K Parker - Pattern

There he had a point. Not long ago there had been a very fine wood at Colscegsford-Barn's wood, for building his house when Colsceg was dead-and another, rather smaller and less well looked after, for Egil; but both of them had been scooped up and smashed into kindling by the mudslides, and the nearest stands of unclaimed timber were weeks away to the south-east. Cutting and carting so far from home would require the entire household to move out there for the best part of six months, during which time they'd have to fend for themselves as best they could by hunting and gathering. Or else they'd have to leave half the household camped out at Colscegsford to raise whatever crop they could grow in the mud, while the other half took twice as long to do the cutting and hauling. Poldarn fancied that he could see all these arguments tracking painfully across Colsceg's mind.

'Can't argue with that,' Colsceg said at last, a trifle resentfully. 'Guess we'll be taking you up on your offer. We're obliged to you.' He said the word obliged as if he'd just given his first-born as extra security on a mortgage of his entire property. 'We'll get started on tearing the old place down straight away.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'No hurry,' he said. 'You've all put in so much hard work here, you need a day or so to catch your breath before you start on that. Why don't you just hang around and take it easy for a while? You'll do much better work if you aren't exhausted.'

'All right,' Colsceg said reluctantly. 'And I guess there's the wedding to see to, that'll take a couple of days if we're going to do it properly. And if we don't get it done and out of the way now, while we're slack, it'll be awkward fitting it in later.'

He made it sound like a more than usually dreary chore, like forking out the poultry sheds. Charming, Poldarn thought, but then, I've never seen a wedding in these parts. Maybe it is a dreary chore, the way they do it. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised. 'What a splendid idea,' he said. 'And, like you say, no time like the present. How would the day after tomorrow suit you?'

Colsceg rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. 'Sure, why not?' he said stoically. 'After all, everything's pretty well screwed up with the volcano and all, so the best thing would be to get it done as soon as possible-no point letting it drag on.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Assuming that's all right with Elja,' he put in.

'Huh? Oh, she won't mind. I mean, it's not like we're springing it on her out of the blue. Anyway,' he added, with a slight frown, 'she seems to like you all right, and a couple of days, you can get most of the furniture and stuff in. That'll be just fine.'

The two households were gathering up their tools, searching for lost froes and wedges, sorting the leftover timber into useful oddments and firewood. There was a general air of grim weariness, like the feel of a week-old battlefield when the scavengers are out gleaning the last pickings of useful property from the dead; all the good stuff having been taken already, and only torn clothes, worn-out boots and broken metalwork remaining. 'We could announce it straight away,' Poldarn pointed out. 'After all, everybody's here.'

Colsceg sighed. 'Good idea,' he said. 'Save having to call a meeting later on.'

Luckily, Poldarn hadn't been expecting wholesale rejoicing and mirth, so he wasn't disappointed; but even so, he wasn't too pleased by the dogged resignation that greeted the announcement. The best that could be said of it was that both households took it like men, with fortitude and without any undue display of protest or disgust. One damn thing after another, their attitude suggested, but it can't be helped, so what's the good of whining about it? Poldarn made a mental note that they were miserable bastards, every last one of them, and carried the slabbing rail back to Haldersness. It felt much heavier than it had done a week ago.

For once, the mind-reading thing turned out to be a blessing. If Poldarn'd had to break the news of the wedding to the combined Haldersness and Colscegsford households-calling a meeting, standing up in front of them, with their blank, bewildered faces glaring at him in the firelight-he wasn't sure he'd have been able to find the courage to do it. But they all knew without having to be told, and by the time the housebuilders arrived back at the middle house, Rannwey and the other women had already made a start on various nameless and inscrutable preparations, most of which seemed to involve tired, dank-looking vegetation in huge wicker baskets. Whether these would turn out to be things to eat or things to wear or things to hang on walls, Poldarn couldn't ascertain and didn't really want to know. Mostly, he got the feeling that it wasn't really anything to do with him, and his role in the forthcoming event would be both minimal and a considerable nuisance to everybody else. He wanted to talk to Elja, if only to make sure that she didn't mind, but when he asked where she was, he was told by word, gesture and facial expression that even being in the same building as her before the wedding would constitute an unmitigated abomination; she'd been moved to the trap-house, and wouldn't be coming out until the actual day of the wedding, if then. Meanwhile, it was suggested to him, if he was at a loose end with nothing to do, wouldn't it be a good idea if he looked in at the forge and did some work, for a change.

The last thing Poldarn wanted to do was stand in front of a raging fire in a dark shed mangling a strip of hot iron; but, since there wasn't really anywhere else for him to be, he went. Asburn seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

'I hope you don't mind,' Asburn said, wiping a pink furrow across his soot-blackened forehead with the back of his hand, 'but I'm just finishing up these latches for the new house. They should've been done by now, but if I can get really stuck into them they'll be ready for when you move in.'

Poldarn frowned. 'Why should I mind?' he asked, but Asburn didn't answer.

There still didn't seem to be anything for him to do; making latch components was clearly a job for one skilled man. He could always make a few nails, of course, but even now that the house was finished there was still a full barrel of nails in the corner, probably enough to last a decade, so there didn't seem to be any point. Then he remembered the promise he'd made to Boarci, to make him an axe to replace the one he'd lost.

'Asburn,' he said, 'how do you make axe heads?'

'Piece of cake,' Asburn replied promptly. 'All you do is, you get a bit of square bar about a thumb-length broad and about a foot long, you leave a square in the middle alone, because that's going to be the poll, for hammering wedges and stuff, but you draw down both ends to about the thickness of a tooth; then you fold these down at right angles round a mandrel-that makes the eye for the handle to go through-wedge a piece of hard steel between them, forge-weld all three layers together, and then you just work it to shape, take a good orange heat and quench in water. And that's all there is to it.'

'Ah,' Poldarn said. He'd followed that as far as the square in the middle, but the rest had soared over his head like a flock of startled teal. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I'll give it a try.'

Asburn went back to his work; he was measuring something with a pair of calipers, over and over again from a bewildering variety of angles. To Poldarn it looked like a little piece of bar, flat and straight and entirely uncomplicated, but obviously there was more to latchsmithing than met the eye. Piece of cake, he muttered sourly under his breath, as he rootled around in the scrap for inspiration.

What he'd been hoping to find, of course, was an axe head-a genuine one, made by a real smith, which he could grind and buff and pass off as his own work. There were halberds and glaives and bardisches and bills, both broken and intact, enough to fit out a regiment, but nothing as mundane and useful as a small hand-axe. But he did find half a heavy-duty cart tyre and the stub end of a broken rasp; and as he looked at them, it occurred to him (why, he had no idea) that he knew what to do.