Oh well, he thought, it was a moral victory, I suppose. But the Amathy house cavalry swung further than he'd anticipated they would when he saw them line out; instead of charging his squadrons, they wheeled and crunched into the raiders' flanks, stoving them in like rocks crushing the side of a ship. Not far behind came Tazencius' infantry, with the Amathy foot soldiers bringing up the rear; they moved in to reinforce his own troops as if they'd been practising the move as a drill for a year. They'd figured out about the caltrops for themselves and stayed clear of the few patches where the spikes hadn't been clogged and rendered safe with a mat of dead raiders.
It was at this point that Cronan finally realised how few of the enemy there actually were. Spaced out in open order in the full flight of the charge (like a flock of birds flying) was one thing; crowded together in a narrow space (like the same flock roosting in a few tall trees) was quite another. And, of course, the best part was still to come Poldarn didn't get to fight in the battle. One moment he was running forward, the backsabre held over his head in both hands; the next he was lying on his side, his whole body ringing with some terrible shock that hadn't yet started to melt into pain, but that paralysed him nonetheless. He only just had time to locate the source of the trauma-the spike of a caltrop poking up through the top of his right foot like a crocus, the feel of something pricking his ribs through his upper arm-before heavy bodies thumped down on top of him, squashing his face down among the heather stems and blotting out the light. The last thing he saw was a huge flock of crows congealing in the sky directly overhead -And they were talking to him, one voice coming together out of the multitude, announcing itself as the god whose name he'd borrowed or stolen. He wished he could see, but that was apparently out of the question.
To be certain, he asked: Who are you?
The voice answered: Oh, you know us, you've known us ever since you were a boy. We've been enemies for years.
He didn't like the sound of that. Have I actually done you any harm? he asked.
The voice answered: It depends on how you define harm. You've killed hundreds of us, possibly thousands, but that's all right, you can't hurt me; not on your own, there's simply too many of us for you to make a perceptible difference. Don't worry about it; I forgave you years ago.
A window opened in his mind, and through it he could see a level field, muddy, with small pools of rain standing on the surface here and there. From a distance it was brown with a faint sheen; as he grew closer he saw that it was covered with ranks and files of tiny green spearheads, driven up through the mud like caltrop spikes. He saw a gate, and beyond that the stump of an old dead tree in the hedge, where someone had built a very fine hide out of green branches and briars. Fifteen yards out from the hide, four or five crows were hopping round in small, furious circles; looking closer he could see that each of them was tethered by one leg to a stick driven into the mud. From time to time each captive bird would open its wings and manage to rise a single wingbeat off the ground before flopping back down again and continuing its small, circular dance. Further out, scattered at random within a twenty-yard radius, he could see a couple of dozen more crows, but when he looked closer he saw they were dead and pegged out, a slender thorn twig stuck through their lower jaws and into the dirt to keep their heads up and make them look as if they were contentedly feeding.
He asked: Am I doing this?
The voice replied: This is who you are, it's the answer to your question. The boy in the hide is you. Now look up and to your left.
He did as he was told and saw a stand of seven tall, thin ash trees, leafless. In the branches sat a dozen fat black crows, and as he watched one of them got up and flew straight towards him, gradually getting lower in the sky as it battled against the stiff wind. It gained a little height as it flew over the decoys, turned a tight circle and came in against the wind, wings back. As it pitched, an arrow with a thick blunt tip shot out of the hide and knocked the bird over in a tangle of outstretched wings, then the bird scrambled up and hopped towards the trees, one wing trailing. Meanwhile the rest of the crows in the trees got up and sailed over; two of them pitched straight away, and an arrow flew out and knocked it down, while the others veered sharply and rode the wind back to their trees.
The voice said: That's how clever you are; you noticed how, when you put one of us down, the others didn't see the arrow, they only saw one of their own dropping in and staying down. I saw that and thought that must mean it was safe, which is why the others came over too. Because you're patient as well as clever, you were able to kill scores of me in a single day, until eventually I realised what you were doing and learned to avoid you.
He said: I'm sorry.
The voice said: I told you, don't worry about it. I admire intelligence. Consider this: you're the only human ever to defeat the great army of the crows, just as Cronan is the only general who's ever beaten the raiders. Consider this: if you hadn't won your famous victory against me, I'd have stripped this field bare-that's your grandfather's spring barley, which he can't afford to lose if he's to feed you and the rest of the farm. Compare General Cronan again: if he hadn't won his famous victory against the raiders, they'd have burned Sansory and killed everybody inside. Does the morality bother you, now that you've decided to become a crow?
He replied: I suppose not. There's a sort of poetic justice to it.
The voice replied: A great man once said that there's a kernel of poetic justice inside every famous victory. Consider this: you and Cronan are the only men in history to have defeated the divine Poldarn. Who do you think you are, the boy or the crows?
He said: Didn't you just say I'm the boy in the hide?
The voice replied: Consider this -And he was sitting in the hide watching the crows flying slow, cautious circuits around the trees. After a while, one crow peeled off from the mob and flew straight towards him, heavy and straight, like his own blunt-headed arrows (as if the crows were shooting at him, not the other way round). He watched the crow come within seventy-five yards, then suddenly shear off screaming and fly back the way it had just come.
The voice said: Consider-before I assemble to feed, I send out a scout (the scout is also me, of course) to see if it's safe, to lead the way. Ask yourself this-when the divine Poldarn manifests himself as the god in the cart, leading the way, scouting ahead for the end of the world, are you the crow or the boy in the hide?
He thought before replying: Perhaps you could tell me, he said; does the crow that leads the way know it's a part of you, or when it leaves the trees and the rest of the mob does it think of itself as an individual?
The voice laughed, and said: Think about this -And he was standing on the top of a cliff watching a sail ship slip away into the interstice between sea and sky; when it had gone, he turned and walked across the downs towards the lights of a town in the distance; and he was repeating to himself his new name, his new history, the details of his new persona The voice said: There's your answer; you're the crow flying away from the trees, the spy sent out to find a good place to feed. When you leave the trees and the rest of the mob, do you think of yourself as an individual? And if so, which one?
He said: I don't know. The person I'm about to become is a stranger to me.
The voice said: When the divine Poldarn manifests himself as the god in the cart, leaving the mob and flying away from the trees, does he know he's me or does he think he's just an individual whose mind happens to be empty of memories because of some accident?