by K. J. Parker
'Are you crazy?' The stranger jerked his head in the direction of the people on the porch. 'What the hell makes you think this lot'll give 'em back?'
Tren didn't seem to understand that at first; then he remembered that Poldarn and his people were their prisoners and enemies. The thought couldn't have bothered him much, because he said, 'I don't think you need worry too much on that score. Anyway, unless you've got another route I don't know about, it's not like we've got much choice.'
'Damn.' The stranger didn't know what to do. 'Oh well,' he said eventually, 'if we do have to come back for them, I don't see this lot giving us much trouble. As you can see, most of 'em decided to go to the new place.'
'So it would seem,' Tren said, and his tone of voice implied that he didn't think much of them for that. 'Well, that's their decision, none of our business.' The other man frowned, and Poldarn guessed there was more in Tren's mind than showed in what he'd said out loud. 'We'd better be on our way,' Tren continued. 'It's going to be a long walk, and the sooner we start the sooner we get there.' He turned to Poldarn. 'If we leave our horses here, you won't make trouble, will you?'
Poldarn shook his head. 'I don't pick fights,' he said. 'Particularly when I don't stand a chance. Besides, we aren't going anywhere, so we won't be needing horses. If Eyvind's taken all the feed we'll have to graze them outside, that's all.'
'I don't suppose they'll come to any harm like that,' Tren said, and his conciliatory tone suggested more than a touch of guilt. 'Soon as the ford's clear we'll take them off your hands, and then we'll leave you alone.'
'That'd be best,' Poldarn said.
He and his people watched them in silence till they were out of sight. Only when they'd vanished into a dip of dead ground did anybody speak.
'Father and Egil are going to move out west,' Elja said quietly. 'They said they'd feel uncomfortable at Ciartanstead, and they didn't want to stay here if the rest of the household went. I think that's probably the most sensible thing all round.'
Poldarn looked at her. 'You aren't going with them,' he said.
'No.' She looked away. 'I thought I'd stay here.'
'Good,' Poldarn said. He wanted to put his arms around her and hold on to her as hard as he could, but he felt she wouldn't like that. 'What about the rest of you?' he said. 'You don't have to stay if you don't want to. It's not going to be easy, just the twelve of us on a place this size.'
Nobody said anything for a while; then Rook said; 'It's not so bad. I had a look round; they've taken most of their stuff but they've left more than they meant to. The standing crops, for one thing.'
'They took all the tools,' said one of the men whose names Poldarn couldn't remember. 'I watched them loading up the carts.'
'The furniture, too,' Elja said sadly. 'No benches, no tables, no blankets even. We've got four walls and a roof, and that's it.'
Boarci laughed. 'No big deal,' he said. 'You've got a few trees still, and I think I saw what looked like a nice seam of potters' clay in the yard, where the stream's washed off the topsoil. We can make stuff; it's not exactly difficult.'
'Make stuff with what?' Raffen objected. 'They took all the tools.'
But Boarci shook his head. 'They think they took all the tools,' he replied. 'But in a place like this, you never take everything, there's always something left-a broken knife or a rusty old axe head in the corner of the barn.'
Asburn stood up and walked away; only Poldarn noticed him leave. 'That's all very well,' Raffen went on, 'but even if we can make a few things, that's not the most important thing. What really matters is, there isn't anything to eat.'
Boarci shook his head. 'Don't you believe it,' he said. 'It all depends on what you mean by food. When you've had to live rough as long as I have, you learn to get by on what you can find. There's five apple trees out back, for a start, just coming up nicely.'
One of the nameless men coughed. 'Actually,' he said, 'they're cider apples, not eaters.'
'Big deal.' Boarci grinned. 'They may taste like shit, but so what? And if it's meat you're after, they've left us half a dozen big, tall horses. After all those dinners of porridge and leeks, a nice red steak'll go down pretty sweet.'
But Poldarn shook his head. 'We won't do that,' he said. 'The last thing we need to do is give Eyvind a pretext. They're to be left alone till Eyvind's people come for them, understood?'
Boarci shrugged. 'Up to you,' he said. 'It's all right, though, we can do without. The mountain blowing its top means that all the deer and bears and wild goats and stuff have been pushed down into the valley, without even a wood to hide in. They'll tide us over for a month or so, easy, even if we don't find anything else. And there's plenty of other things you can eat, if you know what to look for. Anyone here ever tried earwigs? I have. They're not bad, if you just swallow and don't think about it.'
'It's not like we've got much choice,' Elja put in abruptly. 'At least, some of you can go to Ciartanstead, but I can't, I've got to stay here whether I like it or not. So yes, I'll eat anything that's edible, and be grateful. Anybody who doesn't think that way had better push off now, before Eyvind decides to shut the door on you.'
That killed the debate stone dead. Raffen sat down on the stoop, took off his left boot and examined the sole. Boarci got up and went into the house. The two unidentified men who'd come with Poldarn started talking to each other very quietly, apparently about a completely unrelated subject. For his part, Poldarn stared out in the direction of the fire-stream, thinking about what he'd seen when he came down off the mountain. They stayed like that until Asburn came bounding back, in apparently high spirits.
'I've just been to look at the smithy,' he said. 'They've taken all the tools but they've left a good anvil-it's bolted down to a big stump set in the floor, and I guess they couldn't get it out in time to take it on. And there's a decent enough vice mounted on the wall, and the forge and the bellows are all still there. And they've left most of the scrap, and,' he added with a big smile, 'I found this under the bench.' He held out a rusty lump of metal for them to see; it turned out to be a hammer head, a four-pound straight-peen with a nicely crowned face and the handle broken off flush in the eye. 'There's even coal in the bunker,' he went on. 'All I've got to do is put a new stem on this and we're in business. We can make all the tools we need.'
Everybody looked at him, as though he'd started telling jokes at a funeral. But Poldarn turned his back on the view and said, 'He's right. With a hammer and an anvil and a fire and some material, we can make any bloody thing we like. We can make axes and saws and chisels, we can make hoes and scythes and rakes and a plough.' He laughed suddenly. 'At least it'll be something to do,' he said. It looked like nobody else understood what he meant by that, but he didn't care. 'It won't be all that different from moving out to Ciartanstead; we'll have to make all the little things, but the house is here already, we don't have to build that. Oh, cheer up, for God's sake. At least we're still alive, not like Barn and those other poor bastards. I got up out of that river bed with nothing, not even any memories, and I've come this far. And just for once, I'll know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.'
Asburn found a smashed-up wagon wheel in a ditch; he and Poldarn wrenched out one of the spokes, and Poldarn cracked a flint with the hammer head to make a sharp edge. While Asburn was fussing round his new forge, checking the bellows-leather for tears and sorting through the scrap pile, Poldarn patiently whittled down the spoke until it fitted into the eye of the hammer head; then he made a wedge out of a scrap of oak he found on the woodshed floor, split the top of the handle, slid in the wedge and slammed it down on the anvil a few times to drive it home. The weight and balance of his new hammer felt just about right, unlike the hammers he'd used back at the old place, which had never sat comfortably in his hand. By the time Poldarn had got that far, Asburn had lit the fire and found a couple of thick stakes that'd do for the makings of a pair of tongs. With tongs they could hold their work; they could make another hammer, anoth
er set of tongs, a set and a hardie and a punch, and with those they could make anything they chose, from an earring to a warship. Suddenly, there was nothing in the world they couldn't make or do.
'What do you think of the name?' Asburn asked, as they waited for the metal to get hot.
'What name?'
'Bollesknap,' Asburn replied. 'That's what they said this place is called.'
'I think it sucks,' Poldarn replied. 'I think we need a new name, don't you?'
Asburn nodded. 'How about Ciartansdale?' he suggested.
But Poldarn shook his head. 'Too confusing,' he said. 'Ciartanstead and Ciartansdale. Besides, I never liked that name much.'
'Fair enough.' Asburn drew the bar out of the nest of red coals; it was orange going on yellow, almost hot enough but not quite. He reached up for the bellows handle. 'You got anything in mind?'
'I have, as a matter of fact,' Poldarn said, lifting the hammer. 'I was thinking of Poldarn's Forge.'
Asburn looked at him. 'Funny choice,' he said. 'That's the old name for the mountain.' He drew the bar away from the fire, tapped it on the horn to shake off the scale, and laid it on the anvil. Poldarn fixed his gaze on the place where he wanted to strike.
'I know,' he said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In spite of Boarci's enthusiastic recommendation, they didn't eat earwigs for dinner that night. By a pleasing coincidence, the first of the migrating geese appeared in the sky a few hours before sunset, and two plump but stupid specimens dropped in on the flood in the yard. They never knew what hit them.
By another pleasing coincidence, Asburn had already made spits to roast them on and a knife to carve them with. It was, everyone agreed, the best meal they'd had since before the volcano erupted, though Hand, one of the men who'd come from Ciartanstead with Poldarn, said they'd have been better for a bit of cabbage and a few leeks. Meanwhile, Elja had found five elderly but serviceable blankets in a mildewed trunk in the trap-house; she cut four of them down the middle and kept the fifth intact for Poldarn and herself. That left them short by two blankets, but Raffen and Boarci said they weren't particularly cold anyway, and if they were they weren't sleeping under anything that had come from the back of an outhouse. They smashed up the trunk and put the bits on the fire.
Poldarn woke up well before dawn and realised he had no chance of getting back to sleep. He felt as full of energy as a child on a holiday, so he crept out of the bedroom through the hall-it was dark, but he seemed to know the way, because he got through without treading on anybody-and across the yard to the forge. When he opened the door he found that Asburn was already there, nursing the beginnings of the day's fire with gentle nudges from the bellows.
'That's good,' Poldarn said. 'You know, I never dared admit this before, but I haven't got a clue how to start a fire. Not without plenty of hay and charcoal, anyhow.'
Asburn grinned. 'I'd gathered that,' he said. 'But it didn't seem right for me to say so, you being the smith by right of birth and all that. Here, I'll show you if you like.'
When the fire was full and hot, they started work. By alternating, they were able to share the anvil and the hammer, one man striking while the other took a heat. Asburn started by making a spearhead, 'so Boarci can go and kill things up the mountain.' Poldarn made three chisels, welding steel tips to iron bodies, since their stock of hardening steel was distinctly limited. The welds took first time without any trouble. Next Asburn made another hammer, a twelve-pound sledge, and once they'd fitted it on a stem carved down from a wheel-spoke with one of Poldarn's chisels, they used it to draw down and flatten out two broken sword-blades: one into a scythe, the other into a saw. The latter had to wait until Poldarn had made a file so that the teeth could be cut; he used a snapped-off halberd point, which already had the right degree of taper. Once he'd forged it triangular, he took a good heat, clamped it in the vice and used his new chisel to score in the cutting ridges. It was slow work; the heat in the metal kept drawing the temper of the chisel, which had to be rehardened over and over again before the job was done. Finally it was ready; he caked the file in mud before hardening it, so the fire wouldn't burn the ridges off as it came up to cherry red. The saw was filed and finished by nightfall, by which time Asburn had also made a sett, an axe head and a drill bit.
'It's getting late,' Asburn said, cutting a trail through the layer of black soot on his forehead with the back of his wrist. 'We ought to stop now, I suppose.'
'I guess,' Poldarn replied. The day had gone unbelievably quickly, and for once it had left behind tangible and valuable accomplishments. 'I was going to make a start on a shovel. That stream in the yard needs banking up straight away, before we get any more rain.'
'That's a long job,' Asburn replied. 'You'd be better off running up a couple more knives for the house.'
'We haven't eaten anything all day,' Poldarn remembered. 'We'd better do that, before we get weak and fall over.'
The treasures they brought with them ensured them a hero's welcome back in the house. Each piece of work was handed round and admired as if it had been dug up from a king's grave. In turn, they had to admire the achievements of the rest of the household. Raffen had been out gathering firewood, picking out bits and pieces from the charred mess of Eyvind's plantation. Boarci had spent the day waiting for the geese, and one of them had come home with him; they'd have to eat quickly and well to get through all the meat they had on hand before it spoiled. Hand and the other hitherto nameless loyalist, Reno, had filled half a blanket with apples, pears, quinces, chestnuts and various evil-looking varieties of fungus. Rook had scooped clay out of the seam in the yard and squidged it into cups, plates and bowls, which were drying in front of the fire. Elja had found a bed of osiers and was weaving them into something, though it wasn't big enough yet to tell what it was going to be.
'It's a shame Rannwey isn't here,' Poldarn said. 'She's very quick at basket-weaving.'
They turned their heads and looked at him. At last, Elja said, 'You don't know?'
'Don't know what?'
She took a deep breath. 'Rannwey's dead, I'm afraid. On the way down the mountain-we think it was her heart. I'm sorry.'
Poldarn froze, the basketwork still in his hands. 'Oh,' he said. 'Well, that's a shame. I'd assumed she'd gone to Ciartanstead with the others. I don't think she liked me very much.'
They were staring at him, that uncomprehending stare he'd seen so often. This time, it didn't bother him so much. The fact was that he felt nothing, except in an abstract, almost theoretical way. Rannwey had been his grandmother, his last living blood relative, and apparently she'd died. To him she'd been a pair of piercing eyes and a blank stare that he'd done his best to avoid; he'd always seemed to bewilder her more than he bewildered the others, and it had made him feel painfully embarrassed. The fact that he'd had no trouble in believing that she'd sided with his enemy was surely eloquent enough. He hadn't wanted her to die, but he was very glad she wasn't here, even if she could weave a good basket.
'Anyway,' Elja said with an effort, 'we're starting to get organised; that's good. Any chance of someone making a start on some furniture tomorrow? Two stools and the floor are all very well, but I could do with a little luxury, like a table.'
Then everyone began talking at once, urging the claims of their own favoured projects and laying claim to use of the tools. As for what Asburn and Poldarn should do the next day, there was no shortage of suggestions. Pot hooks and fire irons, rakes, pitchforks, hoes, mattocks, spades, more hammers, more files, more knives, more axes, more saws and chisels, an adze (Poldarn didn't happen to notice who asked for that, but he was impressed), pots and kettles, rasps, calipers, nails, a lamp-stand ('But we haven't got any lamps,' Asburn pointed out), new hinges for the barn door, bolts and hasps and brackets, and-if there was time-a lathe spindle, ploughshares and the metal parts for a spinning-wheel treadle. Poldarn kept nodding till he was dizzy; there didn't seem to be any reason why they couldn't make them all, if not to
morrow then the next day. It wasn't as if anything they were asking for was particularly difficult, it was just a matter of knowing what to do. And he did, he realised: somehow he'd known it all along but it was only just beginning to drift up from the depths of his memory. Suddenly he was having visions of himself beside an anvil, bending and twisting and drawing down and jumping up endless rods and bars and odd-shaped pieces from the scrap, while someone whose face he couldn't see was saying, No, not like that, and Now you've got it, that's the ticket. He found himself grinning because he'd known it all already, even when he'd been struggling to make a straight nail in the forge at Haldersness; he'd known the whole craft, even better than Asburn did-everything, of course, except how to get a fire going.
He woke up even earlier next day, and beat Asburn to the forge by several minutes. He still couldn't get the fire to catch, but this time at least he knew why. By the time he was so tired that the hammer was slipping through his fingers, he'd made a heap of priceless, indispensable tools and implements, each one a vital contribution to the life of the farm. Wire, Asburn was saying, if we could only make up some plates for drawing wire; but Poldarn knew exactly how to go about that, though he kept it to himself so he wouldn't look like he was boasting. He'd drawn wire before, any amount of it. It was like everything else, easy if you knew the trick. What a difference just a little scrap of memory made.
Poldarn thought about that as he dug a broken halberd-blade in under the coals. He considered the memory of steel, imparted by intense heat and sudden cold: take a piece of hardening steel, heat it until it glows red and quench it and heat it again until the colours crawl upwards, yellow and brown and purple and blue, and you can teach it to remember its own shape. Bend it back on itself and let it go, and it'll spring back into the shape you've taught it to keep. Heat it again and let it cool slowly in the air, and it forgets; bend it, and it stays bent, bend it back and forth often enough and it fatigues and breaks. Memory gives it not only identity, but strength.
