“… So we made the feint from the front, and when the Unkerlanters bit on it, we hit ‘em from behind,” one scrawny captive was telling another. “We cleaned ‘em out of that village neat as you please.”
His pal nodded. “Aye, that’s good. Those whoresons never did pay enough attention to anything that wasn’t right under their noses.”
One of them had two bars under his wound badge, the other three. They went on hashing over the fights they’d been through as if those battles still meant something, as if other Algarvian soldiers remained in the field to take advantage of what they’d so painfully learned. Lurcanio wondered how long the war would stay uppermost in their thoughts. He wondered if it would ever be anything but uppermost.
I’m lucky, he thought. I was only in the field for the early campaigns, and then at the end. In between, I had those four civilized years in Priekule. It wasn’t so much that his body had come through unscarred, though he was anything but sorry to have escaped the enormous grinding battles in the west: a great many men had gone from Valmiera to fight in Unkerlant, and precious few ever came back again. But Lurcanio hadn’t had the war branded on his spirit to the same degree as most of his fellow captives.
He shrugged an elaborate, Algarvian shrug. I don’t think I have, anyway. He’d spent most of his nights in Priekule in his own bed or, more pleasantly, in Krasta’s. Instead of warring with a stick, he’d fought his battles against the Valmieran irregulars with a pen.
And I won most of them, he thought. The kingdom had stayed quiet, or quiet enough, under Algarve’s heel till the situation in the west and in Jelgava grew too desperate to let the occupiers stay. For a moment, he took pride in that. But then he shrugged again. What difference did it make? No matter how well he’d done his job, his kingdom had lost the war. That mattered. The other didn’t.
Two days later, he was summoned from the ranks of the captives at morning roll call. His wasn’t the only name the Lagoan guard called out. About a dozen men, most of them officers but with two or three sergeants among them, stepped forward.
Major Simao came out of the administrative center. “You men have been ordered remanded to Valmieran custody for investigation of murders and other acts of cruelty and barbarism inflicted on the said kingdom during its occupation by Algarve,” Simao droned, his mumbling, nasal Lagoan accent making the bureaucratic announcement even harder to follow.
But Lurcanio understood what it was all too likely to mean. “I protest!” he said. “How can we hope to get a fair investigation from the Valmierans? They want to kill us under form of law.”
“How many of them did you kill without bothering with form of law?” Simao said coldly. “Your protest is denied.”
Lurcanio hadn’t expected much else. But the speed-and the relish-with which Simao rejected his appeal were illuminating. He’d known the kingdoms allied against his own hated Algarvians. Seeing that hatred in action, though, showed him how deep it ran.
As the Lagoans marched the captives out of the camp and toward wagons that would, Lurcanio supposed, take them to a ley-line caravan depot, one of the sergeants said, “Well, we’re futtered royal and proper. Only question is whether they blaze us or hang us or drop us in the stewpot.”
“Valmierans don’t do that,” Lurcanio said. But then he added, “Of course, by the look of things, they might make an exception for us.”
“That’s right.” The sergeant nodded. “But I’ll tell you something else, sir: they can only get me once, and I got a lot more’n one o’ those stinking blond bastards.”
“Good for you,” Lurcanio said. Algarvian bravado ran deep. He hoped he would be able to keep it up himself when he needed it most.
Sure enough, the wagon ride-with as many Lagoan soldiers as captives: a compliment of sorts-took them to a small depot. The soldiers stood watch over them till an eastbound ley-line caravan came up and stopped. One of the cars had bars across the windows. A Lagoan guard favored the captives with a nasty smile. “Like the ones you used for Kaunians you killed, eh?” he said in Algarvian, a comparison Lurcanio could have done without.
After Lurcanio and the other captives and most of the guards boarded the caravan car, it glided away. The bars didn’t keep Lurcanio from peering avidly out the windows. As the caravan drew near the border with Valmiera, he saw long columns of redheaded, kilted men and women and children trudging westward, some pushing handcarts, some with duffels slung over their shoulders, a lucky handful with a horse or a donkey to bear their burdens.
That Algarvian-speaking guard said, “The Valmierans throw you whoresons out of the Marquisate of Rivaroli. No more trouble there. No more treason there, either.”
Algarvians had lived in Rivaroli for more than a thousand years. Even when Valmiera annexed the marquisate after the Six Years’ War, no one had talked of expelling them. But a generation and more’ had gone by since then. These were new times-hard times, too.
At a stop by the border, the Lagoan guards left the caravan car. Blonds in trousers took their place. “Now you get what is coming to you,” one of them said, proving he too spoke Algarvian. His laugh was loud and unpleasant.
“Go ahead. Have your joke,” the irrepressible sergeant said. “I bet you ran away from the fighting, too, just like all your pals.” The Valmieran spoke in a low voice to his comrades. Four of them beat the sergeant bloody while the rest held sticks on the other Algarvian captives to make sure they didn’t interfere.
“Any other funny men?” the guard asked. No one said a word.
On through Valmiera glided the ley-line caravan. In the early afternoon, the landscape started looking familiar to Lurcanio. Before long, he saw the famous skyline of Priekule. I enjoyed myself here, aye, he thought. All the same, I’d sooner have kept the memories.
Krasta paid as little attention to news-sheet hawkers as she could. When she came to the Boulevard of Horsemen, she came to spend money, to get away from her bastard son, and to show herself off. She had her wig all done up in curls, in the style of the glory days of the Kaunian Empire. A lot of Valmieran women wore their hair that way these days, perhaps to affirm their Kaunianity after the Algarvian occupation. The wig was hot and uncomfortable, but her own hair hadn’t grown out far enough for her to appear in public without its help. Better-far better-discomfort than humiliation.
Hawkers who worked the Boulevard of Horsemen were supposed to be discreet and quiet, so as not to disturb the well-heeled women and men who shopped there. Such rules had gone downhill since the Algarvians pulled out, though. These days, the men who waved the sheets on street corners were about as raucous here as anywhere else in Priekule.
“Redheads coming back for justice!” one of them yelled as Krasta came out of a clothier’s. During the war, the dummies in the window had worn some of the shortest kilts in town. These days, of course, they were all patriotically trousered. The vendor thrust a sheet in Krasta’s face. “It’s our turn now!”
She started to wave him away in annoyance, but then checked herself. “Let me have one.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought, or even looked at, a news sheet, and had to ask, “How much?”
“Five coppers, lady,” the fellow answered apologetically, adding, “Everything’s up since the war.”
“Is it?” Krasta paid as little attention to prices as she could. She gave him a small silver coin, took the news sheet and her change, and sat down on a local ley-line caravan bench to read the story.
It was what the hawker had said it was: an account of how a dozen Algarvians who’d helped rule Valmiera for King Mezentio were being brought back to Priekule to stand before Valmieran judges and answer for their brutality and atrocities. It is to be hoped, the reporter wrote, that the vicious brutes will get no more mercy than they gave.
“That’s right.” Krasta nodded vigorously.
She had to turn to an inside page to find out what she really wanted to know: the names of the Algarvians coming back to Priekule. Those didn’t seem to
matter to the fellow writing the story: as far as he was concerned, one Algarvian was as good-or rather, as bad-as another. At last, though, the reporter came to the point. Krasta shook her head when he called an Algarvian brigadier a fiend and a known pervert, a man who took pleasure in killing. She’d met the officer in question at several feasts and dances. Maybe he liked boys, but he liked women, too; he’d pinched her behind and rubbed himself against her like a dog in heat.
“What do reporters know?” she muttered.
But then she saw the next name, the name she’d wondered if she would find. With the previously mentioned officer is his henchman, the vile and lecherous Colonel Lurcanio, who made our capital a place of terror for four long years. Lurcanio openly boasts of the child he sired on Marchioness Krasta, from whose mansion at the edge of the capital he leaped out like a wolf on honest citizens.
Krasta read that twice, then furiously crumpled up the news sheet and flung it in a trash bin. “Powers below eat him!” she snarled. Had Lurcanio stood before her and not a panel of judges, he wouldn’t have lasted long. She’d thought him a gentleman, and one of the things a gentleman didn’t do was tell.
He hadn’t just told-he’d told the news sheets. People who knew her of course knew her baby had hair the wrong color. Some of them had cut her- including some who’d been at least as cordial to the occupiers as she had. But this… in the news sheets. . Every tradesman she’d ever dealt with would know she’d had an Algarvian’s bastard.
Heels clicking on the slates of the sidewalk, she hurried down the Boulevard of Horsemen to the cross street where her carriage waited. When she got there, she found her new driver reading the news sheet. She wished she still had the one who drank to while away the time. “Put down that horrible rag,” she snapped.
“Aye, milady,” the driver said, but he carefully folded the sheet so he could go on reading it later. “Shall I take you home now?” He spoke as if certain of the answer.
But Krasta shook her head. “No. Drive me to the central gaol.”
“To the central gaol, milady?” The driver sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“You heard me,” Krasta said. “Now get moving!” She sprang into the carriage, slamming the door behind her.
He took her where she wanted to go. If he hadn’t, she would have fired him on the spot and either engaged a new driver or tried to take the carriage back to the mansion herself. She was convinced she could do it: drivers certainly weren’t very bright, and they had no trouble, so how hard could it be?
Luckily for her-she’d never driven a carriage in her life-she didn’t have to find out. “Here you are, milady,” the driver said, stopping in front of a fortresslike building not far from the royal palace.
Krasta descended from the carriage and swarmed toward the gaol, an invading army of one. “What do you want?” asked one of the men at the entrance.
Were they constables? Soldiers? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. “I am the Marchioness Krasta,” she declared. “I must see one of the nasty Algarvians you have locked up here.”
Both the guards bowed. Neither of them opened the formidably stout door, though. “Uh, sorry, milady,” said the fellow who’d spoken before. “Nobody can do that without the warder’s permission.”
“Then fetch the warder here at once.” Krasta’s voice rose to a shout: “At once, do you hear me?”
If they’d read the news sheet, if they’d paid attention to her name, they might not have been so willing to do as she said. But Valmierans were used to yielding to their nobles. One of them left. He returned a few minutes later with a fellow in a fancier uniform. “May I help you, milady?” the warder asked.
“I must see Colonel Lurcanio, one of your Algarvian captives,” Krasta said, as she had before.
“For what purpose?” the warder asked.
“To ask him how he dares have the nerve to tell so many nasty, lying stories about me,” Krasta said. That the stories might be nasty but weren’t lies had entirely slipped out of her memory.
“What was your name again?” the warder inquired. Fuming, Krasta told him. “Marchioness Krasta. .” the man repeated. “Oh, you’re the one who.. ” By the way his expression sharpened, Krasta could tell he’d read the day’s news sheet himself. “You say these are lies?’ he asked.
“I certainly do say that,” Krasta answered. Saying it, of course, didn’t mean it had to be true. She dimly remembered that distinction.
The warder didn’t note it. He bowed to her and said, “All right. You come with me.”
She came. The place was grimier and smellier than she’d imagined. The warder led her to a room with two chairs separated by a fine but strong wire mesh. To her annoyance, he not only made her leave her handbag outside but also turn out her pockets and put whatever she had in them on a tray. “I’m not going to give this Algarvian anything except a piece of my mind,” she said.
With a shrug, the warder said, “These are the rules.” Against the rules, plainly, the powers above themselves contended in vain. Even Krasta, who was anything but shy about arguing regardless of whether or not she had a case, forbore to do so here. The warder said, “You wait. Someone will bring him.”
Krasta waited longer than she cared to. Staring at the wire mesh made her feel imprisoned herself. She drummed her fingers on her trouser leg, trying to fight down her annoyance. After about a quarter of an hour-it seemed much longer to Krasta-two guards brought in Lurcanio. They shoved him toward the chair on the far side of the mesh. “Here’s the whoreson,” one of them said as the other slammed the door.
Instead of sitting down on the hard chair, Lurcanio bowed to Krasta. “Good day, milady,” he said in his musically accented Valmieran. “Have you come to gloat, or perhaps to throw nuts to the monkey in the cage? I could use the nuts. They do not feed me very well-which, considering how you Valmierans stuff yourselves, is doubly a crime.”
“How dare you tell the news sheets you fathered my boy?” Krasta demanded. “How dare you?”
“Well, did I not?” Lurcanio asked. “I surely had more chance than anybody else. But did Valnu or whoever get there at the right time?”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Krasta said, suddenly recalling little Gainibu’s unfortunate hair color. Lurcanio laughed out loud, which only infuriated her further. “How dare you say it?”
Lurcanio gave back a serious answer, perhaps the most annoying thing he might have done: “Well, for one thing, it is-or it appears to be-the truth.”
“What has that got to do with anything?” Krasta yelped, very conscious of the difference between what was said and what was.
“And, for another”-Lurcanio went on as if she hadn’t spoken-”I can still strike a blow of sorts by telling the truth here. You Valmierans are going to be as hard on me as you know how; I doubt that not at all. Why shouldn’t I make things as difficult as I can for you?” Malicious amusement sparked in his cat-green eyes.
Revenge Krasta understood. She didn’t care to have it aimed at her. “It’s not gentlemanly!” she exclaimed.
“I am not in a gentlemanly predicament, you stupid little twat,” Lurcanio snapped. “You were pleasant in bed, but you haven’t the brains the powers above gave a hedgehog. I fought a war here in Priekule, and they intend to murder me under form of law on account of the way I fought it. I cannot do much to stop them, either. Now, have you got that through your thick skull?”
“Futter you!” Krasta said shrilly.
“I would tell you to go right ahead, my former dear, but the mesh is too narrow to make it practical,” Lurcanio replied.
“Powers below eat you, you put my name in the news sheets,” Krasta said.
“And when have you ever complained about that?” Lurcanio asked.
“Futter you!” Krasta said again. This time, she didn’t wait for an answer, but flounced out of the visiting chamber. When she slammed the door behind her, an earthquake might have hit the building. The warder, who
was waiting in the anteroom, jumped. “Get me out of this horrible place,” Krasta snarled, snatching up her chattels.
The warder started to say something, looked at her, and thought better of it. He led her back to the entrance. He did dare a, “Goodbye,” then.
Krasta ignored him. She stalked back to her driver. “Take me home this instant-this instant, do you hear me?” she said. The driver, sensibly, obeyed without a word.
Bembo threw away his cane and stood up on his own two legs in the middle of his flat. Actually, judging by what his kilt displayed, he stood up on about a leg and a half. The one that had been broken in Eoforwic was still only a little more than half as thick as the other. But he did stand, and he didn’t fall over.
“How about that, sweetheart?” he said to Saffa.
She looked up from her baby, who was nursing, to clap her hands. Seeing the baby at her breast never failed to make Bembo jealous, even though he knew how foolish that was: the baby wasn’t interested for the same reasons as his. “That’s good,” she said. “Pretty soon, you’ll be able to run like the wind.”
“Well. .” Bembo looked down at his portly form. He’d lost a good deal of weight since getting hurt, and he was still portly. I might be able to run like a slow breeze one of these days, he thought. That was about as much speed as he had in him. He said, “Maybe I will be able to start walking a beat before too long. Having some money coming in again would be good.”
“Aye.” Saffa nodded. Her little boy was falling asleep; her nipple slipped out of his mouth. She raised the baby to her shoulder to burp him, then set her tunic to rights. As she patted the baby’s back, she went on, “You know something?”
“I know all kinds of things,” Bembo said. “What have you got in mind?”
Saffa made a face at him. “I was going to say, you’re nowhere near as big a bastard as I thought you were before I let you get lucky. Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut.”
“Maybe you should,” Bembo agreed. She made another face. He laughed. “You asked for that.”
Out of the Darkness d-6 Page 50
