Darkness Descending (14 page)

A scowl said the officer realized that, too. But he answered mildly enough: “Constables in this car will get off at Gromheort, not far from here.” He coughed. “Some of them may be fortunate they are replacing the army there and not elsewhere. On the other hand, army discipline might improve them.”

Bembo did not rise to that. One narrow escape was enough. The caravan slid along the ley line toward Gromheort. He tried to remember if he’d ever heard of the place. He didn’t think so. It would have been under Algarvian rule before the Six Years’ War, so it might not prove too bad, but he wouldn’t have bet more than a copper on that.

Nor did his first glimpse, by moonlight, send him into raptures. The depot was battered, and about one building in four between it and the barracks where the constables would spend the night had been wrecked. “The Forthwegians fought hard here,” explained the officer, who guided them to the barracks.

“Why haven’t they repaired it since?” Bembo asked, safely anonymous in the darkness.

“They have,” the army officer answered. “If you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it just after we took it.” He pointed ahead, to a low, squat building that once must have housed cattle or Forthwegian soldiers. “Go through the curtains one man at a time, to keep light from spilling out.”

Inside, the barracks were as bad as Bembo had expected. After a day spent traveling across northern Algarve, he didn’t care. He hurried to a pallet, set his pack under his head in lieu of a pillow (he labored under no delusions about his fellow constables, who were bound to have some light-fingered souls among them), and went to sleep.

Next morning, glum-looking Forthwegians served up bread and olive oil and harsh red wine. Another Algarvian army officer came in and distributed maps of Gromheort to those constables who would patrol it. “Things are pretty quiet,” he told the newcomers. “Just keep ‘em that way and everything will be fine.” He offered no suggestions on how to achieve that laudable end.

Without enough breakfast to suit him, without a bath, without really knowing his way around, Bembo was thrust out onto the streets of Gromheort. Forth-wegians in long tunics glared at him or tried to pretend he didn’t exist. Kaunians got out of his way in a hurry. That, at least, felt right and proper.

No one did anything in the least untoward. All the same, he walked far more warily than he would have back in Tricarico. There, only the rare desperate fool would take on a constable. Here, in a sullen conquered kingdom, who could say? He didn’t want to find out the hard way.

At midmorning, feeling peckish, he stepped into an eatery and demanded an omelette. The proprietor made as if he didn’t understand Algarvian. Bembo’s gut told him the fellow was bluffing. He hefted his club and growled—and got his omelette. He didn’t care for the cheese the Forthwegian used, but it wasn’t too bad. Patting his belly, he walked out.

“You pay!” the proprietor exclaimed—he knew some Algarvian, all right.

Bembo only laughed. If he wouldn’t have paid for a meal back in Tricarico—and he wouldn’t—he was cursed if he’d do it here in a land Algarve had won by the sword. What could the Forthwegian do if he didn’t? Not a thing. He snapped his fingers and went on his way.

In summer, a cold bath looked better to Leofsig than at other seasons of the year. After a day of building roads in the sun, he took himself to Gromheort’s public baths to wash off the sweat and dirt before he went home. He paid the attendant at the door a copper, hung his tunic on a peg in the antechamber, and, naked, hurried toward the pools and plunges beyond. He tested the water of what had been the warm plunge with a toe.

“Not too bad,” said an older man already in there. “Could be chillier than this and feel good on a day like today.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Leofsig slid into the water himself. He rubbed at his hide. By the time he got through, he was three shades lighter than when he’d begun. The plunge wasn’t so warm as to make him want to linger, though, as it would have been in happier times. He climbed up the steps and headed for the soaping room.

The liquid soap in the troughs wasn’t what it had been before the war, either. It was cheap and harsh with lye and smelled nasty. When he rubbed it into a little cut on his arm, it burned like fire.

An enormous rub stood in the rinsing room. He grabbed a bucket with a pierced bottom, filled it in the tub, and hung it from a hook at a level above his head. As the water in it streamed out through the holes, he stood under it and let the soap run off down the drain. A man in a hurry could make do with one bucket. Tonight, Leofsig used two.

On the other side of the brick wall, women were rinsing. As every man of Gromheort had surely done, Leofsig imagined that wall suddenly made transparent. Imagining Felgilde, his almost-fiancée, bare and wet and slick made the water seem warmer than it was. Imagining the screech she’d let out if the wall did turn transparent made him laugh. He set the bucket back by the tub for another bather to use, then got a towel from a Kaunian attendant who’d been there as long as he could remember—and as long as his father could remember, too.

When Leofsig was younger, he’d once said, “Maybe he’s been handing out towels since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

Hestan had laughed, but then, precise as always, he’d shaken his head and said, “No. People bathing together is a Forthwegian custom, and an Unkerlanter one, too, but not a Kaunian one.”

Dry and clean now, Leofsig threw his towel into a wickerwork basket and went up to the antechamber to get his tunic. He hated to put it back on; it was grimy and smelly. But he was no Zuwayzi, to walk unconcerned through the streets of Gromheort without a stitch on.
I’ll
change when I get home,
he thought.

He’d gone only a block or so when a chubby Algarvian in tunic and kilt of cut somewhat different from the army’s spoke to him in Algarvian. “I don’t know your language,” he said in Forthwegian. That wasn’t quite true, but, unlike his brother Ealstan and cousin Sidroc, he hadn’t had to learn it in school. Plainly, the redhead didn’t follow him, either. Leofsig tried classical Kaunian: “Do you understand me now?

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he wondered if he’d made a bad mistake. The Algarvians despised everything in any way connected to Kaunians. But this fellow, after frowning, answered in halting, thickly accented Kaunian: “Understanding little. Not using when . . . after . . .
since
school.” He beamed at coming up with the right word.

Leofsig nodded to show he understood, too. “What do you want?” he asked, speaking slowly and clearly.

“Not finding,” the Algarvian said. After a moment, Leofsig realized he meant
lost.
The redhead pulled a sheet of paper out of a tunic pocket. It turned out to be a map of Gromheort. He pointed. “Going here, please?”
Here
was a barracks where soldiers had been garrisoned. The Algarvian waved, one of his people’s extravagant gestures. “I now where?” He made a comic display of frustration and embarrassment.

“I will show you,” Leofsig said. He’d started to help before remembering he hated the conquerors. He had trouble hating this particular one, who was rumpled and funny and had asked for help instead of demanding it. And so, instead of sending him the wrong way, Leofsig traced the route back to the barracks on the map.

“Ah.” The Algarvian swept off his hat and bowed as deeply as his rotund frame would allow. “Thanking.” He bowed again. Leofsig nodded in return; Forthwegians were a less demonstrative people. Peering at the map, the redhead went off down the street. Maybe he would find the barracks. He was headed in the right direction, anyhow. He looked back to Leofsig and waved. Leofsig gave him another nod and headed on toward his own home.

He mentioned the affable Algarvian over supper. His father nodded. “That must be one of the constables they’re bringing in,” Hestan said. “If they use constables to keep order hereabouts, they can put more soldiers into the attack on Unkerlant.” He glanced over to Uncle Hengist, as if he’d just proved a point.

By the way Hengist fidgeted, maybe Hestan had. Hengist said, “They’re still moving forward. By the news sheet, they’ve trapped a big army west of the capital of the Duchy of Grelz—forget the cursed place’s name. After a while, Unkerlant will run out of armies.”

“Herborn,” Ealstan put in.

“Unless Algarve runs out first,” Hestan added. Hengist snorted and gestured dismissively, almost as if he were an Algarvian himself. Hestan sipped from his cup of wine, then turned back to Leofsig. “And what was this constable like, son?”

“He didn’t seem too bad a fellow,” Leofsig answered: about as much as he would say for any Algarvian. “He thanked me when I showed him where he ought to go. None of their soldiers would have.”

“All their soldiers were good for were pinches on the bottom,” Conberge said.

“I never had that happen to me,” Leofsig observed.

“You’d best be glad you didn’t,” Sidroc said archly. Everyone laughed. It was easier and more comforting to think of the Algarvians as woman-chasers—which they were—than as warriors who had overwhelmed all their opponents—which, unfortunately for their neighbors, they also were.

“Would anyone like more of this beans-and-cheese casserole?” Leofsig’s mother asked, reaching out to touch the spoon in the bowl. “There’s plenty, for once; I went to the markets early, and got the cheese before it all disappeared.”

“I’ll take more, Elfryth,” Hestan said. Leofsig and Sidroc pushed their plates toward her, too. If his mother hadn’t said there was plenty and plainly meant it, Leofsig would have made do with one helping. He’d grown resigned to being hungry a lot of the time. Feeling full, as he did after his seconds, seemed strange, almost unnatural.

After supper, Ealstan came to him for help with a bookkeeping problem their father had set him. Leofsig looked at it, then shook his head. “I know I ought to know how to solve it, but I’m cursed if I can remember right now.” He yawned enormously. “I’m so tired, I can’t even see. That’s how I am most nights. You don’t know how lucky you are that Father decided to keep you in school.”

“It doesn’t teach much, not any more,” his brother answered. “I’m learning a lot more from Father than from the masters.”

“You’re missing the point,” Leofsig said. “You could be out hauling rocks instead. Plenty your age are. Then you’d be too tired to think, too.”

“Oh, I understand that,” Ealstan said. “What makes me sizzle is watching Sidroc not even working at the watered-down pap the Algarvians still let the schoolmasters teach.”

“If Sidroc wants the masters to stripe his back, that’s his affair,” Leofsig said. “If he wants to try to get through life on gab, that’s his affair, too. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time worrying about it.”

“Because he goes off and does what he pleases, and I have the masters’ work and Father’s, too, that’s why,” Ealstan snapped. Then he paused and looked sheepish. “It could be worse, couldn’t it?”

“Just a bit,” Leofsig said dryly. “Aye, just a bit.” But he paused, too. “It could be worse for me, too, now that I think on it.”

This time, Ealstan did not miss the point even for a moment. “Of course it could,” he said. “You could be a Kaunian.” He lowered his voice. “At least you know. So many people don’t even want to, or else say the blonds have it coming.” He looked around, then spoke more softly still: “Some of those people are right in this house.”

“Aye, I know that,” Leofsig said. “If you ask me, Sidroc wishes he were an Algarvian. Uncle Hengist, too, though not so bad.”

Ealstan shook his head. “That’s not it—close, but not right. Sidroc just wants to be on top, and the Algarvians are.”

“If he wants to be on top—” Leofsig broke off. Ealstan hadn’t been through the army, and didn’t take crudity for granted. Leofsig shrugged. “You know him better than I do—and you’re welcome to him, too, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Thanks,” his younger brother said in a way that wasn’t thankful at all. They both chuckled. Then Ealstan grew serious once more. “I’d like to pop him right in the face for the way he rides me about the problems Father sets me, but I don’t quite dare.”

“Why not?” Leofsig asked. “I think you can thump him—and if you have trouble, I’ll pitch in. A set of lumps’ll shut him up.”

“Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but that’s not it,” Ealstan said. “And if I ever do mix it up with him, I want you to stay out of it.”

Leofsig frowned. “I’m not following this. What are big brothers for, if they’re not for thumping people who give little brothers trouble?”

Ealstan licked his lips. “If you thump him, he’s liable to go to the redheads and remind them nobody ever let you out of that captives’ camp. I don’t know that he would, but I don’t know that he wouldn’t, either.”

“Oh.” Leofsig pondered that. Slowly, he nodded. “When you lift up a rock, you find all sorts of little white crawling things under it, don’t you? That he’d do such a thing to his own flesh and blood . . . But he might, curse it. You’re right. He might.” He rubbed his chin. His black beard was a man’s now, thick and coarse, not soft fuzz like Ealstan’s. “I don’t want him having that kind of hold on me. I don’t want anyone having that kind of hold on me.”

“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Ealstan said.

“I’ve frightened him once or twice already, when he started blowing in that direction,” Leofsig said. “If I put him in fear of his life . . .” He spoke altogether matter-of-factly. Before going into King Penda’s levy, he’d been as mild as anyone would expect from a bookkeeper’s son. Now the only thing holding him back was doubt about how well the ploy would work. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “The stinking worm might just run straight to the Algarvians.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Ealstan said. “I don’t know what to do.

Maybe sitting tight and waiting would be best. It’s always worked pretty well for Father.”

“Aye, so it has.” Leofsig gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t like it, though. Powers above can’t make me like it, either.” He pounded a fist down onto his thigh. “I wonder if Uncle Hengist would sell me, too.”