K Parker - Memory

'Better give him something to drink as well,' he heard someone say, as he bent down for another mouthful. 'Don't want him croaking on us, when all's said and done.'

So someone brought him a canteen and allowed him four swallows of warm, muddy-tasting water. Poldarn said thank you very politely; the man didn't seem to hear.

They were talking quietly among themselves now, keeping their voices down, and Poldarn could only make out a few unenlightening words, though at least one of them mentioned Falcata, Dui Chirra and Brigadier Muno. Then someone said something that the rest appeared to find extremely funny, and one of them got up and sat down next to Poldarn, six inches or so outside his circle.

'Straight up,' he said. 'Is that right, you really can't remember back past a year or so?'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied.

The man turned to smile over his shoulder at his mates; he was medium height, unusually broad across the shoulders, with a grey stubble of hair sprouting on his shaved head. He had burn scars on his left cheek, old and probably as close to being healed as they were ever going to get. 'So,' he went on, 'you're telling me you don't know who I am, either.'

Poldarn looked at him. 'We've met before?'

Everyone, the burned man included, burst out laughing. Poldarn waited for them to stop, then said: 'I guess that means you know me.'

'You could say that,' the burned man answered, grinning.

'Don't suppose you'd care to-'

'No.'

Well, he'd expected as much; he'd already got the impression that they didn't seem very well disposed towards him. 'Do you know a man called Gain Aciava?' he asked.

This time the burned man looked blank. He shook his head.

'Xipho Dorunoxy? Copis?'

'Doesn't ring any bells. All right, my turn,' the burned man said. 'How about Dorf Bofor? Recognise the name? Sergeant Dorf Bofor?'

Poldarn shook his head slowly. 'Doesn't mean anything to me, I'm afraid. Sorry, is that your name?'

This time, everyone laughed except the burned man, who looked as if he was about to kick Poldarn in the face. 'No, it bloody well isn't,' he replied. 'But I got this here'-and he pointed to the burn-'fishing you out of a burning library when you went back in after him, the useless fat bastard; and there's others, good friends of mine, died that day because of you wanting to be a fucking hero. And you don't remember that.'

'No,' Poldarn replied and braced himself for the attack; it was a kick aimed at his chin, but the burned man missed and connected with his collarbone instead. On balance, the chin would've been better. 'I'm very sorry,' he said, as soon as he could speak again. 'But I can't remember anything, not for certain, and that's just a fact. There's no malice in it.'

'Yeah, right,' the burned man said. 'No malice. Coming from you, that's a bloody laugh.'

Going to get kicked again, but that can't be helped. 'What did I do?' he asked.

The laughter had an edge to it this time. 'What did you do?' the burned man repeated. 'You want to know, then.'

'Yes.'

'Sorry,' the burned man said with mock contrition, 'but we only got till dawn; what's that, ten hours?' A small ripple of brittle laughter. 'Couldn't tell you the half of it in ten hours.'

'Never mind, then,' Poldarn said. 'Just pick a few bits at random.'

This time the burned man caught him on the elbow. Not quite as painful, but enough to be going on with. 'All right, then,' he said. 'There was Vail Bohec. Mean anything to you?'

Poldarn shook his head.

'Twenty thousand people, all killed in a day. Ackery: fifteen thousand. Berenna Priory-boarded up the monks in the chapter house and burned them all to death. Josequin: you weren't there, but you planned it all out, right down to the last detail. General Allectus: stabbed him in the back, eighteen thousand of his men cut down where they stood. You don't remember that, of course.'

'No, I don't.'

'Course not. How bloody convenient. Weal Huon: thirteen thousand. Morannel. Deymeson. And whose fault is it we've got that arsehole Tazencius sitting in the palace at Torcea pretending he's the Emperor? Or Caen Daras: the river got so blocked with dead bodies it flooded right up through the Rookwood valley. Who'd want to remember something like that if they didn't have to?'

'That's all just names, though,' Poldarn said. 'Why won't you tell me what actually happened? Why it was my fault. I mean, I can't have killed all those people with my own hands.'

Third time lucky, as far as the burned man was concerned; and Poldarn had been wrong, the chin was far worse than the collarbone. 'You want to know who I am?' the burned man was shouting. 'Sergeant Illimo Velzen, that's my name. You think you can remember that, you bastard, or do you need something to help remind you?'

'All right, that's enough,' said a voice that sounded a long way off-the man with the spear who'd been there when Poldarn woke up. 'It's my arse on the line if he's dead on arrival. Sit down and save your strength, we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.'

It took the burned man a minute or so to get a grip on himself, with the spearman and various others telling him to calm down, leave it, Poldarn wasn't worth it and so forth; then he turned his back and sat down, leaving Poldarn crumpled up where he'd fallen. It could've been worse, he eventually decided, nothing broken as far as he could tell (though he'd learned one thing about himself: he had exceptionally tough, strong bones). He wriggled about until he was as comfortable as he could make himself, and tried to clear his mind of what he'd heard-which was impossible, of course.

A pity, though. All that information the burned man had given him, and he still didn't know whether they were the Mad Monk or the Amathy house. On balance, he reckoned, probably the latter; but he had to admit he was mostly guessing. He tried closing his eyes, but that just made things worse; without really wanting to, he started on the mental arithmetic: twenty thousand plus fifteen thousand plus eighteen plus thirteen, that made fifty-six thousand, no, sixty-six, he'd forgotten to carry the one-ten thousand people, snuffed out of memory by a simple mathematical error. Not that it mattered, because the data was incomplete in any event. And almost certainly the burned man didn't even know about Eyvind, or Egil Colscegson, or the two gods in the cart, or the troopers he'd killed on the way to Cric. He grinned suddenly. A new cure for insomnia: why count sheep when you can count dead people-?

As he stood up, three crows lifted out of a tall tree and beat an undignified retreat, screaming at him as they flew away. The sound alerted them, and they turned round to see who was there.

'Over here,' he said quietly; and he noticed with amusement that he was speaking his own language with a distinct foreign accent. Been away far too long; but whose fault was that?

A moment of tense silence; then a voice he recognised. 'Ciartan?'

'Over here,' he repeated. 'You're late.'

'No, you're early.' Scaptey's voice; it was absurd, hearing it here, on the other side of the world, on this alien continent. 'Where are you, Ciartan? I can't see you.'

He smiled to himself and started to walk towards them. 'Now can you see me, you blind old fool?'

'Not so much of the old.' There was Scaptey, the familiar shape of his head and shoulders, a memory coming together out of the dark. 'Bloody hell, boy, it's good to see you again. How've you been?'

Scaptey's bear-hug crushed most of the breath out of his lungs; still, he managed to say, 'Don't tell me I've grown, or I'll smash your face in. How's the old man? Is he all right?'

Close enough to see his face. 'Halder's just fine,' Scaptey said. 'He sends his love.'

'And the farm?'

'Just how you left it,' Scaptey said; then he grinned as he added, 'Except for the fucking crows. They got in on the winter wheat where it got flattened in the spring rains, hardly worth cutting after they were done with it. We need you back home, I reckon, teach them buggers a lesson.'