Pattern

'Halder said that?'

'Oh yes. What really bugged him, you see, was that you'd made friends with a scavenger, a pest who stole corn and pecked at the thatch and trampled down the laid patches in the barley, in preference to your own kind. For some reason he really hated that, he thought it was so perverse that it was positively evil. So he wanted you to think it was crows who'd killed your friend, so you'd stopped liking them.' She chuckled. 'It did that all right,' she said. 'That was when you took to sitting out in the headlands with a pocketful of stones and a slingshot. From one extreme to another, my father said-you carried on being just as crazy, except that instead of talking to crows, all you ever wanted to do was kill them, for revenge. Actually, that got Halder even more worried than when you had the pet, but he didn't say anything, just kept very quiet and gave you nice rewards for keeping the pests off the newly sown fields. Eventually you grew out of it, I suppose; but you kept that trick of being able to keep us out of your head, in fact you had your guard up more often than not, more and more as time went on. That was when Halder decided you'd got to go.'

'He decided that?'

'Oh yes, you were getting very unpopular, and people were saying things about you behind your back, how you weren't right in the head-you could see their point, you had a perfectly awful temper, you kept picking fights and beating people up, which had never happened before as far back as anyone could remember-well, how could it, when we can all see what everybody else is thinking? But we couldn't read you, of course, so you could walk up to someone and suddenly start being nasty, without any warning, and next thing there'd be a fight, and that someone'd be on the ground with you kicking and punching them. That started around the time you stopped killing crows, so naturally people drew their own conclusions.'

'Why the hell would I want to do that?' Poldarn asked.

'Exactly,' the voice replied, 'why would anybody want to do a thing like that? Nobody had a clue, except me, of course.'

'Except you.'

'Oh yes.' The voice sighed. 'You see, you only stopped killing crows when I told you it wasn't their fault your pet died, it was Halder and Scaptey who'd done it. I remember, I thought it was silly, someone declaring war on a species of bird, and it was time you got a grip on yourself and settled down. But as soon as you knew, you were really upset and you decided that you had to take revenge on people for all the crows they'd tricked you into killing. Really, I should have kept my mouth shut, but I was only trying to help. Well, it all came back on me in the end, didn't it?'

'Did it?'

'Yes. But you're making me get out of sequence. I was telling you how Halder decided you had to go away for a while. He wanted to send you up north, let you build a house up there and carry on where nobody knew you; but my father didn't like the thought of that. You see, he didn't like the way we'd become friends, ever since you were little and we played in the same gang, not with me being betrothed to Colsceg after his first wife died; he didn't think you'd stay up north, he was afraid you'd come creeping back. So he persuaded Halder that it'd be a good idea for you to go abroad, back to the old country, to be a spy for our raiding parties. If he wants to hurt people, he said, let him go and hurt people over there, where they deserve it. And Halder couldn't argue with that, because it was a good idea, of course. And you were definitely getting out of hand, no question about that. And then finally there was that other business.'

'What other business?' Poldarn asked.

But the voice only shushed him. 'You've made me lose track,' she said. 'Wasn't I supposed to be telling you about how you came to be lying there in the river, with all those dead people?'

Poldarn had clean forgotten about that. 'Yes,' he said. 'What about that? I really would like to know what happened.'

But the voice was silent for some time. 'I'm not sure,' she said. 'Like, think what happened that other time, when I told you something you didn't ought to know, because I thought it'd help. Look at all the trouble that made for everyone. No, I don't think I should tell you after all, not with the wedding coming up and all that. What if it made you go all crazy again? That'd be awful.'

Poldarn was so angry he could hardly keep still; but he knew that if he moved, he'd wake up out of the dream, and then he'd never know 'Please,' he said, 'stop teasing me. You said yourself, it's spiteful to tease. Tell me what happened.'

'All right,' she said, and she started to tell him. But her voice was getting softer and softer, so he couldn't make out what she was saying over the croaking and cackling of the huge mob of crows that had pitched on the roof-all the crows he'd ever killed, right down to the one he'd crushed into the coals of the forge fire, and they were talking about him, about various things he'd done, or else singing the song about the crows sitting in the tall, thin trees, and because he could hear every last voice, hundreds and thousands of them all at the same time inside his head, of course he heard nothing at all. Finally he got so angry that he grabbed an axe that happened to be lying beside him and jumped up to scare the crows away 'Bloody hell,' said Boarci, 'calm down, for God's sake, and stop waving that thing in my face. It's only me, they told me to come and wake you up.'

Poldarn looked down at the axe in his hand. 'I was asleep,' he said.

'Too right you were, they could hear you snoring out in the yard. Having a bad dream, they reckoned, because you kept shouting stuff out loud.'

Of course, the dream had gone; it had opened its wings in a panic as he came rushing out of his sleep, and flown, away into the air to roost in the darkness. 'What sort of stuff was I shouting?' Poldarn asked.

But Boarci only laughed. 'Search me,' he said, 'it was all in foreign, must've been the Empire language or something like that, we couldn't make out a word of it. Anyway, you were putting people off their food, so I came to wake you up.'

'Oh,' Poldarn said. 'Thank you, I suppose.'

'Don't mention it. Now, can I have my axe back, please? Or are you going to keep it for yourself after all? Feel free,' Boarci added. 'After all, you made it. And I'm still not sure I like it. Bit front-heavy for my liking.'

Poldarn checked; it was the axe he'd made, sure enough, though he couldn't figure how on earth it had managed to get up there all by itself. 'I'll put a weighted pommel on the end if you like,' he said, 'that ought to sort out the balance for you.'

Boarci shrugged. 'Worth a try, I guess.' He laughed. 'Tell you what, though,' he said, 'it's just as well that girl of yours wasn't down there when you were snoring away like a grindstone. Not the sort of thing you'd want to hear just before you're about to get married to someone. If I was in her shoes, I'd probably run away while there's still time.'

Chapter Fourteen

'I've never been to a wedding before,' Poldarn said. 'At least, that's not strictly true. But I can't remember ever having been to one. What happens?'

Eyvind laughed. 'Oh, nothing much. Everyone troops into the hall, the head of the house says a few words, that's basically it. No big deal.'

Poldarn wasn't sure he believed him. The subdued frenzy of activity that had been going on behind his back for the last couple of days suggested otherwise. Of course, he hadn't the faintest idea what they'd been getting up to, because as soon as he turned up, everybody stopped what they were doing and stared at him in oppressive silence until he went away again; but it seemed to involve yards and yards of cloth, dozens of baskets of flora and vegetable matter, and pretty well every member of the two households except him. Even Asburn had been bashing away in the forge at all hours of the day and night, and had refused to let him in in case he saw something he shouldn't. Meanwhile, precious little work was being done around the farm, except by the prospective bridegroom (who, being at a loose end, had been pressed into deputising for all the busy people; he'd mended fences, laid hedges, weeded, spit and harrowed, mucked out cattle sheds and stables, fetched, carried, cooked, swept and polished, until he no longer needed to be told what to do. If he saw a job of work, he did it, knowing full well that if he didn't, nobody else was likely to. On reflection, it occurred to him that maybe that was the whole point).