Shadow

'Really?' Poldarn sat up a little. 'What sort of thing?'

'Don't ask me. I got better things to do than listen.'

Tactical error, Poldarn realised; by expressing an interest, he'd made the carter unwilling to tell him. Still, it wasn't too late to change tack.

'I don't believe you,' he said. 'I've never noticed that I talk in my sleep.'

'Well of course you haven't,' the carter said. 'Think about it.'

Poldarn shook his head. 'Somebody would have mentioned it by now,' he maintained. 'Especially if I really said lots of crazy stuff.'

'Oh, it was crazy all right,' the carter replied. 'Bloody weird, sometimes. All about wars and battles and dead bodies lying around the place; that's when you aren't talking to the gods. What you need is a double dose of rhubarb, clean you out a bit.'

'I thought you said you weren't listening.'

'I wasn't. But you talk so loud I couldn't help hearing bits of it. No choice of mine, I promise you.'

'Give me an example,' Poldarn said. 'Otherwise I'll know you're just bullshitting me.'

The carter laughed. 'You asked for it,' he said. 'What about just now, when you were jabbering away; first it was somebody called Ciartan, next it was General Cronan, then it was the bloody emperor, if you please-I got an idea that's probably treason, dreaming nutty dreams about the emperor-and then, like that wasn't bad enough, you started talking to the gods. "No, I won't do it," you were saying-yelling, more like it, I didn't know where to look. Kept on saying the same thing over and over again, "I won't do it, I won't do it." I'd have woken you up, only they say if you wake someone up when they're having nutty dreams, sometimes they stick like it. I'm telling you, it was better fun than the pantomime.'

Poldarn nodded. 'Glad you enjoyed it,' he said. 'I really wish I could remember some of it. After all, why should you have all the fun?'

The carter shook his head. 'And before that,' he said, 'when you were being Feron Amathy-though why you'd want to be a vicious little creep like that, God only knows. There you were, giving orders-"Burn the houses," you were shouting, "burn the houses, don't let any of them escape." Turned me up just listening to you.'

'Who's Fern Amathy?'

The carter scowled again. 'That's not funny,' he said. 'There's some things you shouldn't make jokes about. People can get offended.'

Poldarn sighed. It was just starting to get dark, and a big flock of rooks were streaming by high overhead, making for a stand of thin larches. 'I wasn't trying to be funny,' he said. 'Seriously, I'm not from around here. Not even from this side of the bay. And I don't recognise the name.'

'You're kidding.'

'No.'

'Oh.' The carter looked at him sideways, as if checking to see if he had an extra finger on either hand now that he knew he was an offcomer. 'Should've known, I suppose, by your voice.'

'My voice?'

'Yeah, your voice. You talk funny. Well, maybe not funny where you come from, but you know what I mean. You don't talk right.'

Poldarn shrugged. He'd made a resolution, he reminded himself; not interested any more. 'Be that as it may,' he said. 'Who's Fern Amathy?'

'Not Fern,' the carter said. 'Feron. Feron Amathy. Runs the biggest free company this side of the bay. Real bastard.'

Free company; ah yes, a euphemism for a band of mercenaries. He'd already gathered that they weren't popular. 'In what way?' he asked.

'Any way you care to name, really. Like, there's a lot of people who reckon it's not the raiders who go around burning down towns and cities, it's the Amathy house, and they kill all the people to make sure there's no witnesses to give the game away. Not all the towns and cities,' the carter added, after a moment's reflection. 'It's when they're between jobs with nothing to do, they go around doing that sort of stuff and blaming it on the raiders. Real bastards, like I said.'

'I agree with you,' Poldarn said, 'if it's really them.'

'Stands to reason,' the carter replied, though he didn't enlarge on it. 'And then there's how he treated General Allectus. There's a lot of people had time for General Allectus, he wasn't half as bad as he's been made out. And even if he was no better than the others, there wasn't any call for Feron Amathy to go changing sides like he did, right in the middle of the battle. That's unprofessional, that is. I mean, before that, if you hired a free company, all right, it's usually a bad move regardless of how things go in the war, but at least you could be pretty sure they wouldn't stab you in the back. Now, though, they're all doing it, and the upshot is, instead of being over nice and quick and clean, these bloody little wars keep dragging on and on, with one lot changing sides, then another lot going over to the other side, backwards and forwards like two mules ploughing. Chaos.'

'I can imagine that it would be,' Poldarn replied. 'And it sounds like you're right about this Feron Amathy. God knows what he was doing in my dream, though.'

The sun was setting fast, and they were just coming under a thick patch of fog (or mist, or low cloud); the effect of the sunset through the mist was fine and slightly disturbing, like drops of blood falling in still, muddy water. Poldarn started to feel anxious, though he couldn't think why.

It must have shown in his face, because the carter noticed it. What are you getting all twitchy about?' he asked suspiciously. 'Is it trouble?'

'I don't know,' Poldarn replied.

'You bloody well ought to, you're the one with the finely honed instincts you're getting paid all that money for. Should we stop here, or go back, or what?'

'I said, I don't know,' Poldarn said. 'I can't see anything that looks wrong. Mind you, I can't really see anything at all. Maybe that's all it is.'

'You mean you're afraid of the dark.' The carter made a clicking noise with his teeth, one of his many annoying habits. 'That's not good enough, is it?' he said reproachfully. 'You're supposed to be able to smell trouble before it happens, that's what you're here for. Well, is it trouble or isn't it?'

'I just told you, I don't know,' Poldarn said impatiently.

The carter stood up and pulled on the reins. 'That's it,' he said, 'I'm stopping right here. You can go on ahead and see what the matter is.'

Poldarn couldn't help grinning. 'What, and leave you here all alone and unprotected? That's not what I'm paid for.'

'Yes, but you're the one carrying the bloody letter.'

'Yes, but they don't know that.'

'Who doesn't know that?'

'Search me.' Poldarn jumped down from the cart and pulled his hat out from under the cover. 'I could do with stretching my legs, I suppose. You want my advice? If I were you, I'd get down off there, climb under the cart and keep still and quiet. That way, they'll think you've gone off too.'

'Who, for God's sake?'

Poldarn shrugged. 'Suit yourself,' he said. 'Don't say I didn't warn you.'

Muttering hurtful things under his breath, the carter hopped down and vanished under the bed of the cart. 'Don't hang around,' he hissed in a very loud whisper. 'See what's out there and come straight back, you hear me?'

'Shh,' Poldarn replied, and walked into the mist.

It was the very last of the sunset, the last glow of heat left in the cooling embers of the day, just enough orange and red light to see a few yards by until the glow rolled back on the wall of cloud. It wasn't fear, Poldarn decided, more a sense of unease, as if he was missing something important, relevant and useful. He tripped over a stone and scampered a few steps before regaining his balance.

'Hello?' a man's voice called out from somewhere in the cloud.

'Hello yourself,' Poldarn called back. 'Where are you?'

'Over here,' the voice said, uselessly. 'Can you help me? I think I've broken my leg.'

It was an interesting, attractive voice, high-pitched, full of character, the accent probably denoting high birth and refinement, though that was just a guess. 'How did you manage that?' Poldarn called back, straining to get a fix on where the voice was coming from.