Doubleborn by Toby Forward Page B

protection.
    The face disappeared. A leather object landed on the floor next to her with a thud. She stepped back. A pair of feet dangled over the edge and then, in a second, he dropped down and fell over, rolled into a ball like a woodlouse, came to a halt, unrolled and stood up, dusting himself down. He set the leather object on its end and sat on it.
    “You should put that back,” he said.
    Tamrin didn’t like roffles. The first one she had ever come across was Megatorine, who had betrayed Sam, and she didn’t trust them.
    “I’ll keep it if I want to,” she said.
    “Do you want to?”
    Tamrin slid the sword back into the pile of junk. The handle still didn’t go right in so she left it.
    “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “I’m leaving.”
    The roffle nodded and she left, following her footprints.
    After three turns she was back where she had left him. He was still sitting on his barrel.
    “That was quick,” he said.
    Tamrin walked away again. She must have made a mistake. She tried to remember something from each pile, to keep her sense of direction. A broken wheel from a mangle, a large kettle, a twisted gate. It was no use. The same sorts of things kept reappearing. Common items discarded. She turned the corner and the roffle was there again.
    “You keep following me,” she said.
    He pointed to the sword handle.
    “I haven’t moved.”
    It was time to try something different.
    “Do you know where the door is?” she asked.
    “Oh, yes. Of course.”
    “Show me.”
    “Please.”
    Tamrin wanted to slap him.
    “Please,” she said.
    He didn’t move from his barrel.
    “You’re not saying it as though you mean it,” he said. “But I suppose it’ll do.”
    Tamrin waited for him to move.
    “What’s your name?” he asked.
    “I don’t want to tell you.”
    “I can’t show a stranger the door, can I?”
    “Tamrin.”
    “Hello, Tamrin. I’m Solder.”
    She nodded.
    “You mean Megasolder,” she said. “All roffle names begin with Mega.”
    She smiled to show she had won a point from him.
    “Well,” he said, “my real name, in the Deep World, is Megapolitifricabilitihitti. You can call me that if you like. But most people call me Solder.”
    Tamrin scowled at him.
    “You have to say, “Hello, Solder,” he said. “It’s polite.”
    He was cheerful. And that made him even more irritating. Tamrin forced herself.
    “Hello, Solder.”
    He hopped off his barrel and hauled it on to his back.
    “This way.”
    Tamrin didn’t follow him.
    “Are you coming with me?”
    “That’s not the way.”
    He sighed.
    “How do you know?”
    Tamrin pointed to her glowing footprints.
    “Oh, that,” he said. “You shouldn’t have followed those.”
    “They’re the way I came in,” she said.
    “If you follow me, I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” he offered, and set off.
    Tamrin watched him disappear round the corner. She hesitated. There was no other way she could think of, so she ran after him.
    “Wait.”
    She caught him up.
    “What’s wrong with the footprints?” she asked.
    “You think they’re showing you the way you’ve walked, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “They’re really showing you the way you will walk in the future.”
    “That’s not the spell I made.”
    “No, it’s the reflection of the spell you made. It bounced back at you, like a hammer—”
    “Like a hammer from an anvil,” she finished his sentence.
    He grinned at her.
    “You’ve been talking to Smith,” he said.
    “Yes. Yes, I have.”
    “What do you think of him?”
    The piles of scrap metal were different here. Household junk – the mangles, the oven doors, the lamp brackets, pots, pans and hinges – were less frequent. Broken swords, dented helmets, shields, breastplates, twisted armour took their place.
    Tamrin stopped and ran her finger over the articulated iron of a knee-protector.
    Solder waited.
    “Is this stuff older?” she asked.
    “Some of it.”
    He found a spearhead and