'I know,' Poldarn said, 'it's called farming. But I haven't got a farm, or at least not yet. One day, perhaps, if I can save up some money, and some con artist doesn't cheat me out of it-'
'Better,' Copis said patiently, 'than farming. But I can see you aren't interested.'
The road passed through a gap in a hedge, where there had once been a gate, and the beech trees on either side masked the view behind them, back to where the dead god lay, and the camp, and the battle. On either side of the road there were large, rough fields, dotted with the withered stems of last year's docks and thistles. A long way down the combe on the left-hand side was a small flock of sheep, and parallel with the road ran a broken-down dry-stone wall, more bother to mend than it was worth. Someone somewhere, in some inn, had been talking about how everything was slowly running down, not just this side of the bay but all across the empire; something to do with money being cheap and commodities expensive, too many people out of work, not enough labour to get the work done. It had made some kind of sense while the man was talking.
'Tell me about it,' Poldarn said.
Chapter Sixteen
Stand with your back straight. (Monach was asleep on a hard plank bed in the only inn in Prodo, a dismal little village two hours west of Laise Bohec; but in his dream he was twelve years old, and a novice in a practice hall at Deymeson.) Stand with your back straight '…Your right foot slightly ahead of your left, your feet apart by the width of your shoulders.' Father Tutor walked up and down the lines, looking for a misplaced foot to smack at with his foil. Late afternoon sunlight soaked through the thin vellum windowpanes, yellow and soft, and the whole world smelt of beeswax, sweat and wet plaster. 'Now, draw your sword and hold it out in front of you, both hands on the hilt, as far as you can reach comfortably without stretching.' A hedge of wooden foils sprouted from each row (Across so much space and time, Monach couldn't recognise himself; they all look the same at that age, particularly in novice's robes and temple haircuts. But he knew he was there, just as he always knew where his sword hilt was, or the extent of his circle.)
– and Father Tutor went back the way he'd just come, inspecting, adjusting the height of a foil-tip up or down, until he was satisfied that he'd achieved as much uniformity as was possible with a group of human beings.
'Very good,' he said. 'Now, please listen very carefully, because I'm about to teach you the most important lesson you'll ever learn.' He waited for a heartbeat or so, just long enough to tantalise the class into paying attention. 'Moving your feet as little as you can, turn round in a circle, keeping your eyes fixed at all times on the tip of your sword.'
Of course, it was something of a shambles. For one thing, he hadn't specified clockwise or anticlockwise, and it was the first time they'd ever done the exercise… Inevitably, one or two novices collided in opposition, their foils meshing like the cogs of a gear-train. There was a certain amount of giggling, and the ludicrous sound of young, pattering feet on a polished wood floor.
'That'll do,' Father Tutor called out, and at once the giggling stopped and the youth in the room evaporated like water sprinkled on the bed of a forge. 'Lower your swords, stand down and listen carefully; this is very difficult, and if you get it wrong you will undoubtedly lose your first live fight and die. Now then.' He took a deep breath and stuck his thumbs into his sash, an unconscious mannerism that he hated because he knew it made him look pompous and fat, but that he had no real control over. The class was staring at him; he felt apprehension and antagonism. That was good.
'Think,' he told him, 'about the circle you've just drawn in the air.' (Was that Father Tutor talking, or the Junior Tutor that Monach had grown into, eighteen years later, the one who copied his former teacher's words and mannerisms now that he was a teacher himself? The sword-point describes a circle-) 'You can't see it now,' Father Tutor went on. 'You'd better learn to see it, because it's the circle of life and death-your life, your death, and the lives and deaths of others, possibly dozens or hundreds of them. So long as you're alone in the circle, you're safe, and so is your enemy. He can't reach you, and you can't reach him. As soon as either of you steps into the other's circle-and of course when you enter his circle, he enters yours-both of you are in terrible danger, both of you are a single moment away from success, from victory. The circle of life and death-there's a grand, magical-sounding name for you, but that's precisely what it is. Alone in your circle, you're safe and you can achieve nothing. Once your circle meshes with someone else's, you carry with you victory and defeat, both at the same time, success and failure, life and death.'
They were gazing at him, spellbound-all it took, he reflected cynically, was a little melodrama. He made them wait for a few more moments, then went on. 'Know your circle,' he said. 'Learn it, so that you can see it-not just when you make an effort and look for it, but all the time, whether you want to see it or not. I know it's imaginary, but you've got to make it more real than anything you can touch or see or hear or smell or taste. You've got to know how far you can reach out into the world, and how close the world can come to you, before you have to draw and cut. Does everybody understand, or shall I go through it again?'
He paused for a while, watching the ranks of novices all earnestly imagining dotted lines in the air around them, panicking because they couldn't quite see them yet. Of course, they were all convinced that they'd just learned something exceptionally profound, like the true secret name of God, when in fact he'd just given them a very useful but entirely basic and mundane lesson in swordsmanship technique. It would be years, probably decades, before they came to realise that the exceptionally profound is always, by definition, basic and mundane.
'Before the next class,' he said, snapping them back into the visible world, 'I want you all to learn your circle so well that you'll know immediately when someone breaks into it-and that includes someone behind you or off to the side, not just in front. We'll learn that until everybody's got it perfectly; then we'll do the same thing with our eyes shut. And then, when we really know our own circles, we'll learn how to see other people's.' He smiled, his most off-putting smile. 'Usually, I find it takes about ten years to get it right. And that's if you're really trying.'
The class broke up. Father Tutor drifted out of the hall, reaching the door long before any of the scampering novices, even though he had further to go, and one novice from the second-from-last row -Sat up in bed, bolt upright, his eyes still closed, making a noise with his mouth that had words in it but wasn't speech. Then, as his eyes opened, the dream broke up like thawing ice on a pond, and he remembered who and when and where he was, and where his circle began and ended. Not long afterwards he found out what had woken him up; there was a leak in the roof (water, not sunlight leaking through scraped lambskin windows) and a fat, wet raindrop had landed in his ear.
He stood up and opened the shutter a little, just enough to see the first stains of sunrise through the wet air. He wasn't as canny about the weather as some, but he could tell from the shape and height of the clouds that it was going to be a long, wet day, miserable for travelling in. He wasn't particularly happy to find that there was another leak in the roof directly above his right boot, which squelched loudly when he put his foot in it.
With his coat pulled round his ears and his hat dragged down over them he scuttled across the courtyard to the stables, woke up the groom by yelling in his ear, and told him to get his horse ready as soon as possible; then he scuttled back to the main building, found the landlord, paid him and demanded bread, cheese, hot milk and cider, in that order. By the time he'd dealt with them, the groom had given his horse a cursory dab with the brush and the curry-comb and slopped on the saddle and bridle (but he was always careful to check his own straps and girths, so that was all right). He left the inn just after full sunrise and followed the road west, towards Laise Bohec.