Darkness Descending (71 page)

“Ahh . . . Do we really have to do that?” the Forthwegian man asked. Bembo didn’t say anything. The fellow said, “Couldn’t we come to some sort of understanding?”

“What have you got in mind?” Bembo countered. By the time he and Oraste left the block of flats, their belt pouches were full and jingling. If the would-be mage and his dissatisfied customer found themselves unhappy with Algarvian notions of constabulary work, Bembo cared very little. After all, he’d made money on the deal.

Shouldering his axe, Garivald trudged across fields still covered in snow toward the woods out beyond the village of Zossen. Pretty soon, the snow would start to melt. Then the fields would go from frozen to soupy, after which they would dry enough for plowing and sowing. Meanwhile, he still needed firewood.

As he tramped along, he glanced toward a spot in a vegetable plot not far from the house of Waddo, the firstman. Zossen’s crystal lay buried there. Garivald had helped bury it. If Zossen’s Algarvian occupiers ever found out about that, they would bury him. He couldn’t dig up the crystal now, either, because he’d have to do it secretly, and that was impossible. He just had to keep on worrying about it.

“As if I haven’t got enough other things to worry about,” he muttered.

It wasn’t as if the crystal would work now. It wouldn’t, not here in this magic-starved backwater of the Duchy of Grelz, not without blood sacrifices to power it. But it had connected Zossen to Cottbus—which meant it would connect Garivald to Cottbus, and to King Swemmel. He knew what the Algarvians would make of such a connection: they would make an end of it, and of him.

Once he got in among the trees, he breathed easier. He couldn’t see the spot where the crystal lay buried anymore, which took a weight off his mind. And none of the redheads could see him anymore, either, even if they were looking for him. That was also a relief.

For a while, he didn’t have to use the axe much. A lot of big branches had simply fallen off their trees, torn from them by the weight of ice they’d had to bear through the winter. Garivald just needed to trim them and stuff them into the leather sack he was carrying. He found some fine lengths of oak and ash that would burn long and hot in the hearth.

He was trimming the smaller branches from one of those lengths when, all at once, he whirled around, the axe ready to swing. He couldn’t have said what had warned him he wasn’t alone any more, but something had, and, whatever it was, it was right.

Bandits and brigands prowled the woods. That was what the Algarvians called them, anyhow: Unkerlanter soldiers who hadn’t surrendered after Mezentio’s men overran them. Some of them were nothing but bandits; others kept up the fight against the redheads. At first, Garivald thought this fellow came from that latter group. But the soldier—he was plainly a soldier—was too neat and clean for one of those men. And Garivald had never seen a hooded white smock like the one he wore. It was too thin to give any warmth; its only possible purpose was concealment.

Realization smote. “You’re a
real
soldier!” Garivald blurted.

The fellow in the white smock chuckled. “Well, so I am,” he said. “And what are you, friend? For that matter, what village are you from?”

“Zossen,” Garivald answered, pointing back through the trees. Eagerly, he went on, “Are we going to be running the Algarvians out of here soon?”

To his disappointment, the Unkerlanter soldier shook his head. “No such luck, pal. I squeezed through the redheads’ lines for a look around, that’s all. How big a garrison have they got in your village?”

“Just a squad that’s been there since they took the place,” Garivald said. “But they’ve had other men coming through—a lot of ’em moving west lately.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” the soldier said with a grimace. “The hope was that they’d run out of men, and that we’d be able to roll ‘em up and clean ‘em out before the good weather comes back.”

“Powers above make it so!” Garivald exclaimed. “Powers above make our powers grow. Powers above make the redheads go.” More and more these days, he thought in doggerel. Sometimes it came out of his mouth, too.

“Well, I have to tell you I don’t think it’s going to happen,” the Unkerlanter in the white smock said. “The cursed Algarvians didn’t quite shatter the way we hoped they would. We’ve got a lot more fighting to do before we’re finally rid of ‘em.”

“Too bad,” Garivald said, though that sounded likely to him, too.

“And you’re the fellow who makes songs, aren’t you?” the soldier said. “I’ve heard about you.”

“Have you?” Garivald didn’t know what to think of that. His whole life in a peasant village had taught him that drawing notice was dangerous. But, if no one ever heard his songs, if no one ever played them, what good were they?

“Aye, I have,” the soldier said. “That’s one of the reasons I came this far east—because I’ve heard of you, I mean. Keep writing them, that’s what the officers say. They’re worth a regiment of men against the Algarvians.”

Garivald’s heart thudded in his chest. He didn’t think he’d ever felt prouder. “A regiment of men,” he murmured.
“My
songs, worth a regiment of men?” He wanted to make a song about that, even if he’d only be able to sing it to himself. Anyone else, even Annore, would laugh.

“Well, I’m on my way now,” the soldier said, turning his face back toward the east. “Have to see if I can make it past the redheads going the other way. Shouldn’t be too hard; they still don’t know what to do in snow.” Off he went, as used to the snowshoes on his feet as if he’d been born wearing them.

“Worth a regiment of men,” Garivald repeated once more. But then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t so glad the Unkerlanter in white had come looking for him. If that fellow knew where to find the peasant who made songs, how long would it be before the Algarvians figured it out, too?

He finished filling the leather sack with wood. Then, bent almost double under its weight, he staggered back toward Zossen. As he neared the village, he saw the man he least wanted to see. And, worse luck, Waddo saw him, too, saw him and waved and limped toward him, putting a lot of weight on his stick.

“Hello, Garivald!” the village firstman exclaimed, as if he hadn’t seen the other peasant for the past ten years.

“Hello,” Garivald answered warily. He and Waddo were bound together because of the buried crystal. He wished with all his heart they weren’t. He didn’t trust Waddo; the firstman had been King Swemmel’s hand in Zossen, and had always sucked up to inspectors and impressers when they came to the village.

Of course, the Algarvians despised and harassed Waddo for that very reason. Here and there in the Duchy of Grelz, they’d hanged firstmen who did things that didn’t suit them. Garivald didn’t suppose he wanted to see Waddo dancing at the end of a rope. On the otlier hand, Garivald had just thought about how Waddo had maintained his tiny authority by aiding those who had more power. If he decided to bend the knee to the redheads’ puppet King Raniero rather than to King Swemmel, how could he best ingratiate himself with the Algarvian garrison?

By throwing me to the wolves,
Garivald thought. As if he were a mage, a wolf began to howl, somewhere off in the distance. Every few winters, Zossen or some nearby village would lose somebody to a hungry pack that came prowling close. It hadn’t happened this year.
No,
Garivald thought.
This year, we have Algarvians instead. That’s worse.

Waddo heard the wolf, too, and grimaced. “I hope he finds a whole company of frozen redheads to eat.”

“Aye,” Garivald said. He agreed with Waddo—he hoped the wolves found a whole regiment of frozen redheads—but wished he didn’t have to answer the first-man at all. Anything he said gave the other man a greater hold on him.

He needed a moment to realize he now had a greater hold on Waddo, too. Realizing it brought him little joy. To use that hold, he would have to betray Waddo to the Algarvians. He couldn’t imagine anything that would make him want to do that. No matter how much he despised the firstman, he loathed the invaders far more.

“May next spring and summer be better,” Waddo said.

“Aye,” Garivald repeated. He started to look back toward the woods in which he’d met the Unkerlanter soldier, but checked himself before the motion was well begun. He didn’t want Waddo wondering why his eyes went that way. He revealed as little to the firstman as a fellow cheating on his wife told her.

Waddo limped closer. He spoke in a hoarse whisper: “When the ground gets soft, we’ll dig up that crystal and get it out of here.”

“Aye,” Garivald said for the third time, now with real enthusiasm. “The farther, the better, as far as I’m concerned.” Getting the crystal away from Zossen would reduce the danger that he’d wind up on the end of a rope.

“Maybe,” Waddo said softly, “just maybe, we can even activate it again and get word back to Cottbus of what’s going on in these parts.”

Now Garivald stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. “Whose throat will you slit to power it?” he demanded. “Not mine, by the powers above.”

“No, of course not yours,” the firstman said, twisting his fingers into the gesture people used to turn aside words of evil omen.

“Whose, then?” Garivald persisted with peasant common sense. “It’d have to be someone’s. We’re not close to a ley line. We’re not close to a power point, either. They’re few and far between in these parts.”

“I know. I know.” Waddo sighed. “Maybe we could draw enough life energy from sacrificing animals. They used to do that in the old days, if you believe the stories the grannies tell.”

“We might, I suppose.” But Garivald remained unconvinced. “If Cottbus thought we could power a crystal with animal sacrifices, why did they send us captives to kill and guards to kill ‘em to keep the thing going?”

The firstman sighed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “All right, maybe we can’t make it work. But we can get it out of here and bury it in the woods somewhere so the Algarvians don’t stumble over it.”

“That would be good,” Garivald said. “I already told you that would be good. I don’t want the cursed thing around here anymore than you do.” Unlike Waddo, he’d never wanted the crystal in Zossen. He’d liked living in the middle of nowhere. That let him pass his life with only minimal interference from the grasping hands of everyone who served his king.

But the Algarvians had grasping hands, too. And they weren’t just trying to seize his crops. They wanted his land and his village and everything he and everybody else had. They wanted Unkerlant, all of it. He could see that. Anyone who couldn’t. . . Anyone who couldn’t had to believe Raniero was the rightful King of Grelz.

Once the crystal got out to the woods, if it did, he might be able to let some of the men the Algarvians called brigands know it was there. They could likely find a way to use it. Maybe they would cut a few redheads’ throats. Or maybe they would cut the throats of a few Unkerlanter traitors instead.

He nodded. One way or another, he judged, they could do the job. “Aye,” he said to Waddo. “When the ground turns soft, we’ll dig it up and get it into the woods. Then we won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
But the Algarvians will,
he thought.

Raunu swung the hoe, lopped the stalk off a weed in Merkela’s herb garden, and chuckled. “I’m getting good at this business,” the veteran sergeant said. “Never thought I would. I was a town boy. My mother made sausages, and my father hawked ‘em through the streets. So did I, before I got sucked into the army in the middle of the Six Years’ War.”

Skarnu was also weeding. “And you stayed in.”

“That’s right.” Raunu nodded. He was more than twenty years older than Skarnu, but probably stronger and certainly tougher. “Once the fighting got done, it was easier work for better pay than I’d had before.”

“Easier than farm work?” Skarnu asked, beheading a weed himself.

“In between wars, sure,” Raunu answered. “And I was good at it, too, by the powers above. It took me awhile, but I got as high up as a fellow like me was ever going to get in the army.”

As a commoner was ever going to get,
he meant. He’d spent thirty years serving Valmiera, and had risen to sergeant and no higher. Skarnu had joined the army with no experience and immediately became a captain. But then, he was a marquis. As he wouldn’t have before the war, he wondered if the rank and file of the Valmieran army would have fought harder against Algarve had a few very able men—his mind reached no further than that—had the chance to become officers.

Merkela came out of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She surveyed the weeding efforts of the two soldiers-turned-farmers with something less than full approval. Taking the hoe from Skarnu, she slaughtered a couple of weeds he and Raunu had both missed. Then she returned it with a flourish, like a drill sergeant showing a couple of raw recruits how a stick ought to be handled.

Raunu snickered. Skarnu felt faintly embarrassed. “I’ll never get the hang of farm work,” he muttered.

“You’re better than you were when you first came here,” Merkela said: an endorsement of sorts, but not a ringing one. Then her whole manner changed. Leaning forward, she asked, “Are we going to do it tonight?”

Raunu snickered again, in a different way. Skarnu knew Merkela didn’t mean taking her up to her bedchamber and making love to her. He might do that, too, but only afterwards. “Aye,” he said. “We are. People have to know that collaborating with the Algarvians has a price.”

“Anyone who has anything to do with the Algarvians ought to pay the price,” Merkela declared.

Skarnu wondered about that. Where did you draw the line between simply going on with your daily life and collaborating with the redheads? Was a tailor a collaborator if he made the occupiers tunics and kilts? Was the chap who steered a ley-line caravan a collaborator if he took Algarvians around Priekule? Maybe not. But what if he took them in the direction of fighting? What then? Questions were easy, answers less so.

Merkela didn’t care to look so hard. She had her answers. Sometimes Skarnu envied her certainty. Seeing the world in black and white—or redhead and blond—was simple, and required next to no thought. He shrugged. In broad outline, they agreed. He knew who the enemy was, sure enough.