K Parker: Pattern

(He expected death would come at that moment of abjuration; like a rough boys' game, you shout 'I give in' and it stops. But nothing seemed to change, as the time drew out-how was he paying for this time, now he was penniless for air? Had he discovered, in the very nick of time, the secret of breathing smoke? Nice trick, but pointless if his back was broken, and he was on fire too. Talk about irony.)

'What are you doing here?'

He looked up. He couldn't look up, because he was paralysed. He saw his grandfather looking down at him.

'What are you doing here?' the old bastard repeated. He sounded put out, as if his authority had been challenged. 'Get up,' he said, frowning, 'it's time to get up. You've overslept.'

You could put it that way, he thought; then he remembered. What am I doing here? How about what's he doing here, he's been dead for six months 'What are you doing here?' the old man said 'Sorry,' said the man facing him, 'am I boring you?'

Suddenly awake; he was sitting on a chair outside his grandfather's house at Haldersness, under the porch eaves, on a cold, bright day. The man opposite was Eyvind, his friend. His name was 'No, of course not, go on,' he said. He hadn't fallen asleep, really, he'd just closed his eyes because the sun was so bright. His name was 'All this talking,' Eyvind said apologetically, 'I'm not used to it. Truth is, among ourselves we don't talk much. Don't need to. Are you cold?'

'What? No, I'm fine, really.'

Eyvind smiled. 'You're huddled up in your jacket like a caterpillar,' he said. 'Perfectly understandable; where you've been all these years, it's much warmer. We sweat like pigs when we go there. Would you rather go inside?'

In front of him, over Eyvind's shoulder, was the great white-headed mountain. From its sides rose tall columns of milk-white steam, billowing out of the cracks and fissures where the natural hot springs bubbled up from the mountain's fiery heart. It was an amazing sight against a blue sky. 'No, thanks,' he replied. 'I like sitting here. Nice view.'

Eyvind laughed. 'I suppose it is,' he said, 'but I don't notice it any more. Would you like me to get you a blanket or something?'

'No, really.' It was bitter cold; he could feel it in his feet, in spite of his thick leggings and felt-lined boots. Everybody said he'd get used to it.

'Wait there,' Eyvind said. 'I'll get a rug from the laundry.'

Well, it would give him an opportunity to wake up-not that he'd been asleep, of course. Once Eyvind had gone, he was able to wriggle a little deeper into the lining of his coat without appearing feeble in front of his friend. He didn't like the way everybody treated him like an invalid; after all, he was perfectly fit and healthy, he just felt the cold more than they did. And his name His name, he remembered, was Poldarn. At least, that wasn't his real name, it was the name of a Morevich god he'd impersonated while touring round the Bohec valley with a female confidence trickster who'd picked him up after he'd lost his memory a year ago. So far, only a part of that memory had come back; but these people, who lived an ocean away from where he'd woken up in the bed of a river surrounded by dead bodies, these people had told him his name was Ciartan, and he knew they were right. He'd grown up here, he could remember names (not his own, of course) and places, pictures in his mind that turned out to be real. Above all, now that he was here at least somebody knew who he was, and that was a great comfort after his experiences back in the empire.

Don't knock it, he thought, it's not everybody who gets a fresh start at the age of forty-one, especially a start like this. After all, his grandfather owned this enormous farm-'owned' was the wrong word, of course, but it was easier to think of it that way-and everybody was going out of their way to be nice to him: they knew about his loss of memory, they understood how difficult it must be for him, they were only too pleased to help in any way they could, they even jumped up and fetched blankets for him without having to be asked. He couldn't have had a more luxurious, pampered life if he really had been a god.

On the far side of the yard, a peacock was clambering about on the thatched roof of the barn. When he'd first arrived he'd never seen a peacock before (as far as he could remember, though Grandfather insisted he'd killed one with his first bow and arrow, when he was seven) and even now he found it difficult to believe in the existence of such a gorgeous, unnecessary, stupid creature, because animals and birds were supposed to be above that kind of thing, they didn't have aristocracies and leisured classes. But the peacock was clearly some kind of duke or viscount, useless, troublesome and splendidly ornamental. Eyvind would have him believe they were just another breed of poultry, only there to get fat and then get eaten, but he didn't believe a word of it.

From the other side of the barn he could hear the shrill, musical clang of a blacksmith's hammer-Asburn the smith, getting down to some work at last. Properly speaking, that should have made him feel guilty, since by rights the job belonged to the head of the house, but Grandfather was too old now, his only son was dead, and his grandson, Ciartan, who'd only just come back from abroad, had left home before learning the trade and hadn't got a clue how to light the forge, let alone make anything in it. As a result Asburn, who was born to mend tools, sharpen hooks and scythes and generally make himself useful, had spent the last twenty years doing the wrong work; and the fact that he did it exceptionally well was neither here nor there. You could tell Asburn wasn't a smith just by looking at him: he was a little scrawny man with weedy arms and sloping shoulders. Poldarn, of course, looked every inch a blacksmith, and the sooner he knuckled down and learned the trade, the sooner everything could get back to normal.

But not today, Poldarn thought, even though it'd be nice and warm in the forge and out here it was freezing cold. Today he was far happier sitting and looking at the mountain, because he'd recognised it as soon as he saw it, and it reassured him more than anything else. As long as he could see it, he knew where he was. More than that, he knew who he was, just as long as he could see the mountain.

He'd nearly fallen over when they'd told him what it was called.

'Here you are,' Eyvind said, appearing suddenly behind him; and he felt the comforting weight of a thick woven rug descending round his shoulders. That was much better, of course, but even so he felt obliged to grumble.

'Wish you wouldn't do that,' he said quarter-heartedly. 'You're treating me like an old woman.'

Eyvind grinned and sat down. 'Hardly,' he said. 'My mother's seventy-one, and right now I expect she's out hoeing turnips. You wouldn't catch her lounging about on porches on a fine day like this.'

'Thank you so much,' Poldarn grunted, feeling even more useless than the peacock. 'Now, if only someone would tell me what I'm supposed to be doing, maybe I could muck in and start pulling my weight around here.'

'I wish you'd listen when I tell you things,' Eyvind replied, 'instead of falling asleep all the time. Makes it very boring for me, having to say the same thing over and over again.'

'Give it one more try,' Poldarn grumbled. 'You never know, this time it just might stick.'

'All right, but please try and stay conscious.' Eyvind leaned back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap, a wonderful study in applied comfort. 'The reason nobody's tried to tell you what to do,' he said, 'is that we just don't do things like that here. There's no need to. For example,' he went on, sitting up and looking round, 'there over by the barn, look, that's Carey. You know him?'

Poldarn nodded. 'Ever since I was a kid,' he replied. 'So they tell me.'