'It'd be difficult not to,' Poldarn replied. 'You believe in the sledgehammer school of allegory, I can tell.'
She looked offended for a moment, then shrugged. 'I was just trying to be nice,' she said.
He nodded. 'It's the thought that counts.' He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. 'So why did you start calling yourself Copis?'
'Because nobody could be bothered to say Dorunoxy,' she replied. 'So they called me Xipho, which of course is my last name, not my first, and where my family come from it's really rude to call someone just by their last name unless you know them really well, and even though I knew they didn't mean anything by it, it used to upset me a lot. So I changed it.'
'Fair enough. What about Copis?'
She laughed. 'Oh, it's a common enough name in Torcea, particularly,' she added, with a grin, 'in that line of work. It's the sort of name the customers expected me to have, so it was easy.'
He nodded. 'And now,' he said, 'what do you think of yourself as, Dorun-whatsit or Copis?'
'Copis.' She pulled a face. 'Which is really bad, because-well, a Copis, you can be pretty sure what kind of person a Copis is.'
'And you're not.'
Her expression changed. 'No. Well, what do you think?'
'Does it matter what I think?'
'Why are you deliberately trying to annoy me?'
He shrugged. 'I don't think you're a Copis, no. I'm just disproving the point you were trying to make at such interminable length a moment ago, that's all. You've changed your name and the shape you appear in, but you've still got the old memory; you're not a Copis, you're a-whatever it was. However hard you try to be a button, you're still a bone.'
She shook her head. 'Whatever,' she said. 'This is all getting a bit too involved and personal for me. I suggest we talk about something else, before we fall out.'
'All right.'
'That woman,' Copis said. 'Who was she?'
'I don't know. I forgot to ask her name, remember?'
'Be like that.' She turned her head away and pretended to look at the scenery for a while. There wasn't any, just a flat plain, and some mist where the Deymeson hills should have been. 'So why did we go out of our way to see her?'
'I was curious.' Poldarn shivered a little. 'Back in the other place, where we sold the buttons, they said she reckoned her son was the god in the cart. The subject interests me. Should be fairly obvious why.'
She raised an eyebrow. 'I thought you said you didn't ever want to do the god act again.'
'I don't. I'm just interested in finding out who I've been, that's all.'
Chapter Nineteen
Monach drew and cut, and as he watched the soldier drop to his knees and slump forward he thought, I can't believe I've made such a mess of it. Everything's going wrong, and it's all my fault.
The other three soldiers were closing in; one dead ahead, one on either side. He took a step back, sheathing his sword-this was a standard exercise he'd learned in third grade, but the sequence started from rest, sword sheathed, and he wasn't in the mood for improvisation. As soon as they impinged on his circle, the sequence began; it was as if it couldn't wait and had started without him. The knuckles of the right hand touched the sword handle; as the hand flipped over and the fingers found their place around the handle, the left foot came back half a step, then turned inwards, placing heel against heel at ninety degrees, so that as the sword left the scabbard, the body pivoted towards the left-hand target and the cut slid out into the space the oncoming target's neck was about to occupy. No time to waste looking to see if the cut had connected; the back foot went forward in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc, swinging the body round to face the right-hand target, while the arms lifted the sword up and back till the point touched the base of the spine, at which moment (like a mechanism engaging an escapement) the leftside diagonal overhead cut launched the sword into a perfectly located slice (number four in the manual, 'dividing the earth from the heavens'); the momentum pivoted the right heel as the arms followed through and used the spare energy of the last stroke to reset the correct position as he turned to face the enemy in front; another perfect cut, to be taken on trust since there still wasn't any time to waste on gawping; pivot once again to face the first target and deliver a conclusive, if redundant, finishing cut down the line of the collarbone. A simple but impressive sequence; a good sixth-year should be able to complete it and return to rest, sword flicked free of blood and back in the scabbard, in the time it takes for an apple to drop from a tree.
Monach felt the sword click back into the tight jaws of its sheath, and looked to see what had happened just as the first target hit the ground. The other two followed a fraction of a second later. There was still a fine mist of blood hanging in the air.
That appeared to be that. A threat had presented itself and been dealt with quickly and efficiently; he could be forgiven for thinking that he'd actually got something right, for a change. But he hadn't. The plan had been to sneak up on the patrol, grab one of them and force General Cronan's current location out of him. As it was, all four of them were dead, and in no position to tell him anything. Screwed it up again.
It wouldn't be so bad if he had a clue where he was, but he didn't. Somewhere in the woods below the hilltop village of Shance, where Major-General Ambosc's cavalry detachment was spending the night before pressing on, probably just after first light, to meet up with the main army, and the general, at Cric. Put like that, it sounded precise and entirely sufficient; but the whole truth was rather different. In practice he had no idea which direction to go in, or where he was in the wood. He was lost.
…Which was infuriating, because there wasn't time for any such nonsense, not if he was to stand any chance of intercepting Cronan on his way to Cric (when he'd be at his most vulnerable, with only an honour guard of half a dozen cavalrymen, out in the open with nowhere to hide). He didn't even know for sure whether that plan was still feasible, since he wasn't very clear about how long he'd been in this damned wood, let alone how long it was going to take him to get out again. Of course the soldiers he'd stumbled across on the edge of this small, deceitful clearing could have told him, if only he'd had the wit to pretend to be a wandering trader or a government courier or something. Instead he'd killed them all. If it wasn't such a nuisance it'd be a joke.
He sat down on a moss-covered log and applied his mind to the problem. Now, unless the soldiers were lost too, it stood to reason that they were passing through the wood on their way somewhere, presumably following the track that he could just make out between the trees. Whether they'd been going up the track or down it was a secret they'd taken with them to the shadows; likewise, which direction led to Shance, and which ran straight back to Mahec Ford, where he'd just come from. Choices, options, decisions; Monach shook his head, he couldn't be doing with them. There's nothing on earth as helpless as a man lost in a wood, he reflected bitterly. It's as bad as losing your memory; you're left with nothing but what you're wearing and carrying, cut off from everything that might help you, with no very clear idea of what to do next or for the best.
Nothing else for it, he was going to have to guess. He pulled a face; ordained sword-brothers of the order didn't guess; either they knew or they found out. He wasn't even sure he knew how to go about it any more. Should he just close his eyes and start walking, or would it be more appropriate to use some formal method-tossing a coin, blowing a dandelion clock, observing the flight of roosting birds? Undoubtedly it was a point addressed somewhere in Doctrine, though he didn't know where was the best place to start researching the point. Genistus' Observances? The Secondary Digest? Lathano on General Procedure?
Roosting birds would seem to be the best bet; it was starting to get dark, and the sky was full of rooks and crows, wheeling and shrieking all around him. He chose a tree at random. If ten birds flew past it on the right before an equal number went by on the left, he'd go up the track, and vice versa. The idea had a certain charm; he could pretend it was an omen from the divine Poldarn, master of crows, rather than a wild, feckless guess.