates. It was turning into a very nasty business, and he didn't actually want to get involved, even if he wasn't really there and so couldn't come to any harm.