He stumbled on as best he could, but the pain in both his foot and his arm was reaching the point where he couldn't just shove it out of his mind; it was insistent enough to control him, the way a baby's crying controls its mother. Long before he reached the bottom of the slope and the battle, he gave in to it and sat down, letting it sweep through him simply because he couldn't resist it any longer. This isn't right, he thought, being separate, not being in there with them. He felt ashamed, but there was more to it than that. He felt lonely, sitting by himself on the wet ground surrounded by dead bodies; and he thought, Well, that suggests I've come a certain distance from the place where I woke up first. It's probably better to belong somewhere, on balance.
'There you are,' said a voice behind him.
He looked round. How the hell did they manage that trick of sneaking up behind him? 'Eyvind?' he said.
'Are you all right?' Eyvind said.
Poldarn shook his head. 'Did you come back just to look for me?' he asked.
'Sort of,' Eyvind replied. 'Actually, Halder sent me. He couldn't see you, wondered where you'd got to.' He smiled. 'I guess he's scared to let you out of his sight now he's found you again.'
'That's nice of him,' Poldarn said. 'You'll have to help me up, I'm afraid my foot's gone useless again.'
'That's all right,' Eyvind said, pulling him up by his good arm and taking his weight across his shoulders. 'It's pretty well all over anyway. What we can't figure out is why they're making such a big deal about those carts. Must be something worth having in there, which means,' he added with a grin, 'that once we've shooed off those few, we might end up with something nice to take home with us after all. Nearly broke our hearts, having to dump the proceeds of all that hard work.'
Poldarn shook his head. 'Don't get your hopes up,' he said. 'I have an idea it's people in the carts, not things. Here, look; can you see the inner ring of soldiers?'
Eyvind looked, then sighed. 'I see what you mean,' he said. 'But that can't be their own people they're guarding.'
'Prisoners,' Poldarn replied. 'Probably they've got it into their heads that we're here to rescue them.'
Eyvind looked thoughtful. 'Think about it,' he said. 'Who would we go out of our way to rescue? Our own, of course. Maybe they've got some of our people down there. Survivors from the battle, maybe.'
Poldarn frowned. 'Unlikely,' he said. 'Why bring them all the way up here, north-west? I'd have thought that if they'd caught any of us, they'd either kill them out of hand or ship them off to Torcea as quickly as possible.'
Eyvind considered that. 'Exactly,' he said. 'Ship them off, by sea. Maybe they've got ships of their own waiting up the coast a way, and that's where they were taking them.'
'Maybe,' Poldarn conceded, though he wasn't convinced. 'Anyway,' he added, 'it won't matter, will it? Like you said, it'll be all over pretty soon. Almost certainly by the time I could get there.'
'Damn.' Eyvind looked troubled. 'That's awkward. I think I should get down there, just in case I was right about them having some of our people, but I promised Halder I'd look after you.' He shrugged. 'Can't be helped,' he said. 'Besides, you and I won't be the only ones who've drawn that particular conclusion. Still, we'll get down there as quickly as we can, I think. Who knows, they may manage to spin the fighting out for long enough.'
It was a painful walk, and Eyvind's impatience didn't make it any easier or noticeably faster. But they got there in the end, just in time to see the circle of soldiers breached and crushed, like the man who draws a little too slowly. After that it was like watching the sea rush in through a hole in the walclass="underline" quick, efficient, rather depressing.
'There's Halder, look,' Eyvind called out. That was a relief, though Poldarn hadn't been thinking much about him at that particular moment. He followed the line Eyvind was showing him, and saw the top of the old man's head; beside him he saw Raffen, so that was all right. He couldn't see Scaptey, but he wasn't really bothered about him.
The fighting petered out quite quickly after that; here and there Poldarn could see rapid scuffling movement, an arm upraised for a moment as some leftover enemy was disposed of, but mostly the raiders were standing about or sitting on the ground, resting sociably for a moment or so before moving on to the next job of work that needed to be done. Two men were pulling down the tailgate of the nearest cart. The prisoners, Poldarn thought, assuming there are any, of course.
One of the men took a step backwards and raised his sabre. 'Hold it,' Poldarn called out; the man hesitated and looked round to see who'd spoken. Poldarn hobbled over as quickly as he could.
'There's some more of them in there,' the man explained. 'I saw something move under that pile of old blankets.'
'I thought there might be,' Poldarn replied, and he explained his prisoners theory.
'It's possible,' the man admitted. 'All right, let's shift the blankets and have a look. Though if it was one of us, surely he'd have called out as soon as he heard our voices.'
Nobody else was paying them any attention; mostly they were wandering round the battlefield picking up weapons and pieces of armour, anything made of metal. Poldarn eased in front of the man he'd just been talking to, picked up a spear and used its point to flick away the blankets, revealing a man's head. The face was familiar.
'I know you,' he said. 'You're Tazencius.'
The man under the blankets sneezed, then stood up. Poldarn had been right; it was the same man he'd picked up off the road, on his first trip out for Falx Roisin. He looked very sad; there was dried mud in his hair, and he had a black eye. His left leg was tightly wrapped in cloth, with two splints to keep it straight. 'That's right,' Tazencius replied. 'What happened?'
Poldarn frowned. 'You tell me,' he said.
Tazencius sat down on the edge of the cart, his bad leg stuck out straight in front of him. 'After the battle at Vistock, you mean?' he said. 'I thought you'd have figured that out for yourself. The Amathy house sold me to the imperials; no idea what the price was, I was in no position to ask.' He frowned. 'But you should know that,' he said. 'After all, if you didn't know I'd been captured, how'd you know to rescue me?'
Poldarn grinned. 'What makes you think you've been rescued?' he replied.
'Hey,' asked the man who'd discovered him, 'what are you talking about?'
'It's all right,' Poldarn replied without turning round. 'It so happens that this is a very important man. The emperor's cousin, I think.'
'Quite right,' Tazencius said.
'Doesn't matter,' the raider broke in. 'You know the rules: no survivors, no witnesses. Now, are you going to deal with him, or shall I do it?'
'Just hold your horses, will you?' Poldarn said. 'Or doesn't the concept of ransom mean anything to you?'
'The what?' the man asked, and Poldarn realised that he'd used the imperial word for ransom, since there wasn't an obvious equivalent in his own language. Anyway, that answered the question fairly well.
'I know him,' Poldarn said, not really sure how this was supposed to justify breaking what was presumably a cardinal rule by sparing a witness. 'It's all right,' he added.
'Please yourself.' The man slid his sabre back on to his belt. 'All yours,' he added, then turned away, having apparently lost all interest in the matter. His colleague had already wandered away, and was trying on a dead soldier's boots.
'Thank you,' Tazencius said. 'I couldn't understand what you were saying to that man, but I could guess pretty well.'