Darkness Descending (46 page)

“They won’t take me alive,” Merkela declared. Like any farm woman, she wore a knife on her belt. She caressed its hilt as she might have caressed Skarnu. “Powers below eat me if I’ll give them any sport or let them squeeze anything out of me.”

“We’d all be smart to go armed some way or another for a while,” Raunu said. Skarnu nodded, wondering if he’d be able to find the courage to slay himself. To save himself from Algarvian torment, he thought he might.

He slept close by his stick that night. But the Algarvians did not come, as they—or perhaps Simanu’s henchmen, acting with their leave—had come to Dauktu’s farm. The next morning, Raunu went into Pavilosta to buy salt and nails and, with luck, sugar: things the farm couldn’t make for itself. The veteran under-officer took along a blade of his own, long enough to reach his heart.

After he’d vanished around a bend in the road, Skarnu and Merkela, without a word spoken, set aside their chores, hurried upstairs to her bedchamber, and made love. This time, he was as desperately urgent as she usually was; he wondered if it might be the last, and did his best to give himself something to savor for however long he had. When pleasure drowned him, he groaned as he might have under an Algarvian torturer’s whip.

Drained, emptied, numb, he and Merkela went back out to the endless farm-work. He did it at about half speed, waiting for Raunu or King Mezentio’s men: whoever chanced to come to the farm first.

It was Raunu, a little bent under the weight of the pack on his back but his face glowing with news. “There must be a dozen of those ‘Simanu’s vengeance—night and fog’ signs in town,” he said as he set down his burden. “Not a one that I could tell was on the door of anybody who’s fighting the redheads. They just picked people, powers above knows how, and now nobody knows what’s become of ’em.”

“That’s good to hear,” Skarnu said. “Good for anybody except the folk who had it happen to them, I mean.”

“Night and fog,” Merkela repeated musingly. “They want people to wonder what’s happened to whoever they took, all right. Are they dead? Are they under torture, like we said before? Or are the redheads doing . . . what the stories we hear talk about?”

Skarnu’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a horrid grimace. “One more thing I hadn’t thought of. One more thing I wish you hadn’t thought of, either.”

“There may not be any Kaunians left alive in the world if the Algarvians have their way,” Merkela said.

“They haven’t taken anyone from Valmiera or Jelgava,” Skarnu said. “We’d have heard if they started doing anything like that.”

“Would we?” That was Raunu, not Merkela. He added three words: “Night and fog.”

“We’re still fighting,” Skarnu said. “I don’t know what else we can do. They won’t get anything cheap, not from this county they won’t.”

“Aye.” Merkela’s angry nod sent a lock of her pale hair flipping down over her eyes. Brushing it back with a hand, she went on, “They say Simanu’s had his revenge. We haven’t even started taking ours yet.”

“Keeping ourselves alive, staying in the fight—that’s a kind of victory all by itself,” Skarnu said. He wouldn’t have thought so, not when the war was new and his noble blood entitled him to don shiny captain’s badges. He knew better now.

Bembo lifted a glass of wine in salute to Sergeant Pesaro. “Here’s to some time well spent in Gromheort,” the constable said.

“Aye.” Pesaro tilted his head back to upend his own glass, giving Bembo a splendid view of several of his chins. He waved to the busy barmaid. “Two more glasses of red here, sweetheart.” The Forthwegian woman nodded to show she’d heard him. He turned back to Bembo. “I’m glad not to spend all day on my feet marching, I’ll tell you that.”

“That’s the truth, sure enough,” Bembo agreed. The barmaid came by with an earthenware pitcher and refilled their glasses. Since Bembo had bought the last round, Pesaro set a small silver coin down on the table. The barmaid took it. As she went off to serve someone else, Pesaro reached out and pinched her backside.

She sprang in the air and gave him a dirty look. “You shouldn’t have done that,” Bembo said mournfully. “Now she’ll spend the rest of the day pretending not to notice us.”

“She’d better not,” Pesaro growled. “Besides, it’s not like I’m the only one in this tavern who’s ever got his hands on that arse.”

Looking around, Bembo had to nod. Because it was across the street from their barracks, the tavern was always full of Algarvian constables—and Algarvians had never been shy about putting their hands on women, their own or those of the kingdoms they’d overrun. “Will she sleep with you for silver?” Bembo asked.

“Curse me if I know,” Pesaro answered. “I never thought she was pretty enough to try and find out. The blond wenches in the soldiers’ brothels look a lot better to me.”

“Well, I won’t tell you you’re wrong about that,” Bembo said. “All these Forthwegian women are built like bricks.” He started to say something more, but then pointed to another constable a couple of tables away. “Oh, powers above! Almonio’s gone and drunk himself into another crying jag.”

Pesaro cursed as he twisted on his stool. He had to push it back to get his belly past the front of the table. He too watched the young constable sitting there with tears streaming down his face. Almonio was very drunk; a pitcher like the one the barmaid carried lay on its side, empty, on the table in front of him. “Miserable bugger,” Pesaro said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why he ever thought he could be a constable.”

“Sergeant, you never should have let him beg off hauling Kaunians out of their houses with the rest of us,” Bembo said. “I don’t like it, either—that’s another reason I’m glad I’m back in Gromheort, aside from all the marching I’m not doing—but I pull my weight.” He looked down at himself. “And I’ve got a deal of weight to pull, too.” If he hadn’t said it, Pesaro would have, though he carried even more weight than Bembo.

As things were, Pesaro emptied his new glass of wine before asking, “You think he’d be better if I made him do it?”

“You’re the one who always says things like there’s nothing like a boot in the arse to concentrate the brain,” Bembo answered.

“I know, I know.” Pesaro waved for the barmaid again. Sure enough, she pretended not to see him. Muttering, the constabulary sergeant said, “He hasn’t got the stomach for the job as is. I just thought I’d make things worse if I held him to it, so I didn’t.”

“Me, I haven’t got the stomach for hard work,” Bembo said.

“Never would have noticed,” Pesaro said in tones that made Bembo wince. Pesaro called out to Almonio: “Powers above, man, pull yourself together.”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” the young constable replied. “I can’t help thinking about what happens to the Kaunians when we ship ‘em west. You know it as well as I do. I know you know. Why doesn’t it drive you mad, too?”

“They’re the enemy,” Pesaro said with assurance. “You always hit the enemy as hard as you can. That’s the rules.”

Almonio shook his head. “They’re just people. Men and women and children with blond hair and a funny language out of old times. A few of ’em were soldiers, aye, but we don’t do anything special to the Forthwegians who yielded, or not to most of ’em, anyway. The women and children sure never hurt us.”

“All Kaunians are out to get us,” Pesaro said. “The Kaunians in Jelgava almost took Tricarico away from us, in case you forgot. They’ve hated us ever since we knocked their dusty old Empire flat all those years ago, and they’ve really hated us since the Six Years’ War. That’s what King Mezentio says, and I think he’s dead right.”

But Almonio only shook his head again. Then he folded his arms on the table, bent forward, and fell asleep. Bembo said, “He’ll be better when he comes around—till the next time he gets drunk, anyhow.”

“Take him back to the barracks and pour him into his cot,” Pesaro said.

“What, by myself?” Bembo said.

Pesaro grunted. He knew Bembo put no more effort into anything than he had to. But at the last minute, the sergeant relented. “Oh, all right. There’s Evodio over there by the wall. Hey, Evodio! Aye, you—who’d you think I was talking to? Come on and give Bembo a hand.”

Evodio gave Bembo two fingers, at any rate: an Algarvian obscene gesture at least as old as any Kaunian ruins. Bembo cheerfully returned it. They draped one of Almonio’s limp arms across each of their shoulders and half dragged, half carried him across the street.

“We ought to leave him here,” Bembo said while they were crossing the cobbles. “Maybe a wagon running over his head would pound some sense into him.”

“It’s a dirty business we’re in,” Evodio said. “Maybe even dirtier than soldiering, because soldiers have real enemies who can blaze back in front of ’em.”

Bembo stared at him in some surprise. “How come you weren’t crying your head off with him, if you feel like that?”

Evodio shrugged, almost dropping his half of Almonio. “I can take it. I don’t think we’ve got anything to be proud of, though.”

Since Bembo didn’t think the Algarvian constables had anything to be proud of, either, he kept quiet. Between them, they got the sodden Almonio into his cot. One of the constables in a dice game on the floor of the barracks looked up with a grin. “He’s going to be miserable when he wakes up, the poor, sorry son of a whore,” he predicted.

“He was pretty miserable already, or he wouldn’t have gotten this drunk,” Bembo answered.

“Ah, one of those, eh?” the other constable said. “Well, let him spend a while longer in this business and he’ll figure out you’re wasting your time if you get upset over stuff you can’t do anything about.” The next roll of the dice went against him, and he cursed furiously.

With a laugh, Bembo began, “You’re wasting your time if you get upset—”

“Oh, shut up,” the other constable said.

When Bembo stuck his nose outside the barracks the next morning, he shivered. Most of the time, Gromheort wasn’t that much cooler than Tricarico. But the wind that blew out of the southwest today had a nasty chill reminiscent of the broad plains of Unkerlant from which it had come. “Just my luck,” Bembo grumbled as he headed out on patrol. He was always ready to pity himself, since no one else seemed interested in the job.

He took some consolation in seeing that the Forthwegians and Kaunians on the street looked as unhappy and put upon as he felt. Some of them had mufflers wrapped around their necks and heavy cloaks over their tunics or trousers, but more, like Bembo, simply had to make do. When a particularly nasty gust blew in under his kilt, he envied the Kaunians their trousers.

By now, he’d found a number of places whose proprietors were good for a handout. He stopped in at one of them for a mug of tea sweetened with honey. He drank it so fast, it burned his mouth. He didn’t much care. It put some warmth in his belly, too, which was what he’d had in mind.

As he started tramping the pavement again, a wagonful of laborers clattered past, its iron-tired wheels loud on the cobbles. Most of the laborers were Forthwegians, a few Kaunians. The blonds looked even scrawnier and more ragged than the Forthwegians. They didn’t get paid as much for the same work. Bembo’s sympathy was fleeting at best. Those Kaunians could have been a lot worse off, and he knew it.

“Good morning to you, Constable,” one of the laborers called. He was a Forthwegian, but used classical Kaunian—a good thing, too, because Bembo still hadn’t learned more than a handful of words in the Forthwegian language.

After a moment, he recognized the laborer as the fellow who’d helped him find the barracks when he was new to Gromheort and very lost. He didn’t want to speak Kaunian where a lot of people could hear him doing it. He did take off his hat and wave it to the Forthwegian. That seemed to do the job; the black-bearded young man waved a hand in return.

A couple of blocks later, Bembo heard a man and a woman shouting at each other in Forthwegian. Setting a hand on the bludgeon he wore on his belt, he turned a corner and tramped down a muddy alley to find out what was going on. “What’s all this about?” he said loudly, in Algarvian. Whether anybody would understand him was liable to be a different question, but he’d worry about that later.

Sudden silence fell. The man, Bembo saw, was a prosperous-looking Forthwegian, the woman a Kaunian who had strumpet written all over her. Strumpet or not, she turned out to speak Algarvian. Pointing to the man, she said, “He cheated me. I gave him what he wanted, and now he won’t pay.”

“This bitch lies,” the Forthwegian said, also in Algarvian—maybe he’d done business across the border before the war broke out. “I ask you, Officer—do you think I’d want a drab like this?”

“Never can tell,” Bembo said—he’d heard of plenty of rich Algarvians with peculiar tastes, so why not a Forthwegian, too? Turning to the woman, he asked, “What do you say he wanted from you?”

“My mouth,” she answered at once. “I know him—he’s too lazy to screw.”

Ignoring the Forthwegian’s bellow of fury, Bembo glanced at the knees of the Kaunian woman’s trousers. They had fresh mud on them. He hefted the bludgeon. “Pay up,” he told the Forthwegian.

The man cursed and fumed, but reached into his belt pouch and slapped silver into the Kaunian woman’s hand. He stomped off, still muttering under his breath. The Kaunian woman eyed Bembo. “Now I suppose you’ll take half of this—or maybe all of it,” she said.

“No,” he answered, and then wondered why. A small offering to make up for all the blonds he’d herded into caravan cars? He didn’t know. Then he had a new thought. “There’s something else you might do....”

“I wondered if you’d say that,” she answered with weary cynicism. “Well, come here.” When he walked out of the alley a few minutes later, he was whistling. This had all the makings of a fine morning.

Retreat again, retreat through heavy snow even this far north. Leudast shivered and cursed and tugged at the hem of his white smock as he stumbled along what might have been the road running back toward Cottbus. Algarvian dragons thought it was the road; eggs kept falling out of the sky along with the snow. Every so often, Unkerlanter soldiers would shriek as one of the eggs burst close enough to wound.