There was something about his manner that made Poldarn feel very nervous indeed. 'That's interesting,' he said. 'But surely, if you did that, you'd just be swapping one problem for another. And the new one would be far worse, wouldn't it?'
'Sure.' Suddenly Egil grinned. 'Why do you think you're still alive, at that? If I killed you, next morning the whole household'd know what I'd done and I'd really be screwed. But only me, if you get my meaning; and my life's all shit anyhow, it doesn't bother me as much as some other stuff does. It makes no mind really what happens to me, I'd rather stay alive and keep going on, one day to the next, but I figure it's really only force of habit, or instinct or something.' He shook his head. 'Maybe the best thing for everyone'd be if you got your new friend to stick that axe of his in the back of my head some day. Quietly, when nobody's looking. Can't say it'd bother me a whole lot, and you'd really be clear then. Other than that-' He shrugged wearily. 'I've said what I wanted to say,' he continued. 'And you did real good, saving us all from the mudslide, so maybe you're not so bad, at that.' He stopped suddenly and looked up at the sky. 'You know what?' he said. 'It's stopped raining. About time.'
Egil was quite right. 'That's good,' Poldarn said. 'But don't try and change the subject. Can't you try and get it into your stupid thick head, nobody's going to get killed, there's no need for it. It seems to me, if something can be forgotten about so completely that only two people in the whole world know about it, and life goes on, it can't have been all that terrible to start with. God, that sounds all wrong, I know, but let's face facts. We're still alive, we came through the mudslide. I'd be dead if you hadn't risked your life for me, and Colsceg tells me you'd all be dead if I hadn't said go up the slope instead of down into the valley.' He stopped, trying to untangle the mess of unruly thoughts in his head. 'I see it like this,' he said. 'If I'd died that day beside the river, when I woke up and realised I'd lost my whole life up to that point, if whoever bashed my head in had hit me just a little bit harder, then you'd all be dead-half of Haldersness would be dead, too. If Boarci hadn't killed the bear before it got me, you'd be under the mud right now. If I hadn't gone away when I did-same thing, exactly. What I'm trying to say is, if I hadn't done this thing I'm supposed to have done, I'd never have left here, I'd still be one of you. But because I left, I became an outsider, and I came back just when an outsider was needed. Do you see what I'm getting at? If I hadn't done this thing, we'd all be dead because of the volcano or the mountain or the divine Polden, whatever you want to call it, we'd all be dead and there'd be nothing left, just mud and ash and a few burnt-out ruins. Whatever the hell it was that I did, was it so bad that it'd have been worth all our lives for it never to have happened? I don't know,' he said wretchedly, tense with frustration, 'maybe I did something you could never forgive, maybe I killed someone, I really don't want to know. But suppose that's what it was. If I'd never killed whoever it was, he'd be under the mud with the rest of us right now, and what the hell good would that be to anybody?'
Egil shook his head slowly. 'You don't understand,' he said. 'Like I said, you're lucky about the mudslide, and so am I. Let's say we leave it at that. Agreed?'
'Agreed.' Poldarn suddenly felt more tired than he could remember being before. 'Look, if it's all the same to you, would it be all right if I got some rest now? I've had a rather exhausting day and it's going to be a long way to Haldersness without any horses.'
'You do what the bloody hell you like,' Egil said, and walked away.
It would have been a long walk under any circumstances, up steep hills and down again, with the ground either bruising rock or infuriating bog after the torrential rain. Most of the ash and cinders were gone-no prizes for guessing where-but there were dips and hollows waist-deep in thick black mud; after a near-disaster when they experimented briefly with wading through one of them, they resolved to go round them, even if it meant retracing their steps up a steep-sided combe. Poldarn did his best to walk on his own, but after the fifth or sixth unexpected detour his legs gave out completely and he sat down suddenly and hard in the grey shale of a particularly steep escarpment, after which Boarci grabbed him round the waist and wrenched an arm across his enormous shoulders. After an hour or so of trying to keep pace with Boarci's enormous strides Poldarn wasn't entirely sure that his new friend's help was making things any easier for him, but at least he kept moving, having no other option.
Covering the whole distance in one day proved to be out of the question, and they ended up spending the night huddled in the nominal shelter of a solitary thorn tree with an absurdly bowed and twisted trunk. It didn't take long for them to figure out how it had got that way; the wind was cold and brisk, and of course they had nothing in the way of blankets or even coats, while all their attempts to make a fire proved to be fatuous ('You have a go,' Colsceg muttered at one point, dumping an inadequate bundle of scavenged twigs in Poldarn's lap. 'You're supposed to be a blacksmith, you should be good at starting a fire.')
In spite of the cold, and hunger that was steadily getting harder to ignore, and the general wretchedness of everything, Poldarn fell asleep-at least, he assumed he must have done, because he woke up with a horribly cramped back, pins and needles in both feet and a dreadful ache in his arms and shoulders to remind him of how he'd spent the previous day. The only way he could get up from the ground was by rolling onto his side and pulling himself slowly up the tree with his hands, which had clamped tight shut during the night and had to be prised open, like scallops. He took so long about it that they very nearly left without him.
The second day was much like the first, only worse; the hills seemed to get steeper, the ash-mud bogs more frequent, the wind harder and colder. When they passed the place where Boarci had killed the bear, it seemed to Poldarn like he was revisiting a scene from his childhood, a time long ago and wonderfully happy and carefree, when his whole life was still in front of him and he still had a horse.
'Fat lot of good it did you,' he said to Boarci, who was still hustling him along like a sheaf of cut corn.
'What are you talking about?'
'That horse I gave you, for saving me from the bear.'
Boarci shrugged. 'Serves you right for being too generous,' he replied. 'I could've told you at the time no good'd come of it.'
Faced with a choice between staggering painfully along on his own two feet and listening to much more of that sort of thing, Poldarn decided he preferred the pain. 'It's all right,' he said, wriggling out of Boarci's grip, 'I'm feeling much better now, I can walk on my own. Thanks all the same,' he added.
'Suit yourself,' Boarci grunted. 'I could do without you treading on my feet every third step, that's for sure.'
Poldarn slowed down, letting him get safely ahead, and this brought him up level with Elja, who was also walking on her own. He hadn't spoken to her since the mudslide, and she hadn't come near him; he wondered if there was anything wrong between them, or whether it was just a point of etiquette.
'So,' he said, 'how are you feeling?'
'Tired,' she replied.
He nodded. 'Me too,' he said. 'I feel like I've been walking my whole life. Still, it's not much further now.'
She frowned. 'Yes, it is,' she said. 'That's Riderfell over there, and down in the dip is Fleot's Water, so at this rate we won't get there till just before dark, if we're lucky.'