Pattern (51 page)

‘Not bad.' Someone was talking to him; not the man he'd spoken to in the ditch, but presumably one of his officers, to judge by his manner and tone of voice. ‘Not bad at all. I'll be honest with you, I thought it was a lousy idea and you were going to get us all killed. Glad I was wrong.'

He shrugged. ‘Well,' he said. ‘It's always worked for me before. No reason why you should know that, of course.'

The other man grinned. ‘You're a ruthless bastard, though,' he said. ‘I can't think of anybody else who'd knock off a whole village just to decoy a column into exactly the right spot. I thought it was just an excuse, because you like killing people.'

‘What, me?' He was grinning, though he didn't know what was so funny. ‘It's like I always say, you've got to set out the right pattern, let 'em see what they expect to see, otherwise they'll shy off and not drop in. We wanted them to think there were raiders in these parts, but they'd got no reason to believe that; so the obvious thing to do was make it look like the raiders had been through. Nothing does that like a couple of hundred dead bodies. Simple fieldcraft.'

‘It's simple when you put it like that,' the other man said. ‘Can't say I'd have thought of it myself, though. Still, you lot have always had a different way of going about things.'

‘Sure,' he replied. ‘We don't give a damn, it makes life much simpler.' He frowned. ‘Your people take their time, don't they? We'd have been done and stripping their boots off by now.'

‘Maybe it's because my men don't need dead men's boots,' the other man said mildly. ‘Anyway, it's a certainty now, so that's all right. The general is going to be very pleased.'

He nodded. ‘Where is he, by the way? Wasn't he supposed to be with the Seventh, coming in from the wood?'

‘That's what I thought, too,' the other man said. ‘Still, Cronan never did have a wonderful sense of direction. Maybe he wandered off and got himself lost.'

He laughed, for some reason. ‘That'd be right,' he said. ‘Of course, this is going to be the crowning glory of his brilliant career, so I guess it's appropriate, the bloody fool not even being here. Meanwhile, we do all the work and don't get a damn thing for it.'

The other man looked offended. ‘I wouldn't say that, exactly,' he said.

‘Yes, well. The main thing is, the job's done. I think I'll leave you to it, if you don't mind. I've got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.'

‘That's no lie,' the other man said, with a certain degree of distaste. ‘Have fun; and for God's sake, don't miss any of them. If Cronan finds out what we've been up to—'

‘Oh, for crying out loud, Tazencius,' he said, ‘what do you take me for, an idiot? It's not like I'm new at this.'

‘No,' the other man said. ‘You're not.' He smiled offensively. ‘But mistakes happen – you should know that better than anybody. Otherwise you wouldn't be here, would you?'

He could feel that that, for some reason, was a deadly insult; he was conscious of forcing down the urge to lash out, of filing it away among his grievances, to be paid for later. ‘Point taken,' he said. ‘Right, I'm off. Are you heading back to town when this lot's done?'

The other man nodded. ‘Soon as I can,' he said. ‘Cronan can do without me for a week or so.'

‘I'm sure. When you get back, be sure to give Lysalis my love.'

The other man abruptly stopped grinning, and gave him a look of pure hatred. ‘Yes, all right,' he said. ‘I'll tell her – well, I'll tell her you've been making yourself useful.'

‘Thanks. Tell her I'll be bringing her back something nice for her birthday. I don't know what it is yet, mind, but there's bound to be something she'll like at Josequin.'

The other man was about to say something, but he wasn't there to hear it; he was sitting on a stone bench in the middle of a beautifully tended lawn, surrounded on three sides by an elegant sandstone cloister. Behind him he could hear running water, and he knew without looking round that the source of the sound was a small, rather ornate fountain in the shape of a grotesque dolphin. There was a woman next to him on the bench, cradling a baby girl in her arms. Between them lay a painted wooden box, about the size of a house brick. The hinged lid was open, and inside it was a necklace: woven gold with pearls and coral beads.

‘It's lovely,' the woman said, with obvious pleasure. (He thought it looked flashy and vulgar, but he didn't say so.) ‘Where on earth did you find it?'

‘On a stall in the market at Boc,' he replied, knowing he was telling a little white lie. ‘As soon as I saw it, I knew it was you all over.'

She beamed, as if the compliment mattered more than the gift. ‘Thank you,' she said, and kissed him. Her lips were very soft and full. She was very pretty, and not more than nineteen, with masses of dark auburn hair piled up on top of her head in an over-elaborate coiffure. He noticed that the earrings she was wearing matched the necklace. Ah, he thought, that's probably why she likes it. How thoughtful of me.

‘How long can you stay for this time?' she was saying, a little wistfully. She really was very attractive, and he awaited his reply with interest. ‘Not long,' he heard himself say (he was disappointed), ‘I've got to see some people and then get back. But I couldn't miss your birthday.'

She smiled. ‘I think that's really sweet of you,' she said, ‘coming all that way. We hardly seem to get any time together these days. Still, with all the wonderful help you've been giving Daddy I can't complain. I'm so glad you've decided to be friends at last.'

I remember you from somewhere, he thought, but of course he couldn't say anything like that. ‘Well,' he said instead. ‘The truth is, he's a bit out of his depth at the moment. It's this damned feud of his with General Cronan – it's going to cause a lot of trouble if something isn't done about it.'

‘Oh.' The woman looked confused. ‘But I thought that's what you'd been doing. Helping General Cronan, I mean.'

He laughed. ‘That's exactly what we've been doing,' he said. ‘That's the whole point. Only, our fool of an emperor assigned your father to Cronan's staff.' She looked even more confused, so he explained: ‘That means he's working for Cronan, he's his subordinate. Well, you can imagine what he thinks about that. So nothing will do except he's got to steal all the glory; which is why he needed me, to pull off a really big coup, and beat General Allectus before Cronan could get to him. That was the idea, anyhow. Luckily for all of us it didn't turn out that way; your father rushed on ahead, trying to get to Allectus before Cronan could, and if he'd managed it, chances are Allectus would've had him for breakfast and there'd have been nothing I could do about it. But when your father did catch up with Allectus, he wasted two days dancing round him trying to get a good position, and by then Cronan was right behind him. So your father panics, tells me to think of something quickly—'

‘Which you did, of course,' she interrupted, ‘and it was brilliantly clever and you won the battle and everything worked out splendidly.'

‘Well, sort of,' he replied, pulling a face. ‘Actually, I hung around pretending to be clever until Cronan's men arrived, and then I managed to draw Allectus into an ambush. But for some reason Cronan wasn't there, he actually managed to lose his way in a forest on his way from the camp to the battlefield, of all the ridiculous things, and so he missed the whole thing. We had to go and look for him in the end. Of course, that pleased your father more than anything, far more than winning the battle. Silly, really. Still, it's over and done with now, and I don't suppose it'll make a blind bit of difference in the long run.'

She sighed. ‘It does all sound rather childish,' she said. ‘Still, I don't know anything at all about politics or war, so you mustn't pay any attention to me.' She reached out and gave his hand a quick, friendly squeeze. ‘But if the war's over and horrid old General Allectus has been beaten, why've you got to go back again? And so soon, too.'

He shook his head. ‘The rebellion wasn't really important,' he said. ‘It'd have petered out of its own accord, probably. We only went after Allectus because the emperor wanted to make a point of crushing him immediately, Cronan wanted another victory for his collection, your father wanted to wipe Cronan's eye – all that sort of thing, you know what it's like. No, the real problem in the Bohec valley is the raiders, that's who we really have got to deal with, before they turn the whole province into a desert.'

She looked worried, frightened. ‘Do they really need you to go?' she said. ‘Oh, I know I'm being silly, but you hear such dreadful things about them. Couldn't they send somebody else instead?'

He put his arm around her shoulders. ‘It's all right,' he said, ‘nothing's going to happen to me, I promise. Trust me.' He grinned. ‘I know for a fact that nothing's going to happen to me, because I can see into the future, remember?' That had to be some sort of private joke between them, he guessed. Anyway, it seemed to reassure her. ‘Sorry,' she said, ‘I'd forgotten about that. Silly of me.'

‘You've got to stop saying you're silly,' he said, pretending to be stern and serious. ‘No, I can see me coming home from the war without a scratch, raiders or no raiders.'

‘No wonder you win all these battles,' she said, trying to sound bright and cheerful. ‘Though really, I suppose it's cheating.'

‘Well, of course. You wouldn't want me to play fair in a battle, would you? I might get hurt.'

‘True.' She leant her head against his shoulder, winced, said ‘Ow!' and lifted her head again. ‘Sorry,' she said.

He smiled. ‘Is your neck still hurting?'

‘A bit. Silly old pulled muscle. It'll be better in a day or so.'

The baby opened its eyes and started to cry. ‘It's getting chilly,' he said. ‘Maybe we should go inside.'

They stood up; and they must have startled the old black crow that had been perched on the top of the fountain, because it screamed angrily at them and spread its wings noisily. The woman shrieked and shrank away, squeezing the baby against her chest as the crow flapped slowly upwards, exerting itself to gain lift in the still air. For some reason he felt extremely angry, as if the crow had no right to be there, let alone startle his wife; he stooped down and picked something up off the grass, a chess piece that someone had left there. The crow was rising steadily, just about to turn, but he anticipated the move (he knew exactly what it was planning to do) and threw the chess piece so hard that he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. It was a good throw; the crow folded up in the air, wings tight to its body, and fell dead with a thump on the cloister roof.

He turned back and looked at her. She was upset, unhappy at the sight of killing, but she did her very best not to show it; still, he could see her thoughts quite clearly. ‘Horrid thing,' she said. ‘That was very clever of you,' she added.

He pulled a face. ‘A friend of mine showed me how to do it,' he said, ‘back when I was with the sword-monks. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I guess I just don't like crows very much.'

‘I hate them,' she replied quickly. ‘Horrible gloomy creatures. And that one's been hanging around here for days, I keep shooing it away and it keeps coming back, like it was laughing at me or something. Well done,' she added firmly, convincing herself that he'd done a good deed.

He didn't reply; he was thinking of something his friend had told him, about the time he'd killed a crow in a blacksmith's forge, and never had a day's good luck since. He tried to remember the friend's name, but all he could recall was a nickname, Monach, which was just ‘monk' in the Morevich dialect. Then he remembered that his friend was dead; killed by the raiders at Deymeson, possibly – most of the monks had died that day. But that was wrong, he wasn't even sure that had happened yet. He shrugged the thought away, and reminded himself that this was just a dream, and he wasn't really here.

The baby was howling, which made it impossible to think straight, anyway. ‘You go on in,' he said, ‘I'll join you in a minute or so.' She went, walking under an old carved arch he hadn't really taken any notice of before. He stood for a moment looking at it, until he saw what it was supposed to be: the divine Poldarn, standing up in his cart, bringing the end of the world to Torcea. Rather a gloomy subject for a carving, he thought; but of course, this house had once been a monastery, and the monks had a taste for the miserable and depressing in the decorative arts. He followed her, but as soon as he stepped under the arch he realised he wasn't in the cloister garden any more; he was home, in his own house at Ciartanstead, alone in the bed he shared with his wife.

He tried to close his hands on the dream, bring it down as it opened its wings and flapped screeching away; but this time his aim was bad, and the dream dwindled into a speck in the distance. He sat up.

Well, he thought, at least the house is still here. Of course, even if he'd failed, it would take the fire-stream a long time to get here; days, even weeks, depending on whether it gained or lost speed coming down the slopes. Someone would have woken him if the molten rock was lapping round the front porch, or if the roof was on fire. Even in the worst possible outcome, he wasn't likely to be burned alive in his bed. That was a comfort, he felt.

Nevertheless. The shutters were down and latched, but little blades of light were forcing their way through. It was time he was up and about, organising things, getting some work done. Assuming, of course, that there was anything for him to do.

By the time he'd dressed and got his boots on (a painful process; he'd escaped without anything he could properly describe as a burn, but his skin was horribly sensitive; like sunburn, only worse), the household was about its business, the tables were out and laid for breakfast, people were bustling in and out of the doors in pursuit of their appointed tasks. There didn't seem to be as many of them as there should have been, and Poldarn remembered the casualties before he remembered the mistake at the breach; the missing numbers weren't dead, just stranded somewhere in the valley on the other side of the mountain. He felt better after he'd realised that.