K Parker - Pattern

'I like salt beef,' Asburn replied plaintively. 'All this wildlife stuff's all very well, I guess, but it's not what you'd call proper food. Salt beef, some good strong cheese and a big fat chunk of new bread; now that's what I call food.'

Boarci shook his head sadly. 'You'll just have to dream,' he said. 'Now,' he went on, 'I know where I can get you a nice neck fillet of horse-'

'That's very funny, Boarci,' Poldarn said. 'You could die laughing at a joke like that. All right,' he went on, 'let's have the pheasant and the poison mushrooms, and then for God's sake let's go to bed and get some sleep.'

Later, when they were lying alone together in the dark, Elja asked him: 'What do you suppose Eyvind'll do now?'

Poldarn stared up at the roof. 'I don't know,' he replied. 'From what I know of him, he'd be prepared to leave the business with the horses. Whether he believes us or not, he's got more sense than to pick a fight over something trivial. And he's got all my horses, those and his own are more than he needs. It's not in his nature to quarrel with his own kind, even with a freak like me.'

'Ah,' Elja said drowsily. 'So that's all right, then.'

But Poldarn shook his head. 'It's not the horses I'm worried about,' he said. 'It's Boarci starting a fight with that man. You can be sure they'll tell Eyvind all about that; they'll want to make a big deal about it so he won't think too much about them coming home empty-handed. If they make it sound like we slung them out, Eyvind won't take that well, it'll offend his sense of what's right. It's us freaks beating up on regular folks, it'll get him worried and angry. The point is, he's afraid of me. He thinks I made the mountain blow up.'

'He's an idiot,' Elja mumbled.

'Maybe.' Poldarn sighed. 'But he feels responsible, because he brought me here, and ever since then, nothing's been the way it ought to be. First the mountain blew up, then I was telling people what to do, and now I'm stealing horses and beating up his men when he asks for them back. If I was going out of my way to make him afraid of me, I couldn't have done a better job.'

'Then it's your own silly fault,' Elja said. 'Next time, think carefully before you go setting off any volcanoes.'

Poldarn shifted, but he couldn't get comfortable. The blanket felt hot and heavy. 'I wish I understood him better,' he said. 'It's like I can see one half of him but not the other. This is all going wrong, just when I thought I was making some sense of it.'

Elja yawned, and pulled the blanket over to her side of the bed. 'Shut up and go to sleep,' she said.

A week went by, and every day Poldarn did his arithmetic-a day and a half for them to get back to Ciartanstead, two at the most; a day for Eyvind to get his people organised; a day and a half to ride over here, two at the most-and every morning he adjusted the variables like a good actuary, allowing half a day here for a house meeting, a day there for making weapons or other such preparations, a day lost because of a stream in spate or a blocked ford. By the end of the week he was convinced that Eyvind was either coming with a fully equipped army, or he wasn't coming at all.

Eight days, and no sign of him. Nine days, and Poldarn allowed himself to tip the balance ever so slightly in favour of the second hypothesis. Ten days, and he found that he needed to exercise considerable ingenuity to stay worried. A fortnight, and he'd have been able to dismiss the whole incident from his mind-if Boarci hadn't gone missing.

He'd set off one morning, early, before anybody else had been awake, and they'd assumed that he was out killing things, as usual. At dinner time, Raffen said that Boarci had probably decided to sleep out on a trail so as to catch a particularly large and juicy buck on its way to its morning feed. At noon the next day, Asburn wondered if Boarci had fallen down somewhere on the mountain and damaged his leg. That night, nobody mentioned him at all, and conversation was generally subdued.

'It's just the sort of solution Eyvind would go for,' Poldarn told Elja, as they got ready for bed. 'Rather than pick a quarrel with all of us because of what Boarci did to that man, he's decided to make it a personal thing, himself and Boarci. It's quite clever thinking, actually, because after all, Boarci's the outsider, we wouldn't be under any real obligation to take the matter further. Eyvind knows he's got to do something, but he's giving us a way out of having to hit back.'

Elja nodded. 'Or maybe Boarci's slipped on loose shale and twisted his ankle,' she said. 'Or he's got bored with being in the one place for so long and gone off somewhere else. He's a drifter, it's what they do.'

'He wouldn't just go, without saying a word.'

'You reckon?' Elja shook her head. 'I think it's exactly what he'd do. And even if I'm wrong, there's another way of looking at it. Suppose he got to worrying about what he'd started, and he figured that the best thing he could do is clear out. That way, Eyvind can't touch him, because he can't find him; and Eyvind won't bother us, because we can say it was all Boarci's fault, nothing to do with us. Solves the problem neatly, don't you think?'

Poldarn hadn't thought of that. 'That's not like him at all,' he said. 'His idea of sorting out the mess would be going over there and planting an axe between Eyvind's eyebrows.' He paused. 'God,' he said, 'let's just pray he hasn't, or we really are in trouble.'

He slept badly that night, and was woken up out of a mystifying dream by the sound of horses in the yard outside. He jumped up and groped in the dark for the axe he'd put beside the bed the previous evening. Instead, he caught hold of Elja's toe, and got sworn at.

'Shut up,' he hissed, 'they're here. Horses, in the yard. Can't you hear?'

That woke her up. 'Maybe it's the missing horses,' she whispered. 'Maybe they found their own way home.'

Poldarn didn't answer. He felt his way along the wall with his hands, looking for the door. It took him far too long to find it; by then, the rest of the household was awake. He could hear someone unbolting the door, calling out, 'Who's there?' Not a sound tactical move, he thought.

'It's all right,' replied a familiar voice. 'It's only me.'

'Bloody hell,' Poldarn whispered under his breath. Then he found the door and pushed through it.

'Boarci,' he shouted, 'for crying out loud. Where have you been?'

Someone had managed to get a lamp lit. It was only a little one, squidged out of stream-bed clay and fitted with a rush wick, but it gave just enough light to show Boarci's face, grinning. 'Ciartanstead,' he said. 'And I've brought you all a present. Anybody going to help me get it in from the cart, or have I got to do every damn thing myself?'

'What cart?' Poldarn asked, but nobody was listening to him. A moment or so later, they were all helping him to haul a big, fat, strangely familiar barrel in through the doorway.

'Is that…?' Asburn said, in a voice quiet with wonder.

'Yes,' Boarci replied. 'And don't say I never do anything for you.'

It was one of Hart's salt-beef barrels. There was a rope tied round the top and another round the base. It hadn't been opened, though one of the staves was cracked, and the pickle was seeping through.

'Well, don't all thank me at once,' Boarci said.

Poldarn found that extreme anger made him talk softly. 'Where did you get that from?' he asked.

'From Ciartanstead,' Boarci replied. 'Where else?'

'I see.' Poldarn nodded. 'I thought for a moment you might have run into Hart and traded it for something. So you went over there and stole it.'

Raffen laughed. 'Wasn't stealing,' he said. 'It's our salt beef.' Then he caught Poldarn's eye and shut up rapidly.

'Yes,' Boarci said. 'After they had the nerve to come over here, saying we were telling lies about their fucking horses. Also, Asburn said he fancied some salt beef.'