'Which you did, of course,' she interrupted, 'and it was brilliantly clever and you won the battle and everything worked out splendidly.'
'Well, sort of,' he replied, pulling a face. 'Actually, I hung around pretending to be clever until Cronan's men arrived, and then I managed to draw Allectus into an ambush. But for some reason Cronan wasn't there, he actually managed to lose his way in a forest on his way from the camp to the battlefield, of all the ridiculous things, and so he missed the whole thing. We had to go and look for him in the end. Of course, that pleased your father more than anything, far more than winning the battle. Silly, really. Still, it's over and done with now, and I don't suppose it'll make a blind bit of difference in the long run.'
She sighed. 'It does all sound rather childish,' she said. 'Still, I don't know anything at all about politics or war, so you mustn't pay any attention to me.' She reached out and gave his hand a quick, friendly squeeze. 'But if the war's over and horrid old General Allectus has been beaten, why've you got to go back again? And so soon, too.'
He shook his head. 'The rebellion wasn't really important,' he said. 'It'd have petered out of its own accord, probably. We only went after Allectus because the emperor wanted to make a point of crushing him immediately, Cronan wanted another victory for his collection, your father wanted to wipe Cronan's eye-all that sort of thing, you know what it's like. No, the real problem in the Bohec valley is the raiders, that's who we really have got to deal with, before they turn the whole province into a desert.'
She looked worried, frightened. 'Do they really need you to go?' she said. 'Oh, I know I'm being silly, but you hear such dreadful things about them. Couldn't they send somebody else instead?'
He put his arm around her shoulders. 'It's all right,' he said, 'nothing's going to happen to me, I promise. Trust me.' He grinned. 'I know for a fact that nothing's going to happen to me, because I can see into the future, remember?' That had to be some sort of private joke between them, he guessed. Anyway, it seemed to reassure her. 'Sorry,' she said, 'I'd forgotten about that. Silly of me.'
'You've got to stop saying you're silly,' he said, pretending to be stern and serious. 'No, I can see me coming home from the war without a scratch, raiders or no raiders.'
'No wonder you win all these battles,' she said, trying to sound bright and cheerful. 'Though really, I suppose it's cheating.'
'Well, of course. You wouldn't want me to play fair in a battle, would you? I might get hurt.'
'True.' She leant her head against his shoulder, winced, said 'Ow!' and lifted her head again. 'Sorry,' she said.
He smiled. 'Is your neck still hurting?'
'A bit. Silly old pulled muscle. It'll be better in a day or so.'
The baby opened its eyes and started to cry. 'It's getting chilly,' he said. 'Maybe we should go inside.'
They stood up; and they must have startled the old black crow that had been perched on the top of the fountain, because it screamed angrily at them and spread its wings noisily. The woman shrieked and shrank away, squeezing the baby against her chest as the crow flapped slowly upwards, exerting itself to gain lift in the still air. For some reason he felt extremely angry, as if the crow had no right to be there, let alone startle his wife; he stooped down and picked something up off the grass, a chess piece that someone had left there. The crow was rising steadily, just about to turn, but he anticipated the move (he knew exactly what it was planning to do) and threw the chess piece so hard that he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder. It was a good throw; the crow folded up in the air, wings tight to its body, and fell dead with a thump on the cloister roof.
He turned back and looked at her. She was upset, unhappy at the sight of killing, but she did her very best not to show it; still, he could see her thoughts quite clearly. 'Horrid thing,' she said. 'That was very clever of you,' she added.
He pulled a face. 'A friend of mine showed me how to do it,' he said, 'back when I was with the sword-monks. I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me. I guess I just don't like crows very much.'
'I hate them,' she replied quickly. 'Horrible gloomy creatures. And that one's been hanging around here for days, I keep shooing it away and it keeps coming back, like it was laughing at me or something. Well done,' she added firmly, convincing herself that he'd done a good deed.
He didn't reply; he was thinking of something his friend had told him, about the time he'd killed a crow in a blacksmith's forge, and never had a day's good luck since. He tried to remember the friend's name, but all he could recall was a nickname, Monach, which was just 'monk' in the Morevich dialect. Then he remembered that his friend was dead; killed by the raiders at Deymeson, possibly-most of the monks had died that day. But that was wrong, he wasn't even sure that had happened yet. He shrugged the thought away, and reminded himself that this was just a dream, and he wasn't really here.
The baby was howling, which made it impossible to think straight, anyway. 'You go on in,' he said, 'I'll join you in a minute or so.' She went, walking under an old carved arch he hadn't really taken any notice of before. He stood for a moment looking at it, until he saw what it was supposed to be: the divine Poldarn, standing up in his cart, bringing the end of the world to Torcea. Rather a gloomy subject for a carving, he thought; but of course, this house had once been a monastery, and the monks had a taste for the miserable and depressing in the decorative arts. He followed her, but as soon as he stepped under the arch he realised he wasn't in the cloister garden any more; he was home, in his own house at Ciartanstead, alone in the bed he shared with his wife.
He tried to close his hands on the dream, bring it down as it opened its wings and flapped screeching away; but this time his aim was bad, and the dream dwindled into a speck in the distance. He sat up.
Well, he thought, at least the house is still here. Of course, even if he'd failed, it would take the fire-stream a long time to get here; days, even weeks, depending on whether it gained or lost speed coming down the slopes. Someone would have woken him if the molten rock was lapping round the front porch, or if the roof was on fire. Even in the worst possible outcome, he wasn't likely to be burned alive in his bed. That was a comfort, he felt.
Nevertheless. The shutters were down and latched, but little blades of light were forcing their way through. It was time he was up and about, organising things, getting some work done. Assuming, of course, that there was anything for him to do.
By the time he'd dressed and got his boots on (a painful process; he'd escaped without anything he could properly describe as a burn, but his skin was horribly sensitive; like sunburn, only worse), the household was about its business, the tables were out and laid for breakfast, people were bustling in and out of the doors in pursuit of their appointed tasks. There didn't seem to be as many of them as there should have been, and Poldarn remembered the casualties before he remembered the mistake at the breach; the missing numbers weren't dead, just stranded somewhere in the valley on the other side of the mountain. He felt better after he'd realised that.