K Parker - Pattern

'You know perfectly well why I'm here. For your sake as much as mine. You ask for trouble so much, one of these days somebody's going to oblige you.'

Boarci laughed.

They made good time, as it happened, reaching Ciartanstead an hour before noon the next day. It felt strange to see the place again; now it looked remarkably foreign, so that Poldarn had trouble remembering that he'd built the house with his own hands. Eyvind had made changes; not great ones, but enough to set his mark there. The cider house was gone, and where it had stood there was a handsome new long barn, built mostly of stone and roofed with turf. 'Someone's been thinking sensibly about the next time the mountain blows its top,' Boarci said. 'That Eyvind's brighter than you'd give him credit for. We could do something like that back home; there's plenty of good building stone in the lower combes.'

Poldarn agreed; the same thought had occurred to him more than once, but he hadn't dared suggest it, because it would be too different, and probably an abomination-coming from him, at least. 'That's new,' he said, pointing to a long cultivated strip that started just below the north wall of the house. 'Something else we should have thought of. I can't remember-what was there before?'

'The smithy,' Boarci replied. 'Fancy you forgetting that.'

'Of course.' Poldarn looked round, but there was no sign of anybody. 'Where have they all got to?' he said aloud. 'This time of day, there ought to be loads of people about the place.'

Boarci nodded. 'My guess is,' he said, 'they're out the other side of the house. Eyvind's building a smoke-house, or he was a few days ago when I was last here. I guess they're raising the frames or something.'

Boarci was right. The whole household-the old Bollesknap outfit, and most of the former Haldersness and Ciartanstead houses-were there, pulling on ropes and lifting timbers, with nobody giving orders or directing the work. For an outsider, it was an amazing sight to see. As soon as they'd finished the stage they were working on, they stopped and turned to stare at Poldarn and Boarci. That was unnerving, to say the least.

After what felt like a very long time, Eyvind emerged from the crowd and walked slowly towards them. He looked different too; more solid, somehow, slower and more assertive in his movements, as if every step had to be taken seriously. Poldarn noticed a new, fresh scar on his right arm, and wondered how he'd come by it.

'You,' he said, and Poldarn realised he was talking to Boarci. 'You must be out of your mind coming here.'

'Maybe,' Boarci replied, grinning. 'We've found your horses, look. And your trap, the one your men broke and left for dead. We've even put the wheel back on for you.'

But Eyvind just stood looking at him, clearly trying to choose between various courses of action. The decision must have been a difficult one, to judge by the unease in his face.

'Boarci found the trap on the mountain,' Poldarn said, with the uncomfortable feeling that nobody was listening to him. 'We brought it straight back. You can have it, we don't want anything for finding it or doing the wheel.'

Eyvind wrestled with his decision silently for a while longer, then made a small gesture with his head. At once, a dozen or so men surged forward. One of them grabbed the reins of the trap; two more stood either side of Boarci's horse, while a third took hold of its bridle. A fourth pulled Boarci's spear out of its bucket on the saddle and levelled it in a vaguely menacing manner.

'Take him to the barn and bar the door,' Eyvind said. 'We'll have to decide what to do with him later.'

'Hold on,' Poldarn said urgently. 'What the hell is all this about?'

Eyvind scowled at him. 'All right,' he said, 'maybe you don't know, at that. Anyhow, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Your man, this one, came sneaking over here a few days back and stole a barrel of salt beef. One of my men saw him at it, but he was long gone by the time he could raise the alarm. He's going to have to pay for that.'

Poldarn felt cold. His own stupid fault, he told himself, for assuming that they'd got away with it just because Eyvind hadn't come storming over the hill with weapons. 'I did know about it,' he said, 'after the event. Boarci told me.'

'Doesn't matter,' Eyvind replied sharply. 'I'm choosing to see it as your man acting off his own hook, so I won't have to take action against the rest of you. Count yourself very lucky,' he added. And I won't be so forbearing again.'

Poldarn could feel the blood pounding in his arms and hands. Any moment now, he knew, something could happen that would set off the instincts he knew lay buried deep inside him; someone would try to grab hold of him or pull him down off the cart, and he'd strike out before he had time to stop himself. He didn't know much about the man who'd lived in his body before Poldarn had inherited it, that day he'd woken up in the mud beside the Bohec; but he'd come to know a little about how he reacted to perceived danger. He was afraid of himself, far more than he was afraid of Eyvind or his people.

Distracted as Poldarn was, he didn't actually see what happened, only the aftermath. Afterwards, in his mind's eye and in recurring dreams, he figured out that it must have started when someone tried to pull Boarci down off his horse. Boarci must have pulled his axe out from inside his coat-he generally carried it concealed, even among friends-and struck out, catching the man in the forehead, just above the bridge of the nose. Immediately, the man who'd confiscated Boarci's spear tried to stab him with it, but apparently Boarci had anticipated that and dodged sideways, trying to slip off the horse and run. Unfortunately he couldn't have seen the man who stepped up on his blind side, intending to force him to surrender by prodding him with a four-tine hay-fork. The outcome was that Boarci slid onto the fork; two of the tines passed through his neck on either side of the spine, killing him instantly. By the time Poldarn realised that something was happening it was nearly all over; the man with the fork was staggering backwards, carrying Boarci's substantial weight on the fork handle, like a youngster showing off by trying to pitch a stook that was far too heavy for him. After a moment of agonised stillness he let go of the handle and Boarci flopped out of the saddle onto the ground, knocking another man off his feet and landing on top of him.

Everybody held perfectly still; it was as though they were unable to accept what they'd just seen-two men killed in a matter of seconds by their own kind. It was the same sort of bewildered horror Poldarn had noticed when the mountain had first erupted, the sort of reaction you'd expect if some malignant and terrifying supernatural creature had suddenly appeared in the middle of the farmyard, without warning.

Quite calm inside, Poldarn weighed up the options available to him. The men who were supposed to be marking him were looking the other way; it'd be easy for him, with his proven abilities in this field, to get past them, take a weapon away from one of them, and kill three or four men before anybody could be ready to oppose him; there was a good chance, better than evens, that he'd be able to get to Eyvind, and he knew he was Eyvind's match with weapons any day of the week. He could kill him, or use him as a hostage, to be sure of getting clear. Or he could go the other way, make for the man with the hay-fork and kill him-that'd be easier, there were fewer people in the way and they were all in a state of profound shock, no real opposition at all. After he'd killed the man with the fork he could take a hostage-really, any of them would do just as well as Eyvind, nobody would be expendable-and get out just as easily, if not more so. Either way, he'd need a horse (but he could demand that, with a hostage, and be sure of getting what he asked for) and a good head start if he wanted to reach Poldarn's Forge in time to organise some vestige of a defence. That would be difficult but-given how well he'd come to know the road across the mountain-by no means impossible. As to whether he should try and fight his pursuers at the Forge or tell his people to get up the mountain and hide there (no chance of them outrunning Eyvind's people, with only one horse), Poldarn wasn't able to reach a quick decision. It was all reasonable enough up to that point, but thereafter it could turn out very badly.