K Parker - Pattern

They found him in the hall of the main house, wrapped in six blankets and shivering helplessly, surrounded by silent, terrified-looking men and women, all keeping their distance as though he had some contagious disease. Two of the farmhands were banking up the fire, making the place uncomfortably hot. Halder was standing next to him, looking-the only word for it was frightened.

'What happened?' Poldarn asked. Everyone turned and stared at him, but he was getting used to that.

'Let him alone,' someone said. 'Can't you see he's near frozen to death?'

'All right,' Poldarn said, and as he walked down the hall he felt like a bridegroom on his wedding day, or the chief mourner at a funeral. 'Somebody else tell me what happened, I'm not fussy.'

Eyvind, who'd been sitting on the corner of the middle table, jumped up and came to meet him. 'You were right,' he said. 'In fact, the Lyatsbridge people are very grateful indeed, you probably saved all their lives.'

Well, Poldarn thought, that's nice, but I'd rather have some details. 'Was it a flood, then?' he ventured.

Halder nodded. 'Hell of a flood,' he said. 'And the devil of it was, it came down so quick, they would all have been at dinner, first they'd have known about it would've been the water smashing through the porch doors.'

'Bloody silly idea,' muttered Rook, through chattering teeth, 'building the house right in the bottom of the valley. Won't make that mistake next time.'

Eyvind put a hand on Poldarn's shoulder and gently eased him down onto a bench. 'It went straight through the middle of the main house,' he said. 'Lifted it up like you'd pick up a basket or something. Took out everything standing in the yard-barns, sheds, cider house, trap house, the lot. All the stock in the long pen, all the stores, everything; all they've got left is what they were wearing.'

Poldarn nodded slowly. 'So he got there in time, then.'

'Sort of,' Eyvind replied. 'Actually, he was on the other side of the valley when it came down-fast as a galloping horse, he said-and he just had to stand there and watch. But of course they'd known he was coming; they got out and went up the other side of the valley with only moments to spare.'

No need to ask how they'd known, of course; a useful thing, this mind-reading. 'How long did it last?' he asked.

'The rest of that day, and all night,' Halder said. 'Come first light, the water was going down, and by noon he managed to get across. Then it came down again, and he was stuck there.'

'But that was only the start.' Eyvind took up the narrative as if this was something they'd all rehearsed earlier, each of them knowing his cues. 'We thought we were getting a lot of ash down here-it's nothing compared with what they've been getting. A hand-span deep over everything, deeper in places; and sometimes it was coming down hot, like it'd just been raked off the fire.'

'Nowhere to shelter, see,' Halder said, 'they were all out in the open, so they had to lie down on their faces and hope they didn't get too badly burned. Nothing they could do about it, of course. There was one poor fool-'

'Iat,' Eyvind said, 'who worked in the dairy. He got hit with a lump of hot ash and his hair caught fire, so he ran down to the water and jumped in. Drowned, of course, the bloody fool. Too quick for anybody to stop him.'

Poldarn sighed, though he hadn't heard of this man Iat before. These things happen, he told himself; however bad things may be, human ingenuity and human determination will always find a way of making them worse.

'That was when it started raining,' Eyvind said.

Under his pile of blankets, Rook shuddered. Probably the cold.

'It happens like that,' Halder went on. 'It's because they're tight in to the foot of the mountain there; they get sudden flash rainstorms coming in off the hillside when the rest of us are having broad sunshine.'

'And all the steam,' Eyvind pointed out, 'from where the snow had melted; all that low cloud we could see from back here. Quite a downpour, even by their standards. Needless to say, it had to wait till the whole mountain was covered in ash.'

Maybe it's catching, Poldarn thought; because he knew what was coming next. 'Mud,' he said.

Halder nodded. 'That's right. Black mud, coming down off the slopes in a bloody torrent. At one point, it was actually moving faster than the flood water had done, if you can imagine that. God knows why, there's probably a simple reason. Anyhow, it filled up the valley right down as far as the lower bridge. In fact, valley's not the right word any more, it's a flat black plain.'

Eyvind shook his head. 'It's just like builder's mortar,' he continued. 'Same consistency, and it dries hard, not like ordinary mud. A few days of sun and that whole valley will be filled in with solid rock. Unbelievable,' he added, 'it's changed the country for ever. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realised what it meant; they hadn't just lost their house and their animals and their stuff, their land's gone too-all the fields and meadows and orchards, buried under ten feet of black stone. You simply wouldn't credit it, outside of a fairy story.'

Quite so, Poldarn thought, the end of the world; and what we don't burn, we'll bury. His mind kept being drawn back, in spite of the atmosphere in the hall, the dead silence, the intense drama, to another issue, smaller but just as important to him personally; why on earth had he done that horrible, cruel thing to that crow, back in the forge? The more he thought about it, the more impossible to explain it became, and yet he could remember that at the time it had seemed logical, sensible, absolutely the right thing to do.

It went without saying that there couldn't possibly be a connection.

'Anyway,' Halder went on, 'soon as it stopped raining, Rook here sets off the long way round, over the hog's back, down to Callersfell and back up our river-on foot, mind, he couldn't get his horse across the flood, which is why it's taken him so long, and why he's frozen half to death, crossing the hog's back this time of year-'

'And his clothes all burned in tatters, don't forget,' Eyvind pointed out. 'It's bad enough up there if you've got a good fur coat and warm boots. But he knew we were worried about him and wanted to know what'd happened, so-well, here he is, just about. And bloody lucky too, if you ask me.'

Long silence; though, Poldarn knew perfectly well, it was only a silence as far as he was concerned. No doubt the rest of them were having a lively debate among themselves. Quite apart from everything else, it was such bad manners.

'So,' he said aloud, 'sounds like it's up to this house to do something for the Lyatsbridge people.'

Halder nodded. 'Us and Colscegsford,' he said. 'Assuming they were high enough up not to get a dose of the same.'

Poldarn frowned. 'And what about them?' he asked. 'Colsceg and Elja, I mean. If the river was right up and then the mudslides after that-'

'They're home,' Rook broke in, 'and safe. They heard what was going on, and took a detour through the Wicket Gate-'

'That's a sort of gap in the hog's back, on our side of the river,' Eyvind explained. 'They got home before the mudslides came on; and anyway, nothing came anywhere near them.'

Halder grunted. 'They've sent over blankets and sawn lumber,' he said, 'and food and beer, and a few changes of clothes. But it's more than they can spare; we'd better get something sorted out ourselves. I'm thinking it'd make more sense to bring the Lyatsbridge people here, rather than taking the stuff over to them. We've got room, and our fires get lit anyway, it'd make more sense, if this state of affairs is going to last any time. Being neighborly is all very well, but better not to waste fuel and food we might end up needing ourselves.'