by K. J. Parker
Poldarn yawned. 'I can imagine,' he said.
'The point is,' Copis went on, 'when you make steel hard, you make it able to hold a shape. That's what hard is, really, being able to stay the same shape even if you get bashed on, unless you're too hard and brittle, in which case you shatter. Anyway, this being able to hold a shape; according to him, the word they used for it was memory. Like a cart spring or a crossbow prod, or a sword; if you bend it, it can remember the shape it used to be and go back into it, exactly the same shape it used to be before you twisted it back on itself. Or, if the memory's really strong, you can hammer and file at it all day and all you'll do is wreck your tools, because it won't budge.' She was looking straight ahead, not at him. 'But if you heat it up, past sunrise red and blood red and cherry red to orange, it'll lose its memory just like you lost yours, and then it stops being hard or springy and turns soft, so you can bash it and shape it and do whatever you like with it. Then, if you just let it cool down slowly in the air, it'll stay soft; but if you take it all red and bloody out of the fire and dip it straight into a pool of water, it'll immediately freeze hard, like the Bohec in winter, and then it'll have a memory all over again. Do you see what I'm getting at?'
'It'd be difficult not to,' Poldarn replied. 'You believe in the sledgehammer school of allegory, I can tell.'
She looked offended for a moment, then shrugged. 'I was just trying to be nice,' she said.
He nodded. 'It's the thought that counts.' He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. 'So why did you start calling yourself Copis?'
'Because nobody could be bothered to say Dorunoxy,' she replied. 'So they called me Xipho, which of course is my last name, not my first, and where my family come from it's really rude to call someone just by their last name unless you know them really well, and even though I knew they didn't mean anything by it, it used to upset me a lot. So I changed it.'
'Fair enough. What about Copis?'
She laughed. 'Oh, it's a common enough name in Torcea, particularly,' she added, with a grin, 'in that line of work. It's the sort of name the customers expected me to have, so it was easy.'
He nodded. 'And now,' he said, 'what do you think of yourself as, Dorun-whatsit or Copis?'
'Copis.' She pulled a face. 'Which is really bad, because-well, a Copis, you can be pretty sure what kind of person a Copis is.'
'And you're not.'
Her expression changed. 'No. Well, what do you think?'
'Does it matter what I think?'
'Why are you deliberately trying to annoy me?'
He shrugged. 'I don't think you're a Copis, no. I'm just disproving the point you were trying to make at such interminable length a moment ago, that's all. You've changed your name and the shape you appear in, but you've still got the old memory; you're not a Copis, you're a-whatever it was. However hard you try to be a button, you're still a bone.'
She shook her head. 'Whatever,' she said. 'This is all getting a bit too involved and personal for me. I suggest we talk about something else, before we fall out.'
'All right.'
'That woman,' Copis said. 'Who was she?'
'I don't know. I forgot to ask her name, remember?'
'Be like that.' She turned her head away and pretended to look at the scenery for a while. There wasn't any, just a flat plain, and some mist where the Deymeson hills should have been. 'So why did we go out of our way to see her?'
'I was curious.' Poldarn shivered a little. 'Back in the other place, where we sold the buttons, they said she reckoned her son was the god in the cart. The subject interests me. Should be fairly obvious why.'
She raised an eyebrow. 'I thought you said you didn't ever want to do the god act again.'
'I don't. I'm just interested in finding out who I've been, that's all.'
Chapter Nineteen
Monach drew and cut, and as he watched the soldier drop to his knees and slump forward he thought, I can't believe I've made such a mess of it. Everything's going wrong, and it's all my fault.
The other three soldiers were closing in; one dead ahead, one on either side. He took a step back, sheathing his sword-this was a standard exercise he'd learned in third grade, but the sequence started from rest, sword sheathed, and he wasn't in the mood for improvisation. As soon as they impinged on his circle, the sequence began; it was as if it couldn't wait and had started without him. The knuckles of the right hand touched the sword handle; as the hand flipped over and the fingers found their place around the handle, the left foot came back half a step, then turned inwards, placing heel against heel at ninety degrees, so that as the sword left the scabbard, the body pivoted towards the left-hand target and the cut slid out into the space the oncoming target's neck was about to occupy. No time to waste looking to see if the cut had connected; the back foot went forward in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc, swinging the body round to face the right-hand target, while the arms lifted the sword up and back till the point touched the base of the spine, at which moment (like a mechanism engaging an escapement) the leftside diagonal overhead cut launched the sword into a perfectly located slice (number four in the manual, 'dividing the earth from the heavens'); the momentum pivoted the right heel as the arms followed through and used the spare energy of the last stroke to reset the correct position as he turned to face the enemy in front; another perfect cut, to be taken on trust since there still wasn't any time to waste on gawping; pivot once again to face the first target and deliver a conclusive, if redundant, finishing cut down the line of the collarbone. A simple but impressive sequence; a good sixth-year should be able to complete it and return to rest, sword flicked free of blood and back in the scabbard, in the time it takes for an apple to drop from a tree.
Monach felt the sword click back into the tight jaws of its sheath, and looked to see what had happened just as the first target hit the ground. The other two followed a fraction of a second later. There was still a fine mist of blood hanging in the air.
That appeared to be that. A threat had presented itself and been dealt with quickly and efficiently; he could be forgiven for thinking that he'd actually got something right, for a change. But he hadn't. The plan had been to sneak up on the patrol, grab one of them and force General Cronan's current location out of him. As it was, all four of them were dead, and in no position to tell him anything. Screwed it up again.
It wouldn't be so bad if he had a clue where he was, but he didn't. Somewhere in the woods below the hilltop village of Shance, where Major-General Ambosc's cavalry detachment was spending the night before pressing on, probably just after first light, to meet up with the main army, and the general, at Cric. Put like that, it sounded precise and entirely sufficient; but the whole truth was rather different. In practice he had no idea which direction to go in, or where he was in the wood. He was lost.
…Which was infuriating, because there wasn't time for any such nonsense, not if he was to stand any chance of intercepting Cronan on his way to Cric (when he'd be at his most vulnerable, with only an honour guard of half a dozen cavalrymen, out in the open with nowhere to hide). He didn't even know for sure whether that plan was still feasible, since he wasn't very clear about how long he'd been in this damned wood, let alone how long it was going to take him to get out again. Of course the soldiers he'd stumbled across on the edge of this small, deceitful clearing could have told him, if only he'd had the wit to pretend to be a wandering trader or a government courier or something. Instead he'd killed them all. If it wasn't such a nuisance it'd be a joke.
He sat down on a moss-covered log and applied his mind to the problem. Now, unless the soldiers were lost too, it stood to reason that they were passing through the wood on their way somewhere, presumably following the track that he could just make out between the trees. Whether they'd been going up the track or down it was a secret they'd taken with them to the shadows; likewise, which direction led to Shance, and which ran straight back to Mahec Ford, where he'd just come from. Choices, options, decisions
; Monach shook his head, he couldn't be doing with them. There's nothing on earth as helpless as a man lost in a wood, he reflected bitterly. It's as bad as losing your memory; you're left with nothing but what you're wearing and carrying, cut off from everything that might help you, with no very clear idea of what to do next or for the best.
Nothing else for it, he was going to have to guess. He pulled a face; ordained sword-brothers of the order didn't guess; either they knew or they found out. He wasn't even sure he knew how to go about it any more. Should he just close his eyes and start walking, or would it be more appropriate to use some formal method-tossing a coin, blowing a dandelion clock, observing the flight of roosting birds? Undoubtedly it was a point addressed somewhere in Doctrine, though he didn't know where was the best place to start researching the point. Genistus' Observances? The Secondary Digest? Lathano on General Procedure?
Roosting birds would seem to be the best bet; it was starting to get dark, and the sky was full of rooks and crows, wheeling and shrieking all around him. He chose a tree at random. If ten birds flew past it on the right before an equal number went by on the left, he'd go up the track, and vice versa. The idea had a certain charm; he could pretend it was an omen from the divine Poldarn, master of crows, rather than a wild, feckless guess.
Nine to the right, all in a clump, and only three to the left. One more needed on the right; but instead, a mob of seven flew left while the right side stayed clear. He followed the seven; six of them carried on but one peeled off, circled behind him and came back in on the right. Monach sighed. Did that one count, or would it constitute cheating? He shrugged. The way things were going with him, if he'd decided to flip a coin instead the wretched thing would probably have ended up landing on its edge.
Just to be awkward he went down the track, realising after a few yards that it was probably a mistake. After all, Shance was on the top of a hill, so didn't it stand to reason that he'd have to go uphill to get there? Unfortunately it wasn't quite as simple as that. He'd been going uphill whenever possible for a long time now, several hours at least, and where was he? Lost.
But he carried on nonetheless, and was rewarded by a sudden violent change in gradient. No question about it, he was going uphill now, for sure. This was promising, even if he did have to stop and lean against a tree for a few moments to catch his breath. The comforting width and straightness of the trail was reassuring too, a trail that gave every sign of knowing where it was going. Or coming from.
But it wasn't in any hurry. Once again he lost track of how long he'd been walking, and he couldn't help thinking that Shance Hill hadn't looked anything like this high or steep when he'd seen it in the distance from the road that morning. He was wondering whether it wouldn't be better after all to give up and retrace his steps when he came round a corner and saw a house.
Not just a shack or a shed, a real house, with a chimney and a porch, large enough to be a farmhouse or something of the sort. Better still, there was a cart outside, conspicuous in the small bald patch immediately surrounding the building. Monach got closer, and was rewarded with the sight of four horses tethered to a rail. It looked very much as though somebody was at home.
He knocked at the door-oak, grey with age but hanging straight and recently scraped clean of moss and lichen-but nothing happened. He couldn't quite understand that; the horses hadn't got there by themselves and tied their halters to a post, so it stood to reason that whoever had brought them here was still in the immediate vicinity. He pushed the door gently with the edge of his left hand, waited for a moment in case there was an ambush or booby trap, and walked quietly inside.
Ah, he said to himself, that would explain it.
There were two people sitting in chairs on opposite sides of a table, a man and a woman. The man had been killed by a single thrust to the heart, and was lolling backwards, his arms hanging down parallel with the legs of the chair. The woman's skull had been split by a square-on overhead cut, delivered with a sharp weapon and a lot of force. He recognised them as the god in the cart and his priestess, the two frauds he'd interrogated in the prison at Sansory.
Well, they weren't going to tell him the way out of the wood. He sighed, and made a closer examination. From the tone and texture of the dead flesh, not to mention the smell, he reckoned they'd been dead for two or three days, just conceivably longer since the house was more than a little chilly In which case that cart might well be their cart, but those horses weren't their horses, or if they were, someone else had fed and exercised them recently. Monach frowned. There was a reasonable chance that this mystery was nothing to do with him, and he certainly didn't have time to indulge his curiosity. On the other hand, if these two characters were spies or agents who'd been masquerading as frauds (a thoroughly unsuitable cover, but possible, and the manner of their deaths suggested something other than robbery or mere dislike), they might turn out to be very relevant indeed. Or not. He found he wanted very badly to know who'd been looking after the horses.
It was also curious, to say the least, that they were sitting facing each other, since the wounds that had killed them were the sort almost invariably inflicted from in front, and the table didn't look ferocious enough to have killed both of them before either of them had a chance to run away. Deliberately propping up dead bodies in chairs so as to give someone else a shock, or a warning? Monach shook his head. There was a lot of evidence to be read here, but he wasn't in the mood.
A horse, on the other hand, would come in handy. He shut the door quietly behind him and headed across the clearing into the trees, then made his way round in a circle through the briars and saplings and other tiresome undergrowth to a point where he could watch the horses for a while; the concept of bait was floating about in his mind, and he wasn't in such a tearing hurry as all that.
True, he'd had an exhausting time of it lately and not nearly enough sleep, but his first reaction, on waking up with a crick in his neck and one leg completely numb, was self-disgust and shame. That was quickly followed by fear; he'd been woken up by the sound of something coming towards him through the wood, and with his right leg asleep he couldn't move. Everything wrong, he told himself resentfully, all my fault. Of all the stupid things to happen He'd managed to crawl-hobble a few yards towards the edge of the wood when it occurred to him that he was going in the wrong direction. Out in the open, he'd be even more vulnerable, unless he had time to get to one of the horses-but even if he did make it that far, how was he proposing to get on the creature's back with one leg out of commission? He stopped, leaning against a tree as the pins and needles surged up his leg as far as his groin. He couldn't face going back, directly towards whatever was making the noise (more than one of it, whatever it was). Going forward didn't appeal. Staying put was very probably a bad idea too, but he didn't feel up to anything else. He closed his eyes and begged for it all to have been a dream.
They came out of the undergrowth around him as if by magic, like fish jumping up through the mirror surface of a still lake; eight men, armed. 'Where the hell have you been?' one of them asked.
Monach slumped a little against the tree he was standing by. 'I could ask you the same question,' he said. 'I got fed up waiting for you, so I set off on my own. Bloody fine back-up squad you turned out to be.'
They were, of course, sword-monks, eight of the ten men he'd chosen specially for the job of tracking down and killing the commander-in-chief of an imperial field army. He'd posted their orders on the chapter door two hours before he was due to leave, and they hadn't shown up. Now, apparently, they were here, having followed his trail and tracked him down in the depths of this impenetrable wood, where even he hadn't a clue where he was. He couldn't help feeling impressed. 'All right,' he said, 'we'll go into all that later. Which way is Shance?'
One of them grinned. 'You mean to say you're lost?'
'Yes,' Monach admitted, tentatively pressing the sole of his foot on the ground and wincing. 'And we're very short on time.' He paused. 'Do any o
f you know anything about the two dead bodies in that house?'
One of the monks shook his head. 'We've only just got here,' he said.
'Oh.' He thought for a moment. 'You three, you're coming with me. Get that cart spanned in, and you'd better know the quickest way to Shance. The rest of you, follow on as quick as you can. And keep your eyes open; somebody killed a man and a woman, possibly spies, in there; those are probably their horses.'
'Our spies or theirs?' one of the monks asked.
'Haven't a clue,' Monach replied (define ours; define theirs). 'Don't get sidetracked, mind; if you see them, keep out of their way, that's all. Understood?'
He didn't explain why he had to hobble slowly to the cart, and they didn't ask. Neither did he ask, or they volunteer, how they'd found him. He let one of the brothers drive; he wasn't very good at it, never having had much experience.
The brother found it humiliatingly simple to get out of the wood; he just followed the road, which came out on the top of a ridge. Less than half a mile away was a walled town, coiled round a spur like a length of rope. Shance, presumably.
'So,' the brother said (nobody had said anything since they left the house in the wood), 'what happens here?'
Monach, who'd been half dozing again, sat up sharply. His leg was fine now, but his neck was still painful. 'We need to find a prefect or a duty officer, someone who can tell us where Cronan's going to be coming from.'
'Coming from.' The brother thought for a moment. 'So we know where he's going, then.'
Monach nodded. 'Cric,' he replied. 'Of course, there's every chance he's there already, but it's worth a try. Certainly better than trying to get at him in the middle of a military camp.'
'Agreed,' said another brother in the back of the cart. 'So how do we go about it?'
Of course, Monach hadn't given it any thought. He wasn't inclined to try barging in and beating it out of them, whoever they were. Far better to be subtle, using some persona or other-superior officer, government courier, spy, something from his usual repertoire. He half turned.
