Pattern

Kill myself? I wouldn't give you the satisfaction.

You think I want that? No, you don't, of course not; you're just saying that to get me angry. Can't you get it into your thick skull, I know what's going through your mind, it's like reading a public announcement nailed to the customs house door. Stop lying, can't you, just for a few minutes.

You're quite right, he said to the mountain, we do know each other too well. You know me, and I sure as hell know you. Why do you think I came here in the first place?

All right, the mountain said, here's the deal. Stop pushing me away, let me back in, and I'll leave these people in peace. No more clouds of fire, no more burning hot ash, no more darkness in the middle of the day. They can get on with their lives, we can get on with ours, and everybody's happy.

And if I tell you where you can stick your deal?

Then-the whole sky was red for a moment-then I'm going to have to do something to prove to you that it really isn't over, aren't I? I'm going to have to give you what you need, whether you want it or not. Not the way I'd have chosen, but I'm not the one being difficult here. If you won't come back to me, I'll show these people who you really are. And then I'll kill them. You see (the mountain went on), I tell it to you straight, like it is. Whatever else you say about me, I never lied to you and I never let you down. I was always there for you, always.

Screw you, he shouted Poldarn sat up. His backside was on fire.

'Are you all right?' Seymond was asking. 'That was one hell of a bang on the head you gave yourself there.'

'No,' Poldarn yelped, 'get me up, for pity's sake.'

They dumped the ladder, grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet. He was a bit wobbly for a moment or so, but they held him up so he didn't fall or sit down again.

'Sorry,' Eyn said, 'didn't see you. Just as well you've got that helmet on your head, or you could've done yourself a real mischief.'

Blood was dripping into Poldarn's eyes. He remembered the gash in the helmet, its jagged lips curled inwards. Hence the bleeding, always so melodramatic from a little nick to the scalp. 'I'm fine,' he said. 'What's happening?'

'Looks like it's getting better,' Seymond told him. 'At least, the big puffy fireballs have stopped coming out of the mountain, and I do believe there's not so much ash falling as there was.'

'Not so hot, either,' Eyn put in. 'And it's getting lighter, too. You never know, maybe it's had enough, or it's run out or something.'

'Just as well,' Seymond muttered. 'We're keeping pace with it, going flat out, but we can't keep this game up for ever. How's the head now? Feeling dizzy? Sick? Spots in front of your eyes?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'It's fine,' he said. 'That's not the end of me that's hurting, if you must know.'

One of them laughed; too dark to see which. 'Well,' said Seymond, 'if you will go sitting on hot embers, what do you expect? Thought you'd have figured that out for yourself by now, you being a smith and all.'

Poldarn could have denied it, but they'd only have given him that funny look again. 'Guess it serves me right for not looking where I was going,' he said.

'It's fine. No harm done to the ladder.'

'That's all right, then.'

Poldarn found the aprons by feel-a simple process of elimination, they didn't scorch his fingertips-and carried on with his mission. Fortunately, there was one left over for him to huddle under on his way back to the forge. Inside, he found Asburn, calmly lighting the fire.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he asked.

Asburn looked at him. 'Getting on with some work,' he said. 'They don't need me out there, I'm just in the way' He said that rather self-consciously, as if something was bothering him. 'Truth is, I sort of came over all clumsy-bumping into people, knocking buckets over, that sort of thing. Halder thought I might prefer to make a start on some hinges for the rat-house. The door's needed replacing for years-these bloody cinders can find their way in through the cracks.'

Poldarn frowned. He could see, intuitively, what the problem was; for some reason, Asburn was having trouble finding the minds of the rest of the household. He could think of several reasons why that might be, the likeliest being that since he'd been working in the forge, Asburn had had to get used to communicating in words, the old-fashioned way, and that was what had upset his inner eye or third ear, or whatever the proper term for it might be. My fault, like everything else around here, Poldarn told himself, though that was patently untrue.

The fire, he noticed, was drawing just fine on nothing more than dry coal and a handful of wood shavings. Why can't I get it to do that? he asked himself.

'Same here,' he said. 'All I've been doing all day is getting under people's feet, so I came in here to hide till it's all over. Need any help?'

Asburn thought for a moment. 'The hinges are more of a one-man job, really,' he said. 'If you felt like it, you could draw down a few dozen nails. They'll be needing them, God knows, when they come to fix up all this damage.'

He said they, Poldarn noticed; they, not we. He must really be out of touch. 'Sure,' he replied. 'Nails I can just about manage. Have you seen the header?'

'There, under the bench. And there should be some stock the right size in the scrap if you don't mind rummaging about for it.'

Poldarn nodded, and knelt down beside the mountain of rusty iron and steel that filled one entire corner of the smithy. Mostly, looking through the scrap just made him feel depressed, because he knew perfectly well that he wouldn't even know where to start making most of the things that had ended up in there, and that anything he made would probably be inferior in quality and utility to the piece of broken junk he'd made it out of. How did one go about making a kettle, for example, or a door latch or a pair of tongs or a trivet or a candleholder or a pitchfork or an arrowhead or a spoon or a horseshoe or a sconce or a shovel or a ploughshare? He supposed he could figure it out if he absolutely had to, but he'd have burned a whole continent of coal and hammered the anvil bow-backed by the time he produced anything he'd be prepared to admit to being responsible for. And there, on the other hand, was the scrap; a thousand properly made articles, representing tens of thousands of hours of hard, skilled work by men who'd known and appreciated their craft, and they'd ended up here, defenceless prisoners awaiting execution at his hands. It was a tragedy.

(Except, he realised, that iron and steel are immortal. Men die and the damp gets into their bodies and spoils them, but iron and steel are too precious to waste. The broken tyre becomes a hinge, the broken sword becomes a cart-spring, the broken ploughshare becomes a spearhead, the broken pot becomes a ladle, the spindle that was once an axle that was once a beam becomes a handful of nails, and nothing ever dies. All that happens is that the metal is purged by the fire of the memory that had been pounded into it. The heat relaxes the constraints that hold it in one shape and the hammer eases it into some new form, a new life in a new setting-from field to house, yard to barn, war to peace, malignant to benign, lethal to helpful, like a man who wakes up one morning to find that his past has burned away, his identity scrubbed off like firescale. Fire and hammer impose the memory, fire and hammer grant pardon and amnesty; which may go some way to explain why superstitious people worship them as gods. It would, after all, be an easy mistake to make.)

A fat drop of water splashed on Poldarn's forehead, making the burnt skin sting.