'Well,' Eyvind interrupted (Poldarn had forgotten he was there), 'obviously you two'll have a lot to talk about, so we'll leave you to it. Remember, we're pulling out as soon as it gets dark.' He turned and walked away, grabbing his uncle Sigfus firmly by the elbow as he did so. Uncle Sigfus didn't look like he wanted to go, but he didn't have much choice.
'I don't know,' Poldarn said. 'Sorry, I thought Eyvind had explained. You see, I got bashed on the head and lost my memory-'
'Yes, I heard about that,' the old man interrupted, 'I mentioned it a few minutes ago, or weren't you listening? But you must be able to remember something.'
'No. Well,' Poldarn qualified, 'almost nothing. Just now I remembered a few things about when I was a kid. But they were just scraps, bits and pieces, pictures. I can't remember names of people or places, or anything useful like that.'
'Not much help, then, is it?' The old man shook his head. 'It'll be different once we're home. Soon as you set eyes on Haldersdale and the farm, it'll all come right back, you'll see. You always were mighty fond of the valleys.'
It was starting to get cold, and Poldarn had nothing except what he was wearing. He considered asking the old man if there was a spare coat or blanket, but he decided against it. Showing weakness at this stage of their relationship would probably lead to repercussions later-the old man didn't look like the sort of person who'd forget something like that in a hurry. 'Tell me something about myself, then,' he went on, 'see if that works.'
The old man considered this for a moment, said, 'Very well,' and squatted down on the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet as if he was expecting to have to jump up and fight at any moment. That made him wonder what kind of place this Haldersdale was.
'Well,' the old man said, 'when you came to me you were just a baby; no use to anybody. Had you doing chores round the yard when you were five and old enough to hold a rake; the sort of thing that needs doing, but it's a waste to set a grown man on the job. You were doing things like scraping the yard, turning the apples, fetching the stock in and out of the pens. And that was it, really, till earlier this year. Winds were bad, see, we had to launch the ships early if we were going to get out at all. Same as the year you were born, come to think of it; we left early that year, too, and that was another time everything went wrong. A judgement on us, I guess, for being in such a damn hurry all the time.'
'What about my father?' Poldarn asked quietly.
'Tursten, his name was,' the old man said, looking down at the ground between his knees. 'He was a good boy, Tursten, and just shaping up to be a good farmer. Only his second year out,' he went on, 'and that bitch murdered him. There was no call for her to go doing that.'
My mother, Poldarn thought. Who died today, the day I found my people and family again. Best not to dwell on any of that. He looked up, wondering how the old man would look now that he'd faced that particular issue. To his surprise there was no perceptible difference. Not so strange, at that, he rationalised, since I only met her the once and I couldn't get away from there, here, fast enough. Or maybe I'm just naturally callous. That's possible, too.
'Are there any more of us?' he asked. 'Family, I mean.'
The old man nodded. 'Cousins,' he said. 'My brother Turcram's boy, almost exactly the same age as your father, and he's got four sons-Cari, Stearcad, Healti and Oser. Then there's Eplph's son Turliff, he's got two girls, Renvyck and Seun; and there's the other cousins, over at Colsness. It's not a big family or particularly close, but it's better than being alone.'
'That's good,' Poldarn said, wondering what it must be like to know someone all your life. Very strange, he decided, like being part of a herd of animals or a flock of birds. 'I'll look forward to meeting them,' he added. For once, he seemed to have said the right thing.
'They'll be surprised as all hell to see you again,' the old man said, and this time there was just a little warmth in his grin. 'Which is just as well,' he added, 'it'll take their minds off all this. There won't be a family on the island except ours that won't have lost someone. And we'll be one stronger, instead of two or three less,' he went on, looking over Poldarn's head at the gradually setting sun. 'Well, they say even in the worst times there's always one good thing to every half-dozen bad. Reckon someone must be looking after us, the way things've spun out.'
It was getting noticeably darker, and some of the men were getting to their feet, picking up their things, tightening their bootstraps and hanging the straps of their luggage round their necks. I wonder, Poldarn thought, what it'll feel like, flying back towards the trees and rejoining the mob. Will I still be an individual, or just part of the family? Of course, nobody else in the world but me would ever ask a question like that.
'Is it far to the ships?' he asked.
The old man shook his head. 'Couple of days, day and a half; if we can cover some ground tonight, so much the better. It's their damn horsemen we've got to worry about. One of these days they'll build ships so we can bring our horses with us when we come over, and then we'll show them something, I'm telling you. But you can never find horses in this damn country; probably the government takes all the useful ones for their army.'
They were starting to move out. Nobody gave a signal or blew a horn, nobody specified a direction. 'You dropped this,' the old man said, producing the borrowed backsabre. 'You may need it before we're done.'
Poldarn stood up. 'Tell me about the farm,' he said.
That pleased the old man. 'Haldersholt,' he said. 'It's not a big spread, but it's plenty for us. There's a small river runs down the middle of Haldersdale; that's about a thousand-' The old man said some unit of measurement; it meant nothing to Poldarn, of course. '-And at the end of the valley there's a deep old combe, more or less at right angles; all wooded on the north side, with a little stream in the bottom, good pasture up the other side, but steep. The farmhouses are where the combe stream meets the river. We've usually got a couple of hundred sheep, a hundred beef stock, thirty-odd milch cows, a few dozen horses; west side of the dale's in plough, we switch ends around every year, plough and fallow. Wheat never comes to much, barley's all right, and there's gardens for greens and stuff out back of the houses; orchards too, and a hop garden. Got our own quarry on the patch, which is a blessing, and a little mill on the combe stream. There's always a few goats and pigs and chickens about the place, but the women see to all that. We had grapevines on the south side of the combe when I was a boy; my father grubbed them up one year in a bad season, but they'd probably take again. There's a few deer in the wood, birds in the season; used to be a salmon weir at the south end of the dale, but we haven't bothered with it in years, not since the Barnsriver people built theirs and fished the river out. Still, we haven't had to trade for anything outside the farm for sixty years, to my certain knowledge-got everything we need, and what we don't need we do without. And that's not much, either.'
'I like the sound of that,' Poldarn said. 'You must have a fair few men working for you.'
The old man gave him a strange look, then shrugged. 'Really have lost your memory, haven't you?' he said. 'That's not how it is back home; I'll explain it to you later, when there's time. But there's, what, fifty or sixty of us at the farm, maybe another half-dozen up at the hill station or the coal pits; like I said, it's not big but it's big enough. You want to meet some of the hands? Left most of 'em behind this time, thank God-so far, we only lost one, back there in the battle. Here,' he went on, lengthening his stride; Poldarn had to trot to keep up, like a little boy. Suddenly the old man stopped, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Two men ahead of them in the group turned their heads and looked round; the old man waved at them to come over.