K Parker: Shadow

(And when I was a kid, I declared war on those crows, and won a single glorious victory, Yes, I know all about that.)

'How old was my father when he died?' he asked.

Halder counted backwards for a moment. 'Nineteen,' he replied, 'just about to turn twenty.'

Poldarn nodded. 'And how long ago was that?'

Halder looked at him, then realised the point of the question. 'Forty-one years ago,' he replied, 'give or take a month. The woman was ten years older than him, they reckon. When I heard what'd happened, I looked up the men who'd been with him at the time-they were from Colscegsbridge, on the other side of the island-and made them promise to take me there the next year when they went, in case there was anything left to see. We found her there, among the ruins, with the baby. We tried to creep up nice and quiet but she must've heard us. She was in the barn, and there was a hole in the back wall we hadn't spotted. By the time we figured what had happened, she was out back and running, with you tucked under her arm like a parcel. We saw her just in time, and chased after her; I fell behind, but Asley and Turcram, two of the men, were good runners, they were closing in; suddenly she stopped-I saw this myself-and she put you carefully down on the ground, then she ran off, fast as she could.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said.

'Well,' Halder went on, 'Asley carried on after her, Turcram stopped to pick you up. To cut a long stick short, Asley tripped on a molehill and twisted his ankle, she got away, and we were left with you. Of course, soon as I saw you I knew you were Tursten's boy; so I brought you home, and handed you over to Rannway-that's your grandmother-'

'Yes, you told me that,' Poldarn said.

'So I did. Anyway, she died two years later, but there were women at the farm to look after you, you never wanted for anything, and that's all there is to tell. At least, that's all till you were just turned nineteen, old enough to go abroad for the first time.' The old man shook his head. 'Should've known better, of course,' he said, 'but you were wild keen to go, and I couldn't see the harm. Worst thing was, I was laid up that season, I'd fallen out of a pear tree, of all the damn fool things to do, and broken my leg. So I didn't go, and you didn't come back. That's something to think about,' he added. 'There's only been two years since I turned twenty-three that I didn't go abroad; the first time I lost Tursten, the second time I lost you. I guess that's why I'm here now, for fear of what'll happen if I miss another year, because the only one I'd got left to lose by then was me.'

That night they slept in the ruins of a town, long since overgrown. Halder said he had an idea that he'd been with the expedition that burned it, forty-seven or forty-eight years ago, but he couldn't be sure. The wind was coming up from the east, but there were some bits and pieces of wall still standing, enough for most of them to get behind. Poldarn fell asleep as soon as he lay down, and had a dream in which his mother appeared to him and forgave him for something he couldn't remember having done, but she didn't look anything like the old woman from the barn at Vistock, and he couldn't help wondering if the dream had really been meant for somebody else.

The next day, just after mid-afternoon, they reached the coast (which was good), at least half a day south of where they thought they'd come out (which wasn't); the confusion turned out to be the result of following the southern fork of the Mahec at the point at which it split into two. Everybody in the party seemed very upset and disappointed, though nobody blamed anybody else; they seemed to regard it as an omen or a punishment from heaven, and none of them seemed to be in any mood to talk about anything for the rest of the day. They pressed on, apparently hoping they'd be able to force the pace enough to make the ships by nightfall, but they'd underestimated the terrain and ran into complications they didn't appear to have been expecting: boggy ground, woods, places where the path ran along the cliff face and occasionally crumbled away into the sea. Five men left the main party of their own accord and went ahead to scout out a safe route; they hadn't come back by the time the main body decided to stop where they were and wait for morning.

Poldarn lay down and went to sleep lying on a flat rock. When he woke up he realised that the rock sloped downwards at a sharp angle, and was perched on the end of a spur hanging out over the sea.

The next morning they set out early, the consensus of opinion being that they couldn't be more than an hour from the ships, if that. Four or five hours later they still hadn't found any ships, or even any landmarks they recognised, nor had the scouts come back. This didn't make sense, so another five men set off to find the way and see if they could figure out what had happened to the other advance party. They came back soon afterwards and announced that they'd seen the ships, and they weren't far away, but there was a problem. Between the raiders and the ships was the mouth of the main spur of the Mahec River; it was too wide to cross, and there didn't seem to be a ford or a bridge. Rather than muck about and waste time following the river upstream looking for one, they'd come back to report and warn the others, who would doubtless be able to think of some way round the difficulty.

At that point everybody started talking at once, and it wasn't long before Poldarn came to realise that this was a sure sign that nobody had the faintest idea what to do. Of course, he didn't either. If the nearest crossing place was a day's march upstream-well, that was two days wasted, during which time the enemy might show up at any moment. (Did they have ships of their own? Nobody knew. If so, were they patrolling the coast in the hope of finding the beached ships? If so, why hadn't they already done so?) To make matters worse, they'd be kidding themselves if they reckoned they had enough food left for a square meal, so there was a very real prospect of a long detour on an empty stomach. A few enthusiasts started talking about swimming out to the ships and bringing them into the mouth of the river. Others, more sensible, explained why this would be a bad idea. It was the first time Poldarn had seen them disagreeing among themselves, and it struck him that they weren't very good at it, presumably through lack of practice. Nobody particularly wanted to listen to anybody else's views or suggestions, they were too busy shouting out their own, with a degree of vehemence that suggested that fairly soon they'd reach the conclusion that words weren't going to be enough, and start reaching for their backsabres.

Someone asked why they hadn't considered this problem when they beached the ships there in the first place. The explanation seemed to be that they hadn't anticipated coming back that way. It had been assumed, reasonably enough in the light of past experience, that they'd be following the north bank of the main spur of the Mahec, having come down on it from the north about a day out from the sea. The river hadn't been an issue since the trail they'd been planning to follow both going out and coming back sheared off north-east from the river road, and nobody had actually carried on that way far enough to notice any fords, bridges or ferries.

By this point the argument was going round in circles, but there wasn't anybody either willing or able to stop it and bring the discussion to order. Poldarn, who didn't feel he was qualified to join in, wandered away and sat under a thorn tree, one of the few windbreaks on the open moor. He rested his head against the trunk and closed his eyes Don't I know you? he thought.

The woman from his previous dream was standing in front of him, while the obligatory crow flew in overhead and pitched in the spindly branches of the tree. Poldarn stayed where he was.