K Parker: Pattern

'Get up,' I tell her. 'The house is on fire.'

'What?' She opens her eyes and stares at me.

'The house is on fire,' I tell her, annoyed at having to repeat myself in the middle of a crisis. 'Come on, for God's sake.'

She scrambles out and starts poking about with her feet, trying to find her shoes. 'No time for that now,' I snap, and unlatch the partition door. It opens six inches or so and sticks; someone's lying against it on the other side. That isn't good.

It occurs to me to wonder where the light's coming from, a soft, rather beautiful orange glow, like a distant view of the fire-stream slipping gently down the side of the mountain. The answer to that is through the gap where the partition doesn't quite meet the roof-it's coming through from the main room. Not good at all.

I take a step back from the door and kick it, stamping sideways with the flat of my foot. The door moves a few more inches, suggesting that I'm shifting a dead weight. I repeat the manoeuvre five times, opening a gap I can just about squeeze through.

'Come on,' I urge my wife-comic, as if we're going to a dance and she's fussing about her hair. Hilarious.

The main room's full of orange light, but there isn't any air, just smoke. As I step through, the heat washes over me; I look down to see what the obstruction had been, and see Henferth the swineherd, rolled over on his side, dead. No need to ask what had killed him, the smoke's a solid wall of fuzzy-edged orange. Just in time, I remember not to breathe in; I lower my head and draw in the clean air inside my shirt.

Only six paces, diagonally across the floor, to the upper door; I can make that, and once the door's open I'll be out in cold, fresh air. The bar's in place, of course, and the bolts are pushed home top and bottom-I grab the knob of the top bolt and immediately let go as the heat sears my skin. Little feathers of smoke are weaving in through the minute cracks between the boards; the outside of the door must be on fire.

So what? Catching the end of my sleeve into the palm of my hand, I push hard against the bolt. It's stiff-heat expands metal-but I'm in no mood to mess about, and my lungs are already tight; also, the smoke's making my eyes prickle. I force the top bolt back, ramming splinters into the heel of my hand from a rough patch of sloppily planed wood, then stoop and shoot back the bottom bolt, which moves quite easily. That just leaves the bar; and I'm already gasping out my hoarded breath as I unhook it. Then I put my shoulder to the door and shove.

It doesn't move. I'm out of breath now, and there's no air, only smoke. I drop to the floor. Right down low, cheek pressed to the boards, there's clean air, just enough for a lungful.

As I breathe in, I'm thinking, The door's stuck, why? The door won't open, it's burning on the outside. No prizes for guessing what that means.

The axe; the big axe. Of course the door's too solid to break down but with the big axe I can smash out the middle panel, at least enough to make a hole to breathe through. Where's the big axe? Then I remember. The big axe is in the woodshed, where the hell else would the big axe be? Inside there's only the little hand-axe, and I might as well peck at the door with my nose like a woodpecker.

Something flops down next to me and I feel a sharp, unbearable pain in my left foot and ankle. Burning thatch, the roof's falling in. 'Bench,' I yell, 'smash the door down with a bench.' But nobody answers. Come on, brain, suggestions. There's got to be another way out of here, because I've got to get out. The other door, or what about the window? And if they're blocked too, there's the hatch up into the hayloft, and out the hayloft door-ten-foot drop to the ground, but it'd be better than staying here.

But the other door's forty feet away; the window's closer, but still impossibly far, and the hatch might as well be on the other side of the ocean. There simply isn't time to try, and if I stand up I'll suffocate in the smoke. The only possible place to be is here, cheek flat on the floorboards, trapped for the rest of my life in half an inch of air.

Another swathe of burning thatch lands on me, dropping heavily across my shoulders. I feel my hair frizzle up before I feel the pain, but when it comes it's too much to bear. I snuff up as much air as I can get-there's a lot of smoke in it, and the coughing costs me a fortune in time-and try to get to my feet, only to find that they aren't working. I panic, lurch, overbalance and fall heavily on my right elbow. The fire's reached my scalp, it's working its way through my shirt to the skin on my back.

A man might be forgiven for calling it a day at this point, but I can't quite bring myself to do that, not yet. I'd be horribly burned, of course-I've seen men who've been in fires, their faces melted like wax-but you've got to be philosophical about these things, what's done is done and what's gone is gone, salvage what you can while you can.

It hadn't been so bad back in the inner room-why the hell did I ever leave it? Seemed like a good idea at the time. So I start to crawl back the way I've just come. A good yard (the palm of my hand on her upturned face; I know the feel of the contours of her cheeks and mouth, from tracing them in the dark with my fingertips, tenderly, gently; but no air to waste on that stuff now) before the beam falls across my back and pins me down, making me spill my last prudent savings of air. The pain-no, forget that for a moment, I can't feel my hands, even though I know they're on fire, my back must be broken. Try to breathe in, but there's just smoke, no time left at all. Forget it, I can't be bothered with this any more Poldarn opened his eyes. 'He's dead,' he announced.

They looked at him. 'Who's dead?' one of them asked.

'Eyvind.' Poldarn let out the breath he'd been holding (as if he'd been the one trapped in the smoke, hoarding air like a prudent farmer stockpiling grain against a hard winter). 'All of them. It's finished.'

Someone-Raffen or Rook, in the darkness they all looked the same-coughed a couple of times and said, 'Well, we did it, then.'

'Yes,' Poldarn replied. 'We did it, and it's over. I wish we hadn't.'

'Bloody fine time to say that.' He wasn't sure who'd spoken. 'Bloody fine time. Next you'll be telling us it was all a mistake.'

Poldarn shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

'Is that supposed to be funny?' That sounded like Hand, but he couldn't be sure. 'Because if it was, I don't think much of it.'

'Sorry' Poldarn wanted to look away-the brightness of the flames was hurting his eyes-but he couldn't. 'But it's true, at the time it seemed like the right course of action. Now, I'm not so sure. It was a terrible thing to do.'

'That's no lie.' This time, he was almost certain it was Raffen. 'But the bastards asked for it. They had it coming, turning us out of our own house.'

Someone else said, 'That's right,' but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. And failing.

'And the way they went about it.' Asburn's voice, slightly hesitant. 'Sure, we've just done something pretty bad, but they started it. They got what they deserved. We showed them. And anyway, it's too late now.'

'What the hell are you all moaning about?' That was Elja, and she sounded hard, firm, resolute. 'It was all Eyvind's fault; he was supposed to be your friend, and he started this stupid feud. If it hadn't been for him, we'd all be getting on with our lives in the places where we ought to be. Come on, we all knew that before we started this. Otherwise we wouldn't have done it.'

The roof-tree fell in, lifting up a cascade of sparks, like a mob of crows put up off a newly sown field. It was a beautiful sight, regardless of context. 'If anything's to blame,' someone said, 'it's the mountain. If that hadn't started playing up, we'd none of us be in this mess.'