Free Pattern by K. J. Parker Page B

years back.’
    â€˜Did I?’ Poldarn frowned. ‘That I don’t remember.’
    Halder laughed. ‘You came up here flighting crows,’ he said. ‘You’d sit just inside the wood, just as it was starting to get dark; and when they dropped in and pitched to roost, you’d try and knock them down with a slingshot or a stone. Got quite good at it, too. Always struck me as a bit of a waste of time, but you always said it was too hard to get ’em out in the fields, you’d do better catching them where they lived. Some sense in that, I guess.’ Halder shook his head. ‘Always seemed to me you took it personal, them trespassing in your wood. Hated the buggers, you did.’
    â€˜Really.’ Poldarn wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it. ‘Well.’ He took a few steps forward and rested the palm of his hand against the trunk of the tree that would one day be the middle cross-beam. He could feel it flexing ever so slightly, as the wind mussed up its branches. Then it occurred to him to wonder what they were doing there, at that particular moment. As he understood it, a man only built his house when his father (or grandfather) died, because then the old house would be pulled down and split up. It was as if, by bringing him here, Grandfather was serving a formal notice of his own impending death. Just the suggestion filled Poldarn with unanticipated panic; he looked round, just to make sure the old man was still there.
    Halder was looking into the cupped palm of his right hand, which was grimy with ash. ‘Bloody stuff,’ he said.
    â€˜I think it’s from the volcano,’ Poldarn replied. Colsceg and his tribe seemed to recognise the word, although the only people he’d mentioned it to were Halder and the long-barn hand, Rook. ‘I think it’s what the big black cloud’s made out of. The hot air from the fire shoots it way up in the air, and now it’s starting to come down.’
    â€˜Figures,’ Colsceg said, after a long pause. ‘It’s coming down everywhere, look. Like snow.’
    Like black snow, at any rate. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse than that,’ Poldarn said. ‘A few cinders I can handle.’ He dusted his hands off, but black smudges still clung to them. Like soot from Asburn’s forge, he thought.
    â€˜Filthy mess,’ Halder muttered, and Poldarn realised he was actually afraid of it – well, fair enough, fear of the unknown; he’d got over that quite some time ago, since he’d woken up beside a muddy river and found that nearly everything had suddenly become the unknown. In that respect at least, he was rather better off than all the rest of them.
    â€˜Maybe we should be getting back to the house,’ he said.
    Colsceg turned his head and looked at him suspiciously. ‘What’s the hurry?’ he said. ‘We only just got here.’
    I don’t know,’ Poldarn admitted. ‘It’s just a feeling I’ve got; like, we shouldn’t be too far from home, just in case something bad happens. How long will it take Rook to ride to the Lyat place?’
    Halder scratched the back of his head. ‘Couple of hours, maybe. It isn’t far, good track all the way. Why?’
    â€˜I just wondered, that’s all,’ Poldarn said. ‘Maybe it’ll stop soon. After all, there can’t be too much of the stuff in there, surely.’
    â€˜We might as well go back now,’ Colsceg said.
    As soon as they cleared the bend in the river, they all looked back at the mountain. It was still pumping out smoke, but far less than before, and the red glow had faded into a smudge. So that’s all right, then, Poldarn thought. But he quickened his pace all the same. The cinders crunched as he walked on them, and he thought how uncomfortable it’d been, making his way over the black rocks on the way to the hot springs.
    For some