Poldarn thought about the monks of Deymeson, and Copis. 'Are we any better?' he asked.
'Of course,' Eyvind replied. 'We don't even lie to our enemies. Not that we ever need to, of course; if you don't talk to them, you can't lie to them. Saves a lot of trouble in the long run.'
'I suppose it would,' Poldarn said. 'Where are we headed?'
'Over there.' Eyvind indicated the direction with a vague dip of his head. 'There's a little combe, well hidden, you wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it. Mercifully we happened to find it on our way up here, and after they'd stopped chasing us we all had the wit to head for it. The general idea is to hang about there till it gets dark and then sneak back up the way we came, past that religious place we took out, and find the north-west road in the morning. If we keep going after that, we ought to have a clear run to the coast, provided they don't figure out what we're up to and cut us off. But I doubt they will, they aren't organised enough. Probably be back to fighting among themselves in a day or so,' he added contemptuously. 'They always seem to be doing that, and what it is they're actually fighting over, God only knows. I don't suppose they do.'
Poldarn shook his head. 'It's complicated, certainly,' he said. 'While I think of it, I never did get to ask you what happened to you after that first time we met-'
Eyvind laughed. 'Amazing stroke of luck,' he said. 'The day after we ran into each other I walked straight into a scouting party-they'd have killed me, only I recognised one of them from back home and yelled out his name. It's like some providence is looking out for me,' he went on. 'And the same with you, I reckon; if I hadn't happened to see you there when we attacked that column of horsemen you were with-well, you'd be feeding the crows right now, no question about that. And again just now; pure luck I found that cart, just standing there empty on the road with the horses still between the shafts. And I didn't set out to look for survivors, I just happened to look in your direction and there you were, so I went to see if you were still breathing. No idea why I did it, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I reckon you've got someone up there looking out for you, in which case I'm going to stick close to you, hope some of it rubs off on me. That's what they say, isn't it? Stay close to a lucky man.'
'That makes sense, I suppose,' Poldarn replied. He hadn't thought of himself as unusually lucky before, but he could see Eyvind's point. And there are several different kinds of luck, some more desirable than others. He thought for a moment, then asked, 'When you get back to the ships, can I come with you?'
Eyvind gave him a curious look, then laughed. 'What a strange question,' he said. 'Yes, of course you're coming with us, you're one of us. All right, so you may have lost your memory; doesn't alter the fact that you're clearly one of our own. We wouldn't dream of abandoning you here.'
Poldarn nodded. 'Thank you,' he said. 'So what'll I do when I get to your country? Our country,' he amended.
Eyvind shrugged. 'My guess is, either you'll remember who you are and where you live, or somebody'll recognise you soon enough. Failing that, you'll come and stay at our place for as long as you like. Trust me, as soon as you're home in the islands, it'll all come flooding back. I mean, think about it. The only reason why you'd lose your memory for so long is because you're in the middle of this totally foreign, alien country, among all these people who're nothing at all like us, so naturally nothing's familiar, there's nothing to jog your memory, break the ice. I can see that clearly enough after being lost and alone in this country myself; I tell you, there were times when I reckoned I was having trouble remembering who I was and where I came from; when I closed my eyes and tried to think of home there was just this vague blurry picture, like seeing it all through autumn fog. Bloody disconcerting that was, I can tell you, scared the life out of me. What it's been like for you, after several months of it-makes my blood run cold thinking about it.'
It wasn't far to the combe Eyvind had been talking about, and he'd been right; it was so well hidden that they were rolling down the sheep track into it almost before he realised it was there. It was much larger than he'd imagined, and nearly full of people, most of them lying or sitting on the ground, talking to their neighbours or dozing or playing dice or knucklebones, as if they were at some kind of festival or outing. He wondered what it would take to make these people act miserable (Kill half of them? No, that didn't work. Kill the other half, maybe? No, then they'd just be cheerfully dead. Are I really seriously contemplating going to live in a place where everybody's cheerful all the bloody time? If I'm not mad now, I soon will be…)
Someone looked up and called out, 'Eyvind, over here.' Eyvind stopped the cart-a couple of men stood up and started seeing to the horses; nobody had told or even asked them to-and jumped out. 'This way,' he said. 'I want you to meet my uncle Sigfus.'
There was something bizarre, almost dreamlike, about the overwhelming wholesomeness of it all; Eyvind didn't say, 'Uncle, this is my new best friend,' but the genial smile and the firm handshake were straight out of some daydream of the bright, impossible Better Place where everybody's learned to get along just by being nice to each other… On the edge of a battlefield, with a caltrop stuck through his arm, he wasn't sure whether he could cope with it.
Eyvind was asking his uncle what he reckoned; and Uncle Sigfus was saying that pulling it out now might easily set off a lot of heavy bleeding, but on the other hand it had to come out eventually and the longer it stayed in there the worse it would probably get. He made it sound like a bad tooth. 'Uncle Sigfus knows all there is to know about wounds and serious injuries,' Eyvind told him. 'He'll have you fixed up in no time flat.'
Uncle Sigfus reached his decision quickly and very abruptly, suddenly plucking the caltrop out of Poldarn's arm like a man picking an apple. 'Bloody things,' he said, frowning as he held the caltrop up and examined it, 'that's no way to fight a war.' Poldarn was still reeling from the pain. 'Quick,' Sigfus went on, 'run and find something we can use for a bandage. It may hurt for a while,' he told Poldarn, 'but you'll just have to put up with that, I'm afraid.' (If he calls me a brave little soldier, Poldarn decided, I'll have no option but to cut his throat. You can't just let something like that go by.)
Then he felt painfully weak, and Eyvind and Sigfus took his arms and carefully lowered him to the ground, as if he was a slightly cracked jar. 'You stay put and get some rest, now,' Sigfus told him. 'There's still a couple of hours before sunset, and closing your eyes for a bit will do you the world of good.'
But Poldarn didn't want to close his eyes or sleep; in fact, it was out of the question 'Well,' said the crow, 'here we are again.'
Poldarn looked up, and round. His instincts shrieked at him to run or hide, but he discovered that he couldn't move. 'Dream?' he asked.
'Are there many talking crows where you come from?' the crow asked patiently. 'Well, then. At least you can be fairly sure you're awake. Whether this is strictly speaking a dream or a vision, I can't tell you, I never did go to college. A sword-monk would know, if you should chance to see one anywhere.'
That was presumably a pointed reference to his part in the attack on Deymeson, so he decided to ignore it. 'What's going on here, anyway?' he asked.
The crow hopped through forty-five degrees. 'Over there,' he said, 'is the destruction of Sansory. You'll observe that they broke through at the Southgate-'
'Who did?' Poldarn asked.
'-Which,' the crow went on, 'is a fine example of the old military adage about attacking your enemy's strengths, not his weaknesses. Over here-' It hopped round another twenty degrees. 'Over here, we have the riots in Mael, just before the rebels open the gates to the enemy-'