K Parker: Shadow

I don't know, the woman replied, do you?

That didn't seem very helpful. The woman was about forty years old, with a thin face, very pale, and a small, sharp nose. This time, apparently, she wasn't his mother.

I'm sorry, he said, but I don't know who you are. Not that that means anything, I don't even know who I am, let alone anybody else.

Well, you should know me by now, the woman replied, I'm your wife.

Oh, Poldarn thought; and he said, I'm sorry, I hadn't realised I'm married.

The woman gave him an unpleasant look and said, Well, you aren't, not any more. Poldarn said, I'm sorry, I don't quite follow. The woman shook her head and said, That's a joke, when you think that it was you who had me killed. Murdered, she amended; you had me murdered, because I'd become a nuisance and you wanted to marry someone else, Prince Tazencius' daughter, who's less than half your age. So you had two of your men push me down a well, and I remember floating there, after I got too weak to swim any more and drowned, and I was listening to you telling everybody that there'd been a dreadful accident, you were bawling and sobbing-I'll bet you managed real tears, somehow or other-and they all believed you, or they put up a bloody good show; and all this time I'd been thinking, at least he remembers, at least his conscience must be ripping into him sometimes, probably in the early hours of the morning, when you wake up and can't get back to sleep again. Now it turns out you've forgotten, and that makes me feel so angry I'm sorry, Poldarn repeated, but I honestly don't remember. I don't know your name, even.

She grinned at him unpleasantly. I like that, she said. My name's Faleris, and we were married for seven years. We have a son, who's five, and a daughter who's just turned three. At least, that's how old they were when I died. You have no way of knowing when that was, and I'm damned if I'm going to tell you. I'll leave you to think about that in the early hours of the morning, that time when you've woken up and you can't seem to be able to get back to sleep. That'll give you something to think about other than wars and fighting and plundering, assuming you're capable of doing that.

He reached out a hand towards her, to see if she was real; but she seemed to melt and soak away into the ground, leaving behind nothing but a noise in his head that was somewhat like her voice. He looked directly overhead, trying to see the crow in the branches that would reassure him it was all just a dream 'I said wake up,' Halder repeated. 'Or we'll go without you.'

He sat up. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I think I fell asleep.'

'You were always doing that,' Halder told him, reaching out a hand and pulling him to his feet. 'Leave you alone for ten minutes, come back and there you'd be, dead to the world. God only knows how anyone could sleep at a time like this, but if anybody could, it'd be you.'

It turned out that they'd decided there was nothing for it but to walk alongside the river and look for somewhere to cross. Nobody was happy about it; the pace of the march dwindled away into a slow trudge, that of weary men with half a day's work still to be done. No one spoke. Poldarn's foot and arm were both hurting, but he felt he couldn't say anything.

Late in the afternoon they came over a blind ridge. For some reason they hadn't sent out scouts (nobody had wanted to go), so the first they knew about the army in the valley was when they cleared the ridge and looked down at them.

'Who the hell are they?' somebody asked.

The soldiers down below were looking up at them, plainly stunned; this wasn't an ambush, Poldarn realised, just a chance meeting that nobody had planned. Of course, there was no reason why they should fight each other.

'Well, just standing here isn't going to do any good,' someone said, and a moment later they were charging down the hill, sabres drawn and swung above the head, ready for the down-stroke. Damn, Poldarn thought, and he started running as well so as not to be left behind. He carried on running until he crashed into something; the something turned out to be a man, one of the enemy, who'd dodged sideways to get out of the way of someone else. Both of them hit the ground and rolled; Poldarn was the first on his feet, and his bad arm screamed with pain as he swung the sabre, a fraction of a second quicker than the man he'd just collided with could snatch his sword up from the damp grass and thrust at him. Poldarn was quicker, but he botched the cut. Instead of connecting with the junction of shoulder and neck, he cut through just above the elbow joint. The man opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It was at that moment that Poldarn recognised him, even recalling his name-Captain Muno, the man he'd rescued from the old women who were robbing the bodies, after the battle by the river; the man he'd carried back to camp, and been given a horse in exchange for.

Captain Muno sank to his knees, his mouth still open, like a fish drowning in air. Poldarn swung again, this time getting the cut in exactly the right place; he felt the jar as the blade hacked into bone, running up his arms and filling him with pain. Muno fell forward, making the backsabre twist; Poldarn yelped and let go, but not before he felt something tearing in his bad arm. Trying to ignore it, he reached down with his other hand and picked up the sword, which wasn't his and therefore couldn't just be abandoned.

He'd been left behind, of course. He tried to run, but could only hobble along behind the great, splendid surge of the raiders' charge, like a very old, grey-nosed dog pottering along behind a cart. More than once he tripped over a dead body or a stone.

Whoever these people were, they were fighting to the last man (ridiculous, Poldarn thought; this is an accident), as if something vital was at stake. A bunch of them had drawn back to guard a line of carts. They'd formed a circle around them, but at least a third of them were facing inwards, as if they were expecting to be attacked from both sides. Prisoners, Poldarn guessed, they've got prisoners in those carts and they daren't let them get away. But he didn't have the mental resources to spare for mere curiosity. The main thing was to get out of the way of this pointless fighting before it ruined everything. He had an unpleasant vision of his newly acquired grandfather coming in a trifle too late with his guard, or failing to notice the man immediately behind him. The way his luck had been running, for himself and everybody he'd been in contact with, he reckoned he had cause to be apprehensive.

But he couldn't see the old man, or Raffen or Scaptey-the-lovable-rogue. They weren't hampered by infuriatingly inconvenient injuries, and had rushed off down the hill and merged in with the rest of the battle scene, flying back towards the trees and dissolving into the mob. For a brief moment they'd been individuals, with names and histories, but now they were part of the wave, and he couldn't make out their faces at this distance, not even to watch them die.

He stumbled on as best he could, but the pain in both his foot and his arm was reaching the point where he couldn't just shove it out of his mind; it was insistent enough to control him, the way a baby's crying controls its mother. Long before he reached the bottom of the slope and the battle, he gave in to it and sat down, letting it sweep through him simply because he couldn't resist it any longer. This isn't right, he thought, being separate, not being in there with them. He felt ashamed, but there was more to it than that. He felt lonely, sitting by himself on the wet ground surrounded by dead bodies; and he thought, Well, that suggests I've come a certain distance from the place where I woke up first. It's probably better to belong somewhere, on balance.

'There you are,' said a voice behind him.