And now here he was, and she wouldn't be coming to rescue him from the field of battle; there was no guarantee that she was even still alive, and if she was, the only reason she'd come looking for him would be to kill him (and he could do without that kind of rescue, even now). He tried to think practically, one stage at a time. First grade: get the caltrops out. Second grade: crawl off the battlefield and find some cover. Third grade: find some food and something to drink. Fourth grade: don't bother your head with fourth grade until you've passed first, second and third.
He tried five or six times, but he couldn't reach the caltrop in his foot, and that was the one that mattered, because he couldn't crawl away from there until he'd got rid of it. The one in his arm was far less important; once he was off the field and inside the barn over there, he could attend to it at his leisure, if only he could find some way of getting this other one out of his foot… He considered trying to kick one of the other spikes into the ground, anchoring the caltrop firmly enough so that he'd be able to draw his foot clear (like a man drawing a sword from a scabbard, given that he would be the scabbard). The pain caused by one gentle, tentative attempt was enough to convince him to forget about that idea. He let go, sinking back into the mud.
What had happened, he wondered, in the battle? Who'd won? When he left it, the raiders (his side?) appeared to be losing or about to lose, but they were the raiders, the invincible, nearly supernatural enemy he'd heard so much about; it was almost impossible to believe that they'd choose this one occasion to go against the grain and fail for the very first time. Besides, he'd only seen one small part of the battle, and his impressions could therefore have been entirely misleading. In any event, the battle was over, or it had moved a long way away. Perhaps each side had wiped out the other, down to the very last man, leaving him as the sole survivor.
If that was the case, he didn't want to know.
Didn't matter in any event. The battle, the war didn't mean anything to him, and he belonged to neither side, or both. True, he had a strong intuitive feeling that the raiders were his people, but it wasn't very long at all since he'd had exactly the same feeling about the sword-monks. They couldn't both be his people, since the raiders had hated the order so much they'd frittered away time and energy wiping them out; how could there be any common ground between two such deadly enemies?
Since he couldn't see anything but mud, he closed his eyes for a while and tried not to think about the pain (which only made it worse; he could feel every nerve in his body each time his heart beat). It was some time before he realised there was someone else moving about.
He kept perfectly still. Helpless as he was, there was nothing he could do to save himself if whoever it was turned out to be the enemy, or even just some scavenger from a nearby farm, picking through the dead for scrap. On the other hand, if it was a friend and he kept still and quiet, he could escape notice and miss out on his only hope of being rescued. He thought about that; if nobody rescued him, he was probably going to die here, and it would take a long time and be unpleasant. Since the worst that could happen was going to happen anyway, why the hell bother with caution?
He tried to sit up, but it hurt so badly that he cried out at the pain. That, however, was all that was needed; a moment later he found himself staring at the toes of a boot.
'Is that you?' someone asked.
– Which was a very good question, given his circumstances. But the voice was, once again, familiar.
'Eyvind?' he asked.
'Yes, I thought it was.' The voice was much closer; whoever it was, he was kneeling down. 'God almighty, look what happened to you. Here, hold still. I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I expect we'll soon find out.'
It was annoying and illogical that he'd hardly felt the caltrop spike go in, but the pain as it left his foot was almost enough to stop his heart. 'Damn,' said the voice he believed was Eyvind, 'it's started bleeding. I don't know; do I leave the other one where it is, or do I pull it out? Well?'
He realised that the voice had asked him for a decision, a choice between options. That hardly seemed fair, to his way of thinking. 'Haven't a clue,' he said. 'I have a feeling that if you make the wrong decision I'll probably die, but that's about as helpful as I can be. Sorry.'
There was definitely an edge to the voice as it replied, 'All I wanted was a straight answer to a civil question. Damn it, I suppose I'd better leave it in there for now. Seems to me that if you've lived this long with it in, a few more minutes won't kill you. We'll see.'
He thought about the implications of that. 'Who won the battle?' he asked.
'Quiet a moment, I'm going to try and get you up on your feet.'
He saw two hands passing in front of his face, then he felt them each gathering a fistful of his shirt and he was lifted up off the ground like a sack. Eyvind was apparently stronger than he'd looked.
The pain as he tried to put weight on his pierced foot was enough to make him squeal, but a hand grabbed his left arm and draped it round a pair of broad, thin shoulders, and he was able to lift his foot off the ground and still stay upright. He opened his eyes, which he'd instinctively closed when the pain started.
'Right,' Eyvind said, 'that was probably the difficult part, we'll see. Gently now, there's no need to rush.'
Behind the barn was a cart. Needless to say, a crow was perching on the box; he was sure that given time he'd be able to remember its name. It flew away as they approached, ploughing a weary line across the broad sky.
'They did,' Eyvind said, dumping him down on the box and scrambling up beside him. 'It was a massacre.'
'Oh,' he said.
Eyvind picked up the reins. 'We don't even know how many of us made it,' he went on, urging the horses into a brisk walk. 'We haven't had time for a head count. Best guess at the moment is that half of us got killed. It was a nightmare.'
He nodded. 'What happened?'
'They decoyed us into the trap, basically,' Eyvind said with a sigh that was more disgust and disappointment than anything else. 'We were suckered in; those bloody spike things were what did it. After they'd got us bottled up, they pushed us back to the river, at the deepest point, needless to say, where we couldn't get across. That was a mistake on their part,' he went on, 'because we managed to pull ourselves together, counterattack. We were so badly outnumbered by that stage that it should've gone the other way, but they lost their nerve when we started cutting them about; we punched a hole right through their centre and started to pull out, which was when the horsemen started carving us up; we lost it and started running, and of course that was the worst thing we could've done. End result was, by the time they realised they'd gone too far and called off the pursuit, we were scattered all over the place in fives and tens or just one man out on his own, no chance of regrouping or anything like that. They gave it up and went back towards the big town; we've been blundering about trying to find each other ever since. The idea is to get back in some sort of order and follow a straight line back to the ships, assuming they're still there.' He scowled ferociously; his expression was almost comic. 'Since our so-called best friend knows where the ships are, that's by no means guaranteed. All we can hope for is that he wants us to get away, since he won't want it coming out that it was him who set all this up in the first place.'
Poldarn nodded again. 'You mean the Amathy house,' he said. 'They changed sides, didn't they?'
'Is that what they're called? I can't seem to remember these foreign names. Yes, that's exactly what they did. Of course, it's our own damn silly fault for being so trusting. I've said it before, these people aren't like us, you can't believe a single word they say.'