Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "I suppose so," he admitted. "But it doesn't mean I want to lead. Besides, we aren't strong enough to do anything much right now."

  "We will be." Obilot sounded more confident than Garivald felt.

  He didn't have to answer. Rain had been falling steadily for a while. Now lightning flashed and thunder bellowed, drowning out anything he might have said. Nobody could do anything much in such weather: the Grelzers couldn't push into the woods, as they had when snow lay on the ground, but the band of irregulars couldn't very well sally forth by squelching through the mud.

  After another peal of thunder rumbled and subsided, Obilot said, "Would you rather be taking orders from Sadoc?"

  "That's not fair," Garivald answered, though he couldn't have said why it wasn't. As a matter of fact, he had no desire whatever to take orders from Sadoc; the idea scared him worse than going up against the Algarvians in battle. But no one had proposed the inept would-be mage to succeed Munderic. No one had proposed Garivald, either, or not exactly. People had just looked at him. They hadn't looked at anyone else, and so the job ended up his.

  But the irregulars couldn't very well stay holed up in the woods forever, either. A fellow named Razalic came up to Garivald while the rain was still falling and said, "You know, boss, we're almost out of food."

  "Aye," Garivald agreed, not altogether happily. "We'd better pay a call on one of those villages outside the forest- maybe on more than one of them." Some of the peasant villages in these parts collaborated with the irregulars and gave them grain and meat. Others had firstmen who worked hand in glove with the Grelzer authorities and with their Algarvian puppet masters.

  But when Garivald led a couple of dozen men out of the woods, he found the peasants from even the friendliest villages imperfectly delighted to see him. He'd expected nothing better. Early spring was the hungry time of year for everybody. Living on the end of the supplies that had brought them through the winter, the peasants had little left over to share with anyone.

  "What do you want us to do?" he asked the firstman of a hamlet named Dargun. "Dry up and blow away and leave you at the mercy of the redheads and the Grelzer dogs who sniff their arses?"

  "Well, no," the firstman answered, but he didn't sound pleased. "Don't want the brats here to starve, either, though."

  Garivald set his hands on his hips. He knew a trimmer when he heard one. "You can't have it both ways," he said. "We can't farm and fight the Algarvians at the same time. That means we've got to get food from somewhere. This is somewhere." Even to him, though, it looked like nowhere. Next to Dargun, Zossen- nothing out of the ordinary as villages went- looked like a metropolis.

  The firstman's sigh was close to a wail. "What I really wish is, things were back the way they were before the war started. Then I wouldn't have to… worry all the time."

  Then I wouldn't have to make hard choices. That, or something close to it, had to be what he meant. And what hard choices was he contemplating? Feeding the irregulars or betraying them to the soldiers who followed false King Raniero? That was one obvious possibility.

  "Everything gets remembered," Garivald remarked, keeping his tone casual. "Aye, that's so- everything gets remembered. When King Swemmel's inspectors come back to this part of the realm, they'll know who did what, even if something goes wrong with us. Somebody will tell them. Or do you think I'm wrong?"

  By the look the firstman gave him, he was certainly loathsome, regardless of whether he was right or wrong. "If the inspectors ever get this far again," the fellow said.

  Munderic would have blustered and bellowed. Garivald pulled a knife from his belt and started cleaning dirt from under his fingernails with the point. "Chance you take," he agreed, doing his best to stay mild. "But if you think the inspectors aren't ever coming back, you never should have started feeding us in the first place."

  The firstman bit his lip. "Curse you!" he muttered. "You don't make things easy, do you? Aye, I want the Algarvians out, but-"

  "But you don't want to do anything to make that happen," Garivald finished, and the firstman bit his lip again. Garivald went on, "You're not fighting. Fair enough- not everybody can fight. But if you won't fight and you won't help the folk who are fighting, what good are you?"

  "Curse you," the firstman repeated, his voice weary, hopeless. "It almost doesn't matter who wins the stinking war. Whoever it is, we lose. Take what you need. You would anyhow." Back before the Algarvians had hauled him out of Zossen, Garivald hadn't felt much different. He'd just wished the war would go away and leave him and his alone. But it hadn't worked like that. It wouldn't work like that here in Dargun, either.

  Along with his irregulars and several pack mules borrowed from the village, he trudged toward the woods. One peasant from Dargun came along, too, to lead the mules back after they weren't needed anymore. The mules were heavily laden with sacks of beans and barley and rye. So were the men- as heavily laden as they could manage and still walk through the mud. Garivald, his back bent and creaking, didn't want to think about what would happen if a Grelzer patrol came across them. Because he didn't want to think about it, he had trouble thinking about anything else.

  More irregulars met them at the edge of the woods and took the sacks the mules carried. The peasant headed off to Dargun. Garivald wondered if he should have kept him behind. Munderic might have. But Garivald didn't see much point to it. Everybody knew the irregulars denned somewhere in this forest. The peasant wouldn't find out where. As far as Garivald could see, that meant he was no great risk.

  When he got back to the clearing the irregulars had reclaimed after the Grelzer raiders left the wood, he expected applause from the men and women who hadn't gone along to bring in the supplies. After all, he'd done what he set out to do. If anything, he'd done better than he expected. They wouldn't have to worry about food again for two or three weeks, maybe even a month.

  And, indeed, people were staring at him and the men he led as they came into the clearing. Among the people staring were a couple of men Garivald had never seen before. He wondered if he ought to shrug the beans off his back and grab for his stick. But the irregulars who hadn't gone out to Dargun seemed to take the newcomers for granted. They wouldn't have if they'd thought the strangers meant trouble.

  Obilot came up to one of those strangers and pointed toward Garivald. "That's our leader," she said, her voice not loud but very clear. A couple of the other irregulars nodded. Garivald straightened with pride despite the weight he carried.

  Both newcomers strode toward him. They had on rock-gray tunics. At first, that meant little to him; a lot of the men in his band still wore the ever more threadbare clothes they'd used while serving in King Swemmel's army. But these tunics weren't threadbare. They weren't particularly clean, but they were new. Garivald didn't need long to realize what that meant. He let the sacks of beans down to the ground and stuck out his hand. "You must be real soldiers!" he exclaimed.

  The two men looked at each other. "He's quick," one of them said.

  "Aye, he is," the other agreed. "That's efficient." But, by the way one of his thick eyebrows rose, he might have thought Garivald too quick for his own good.

  "Wonderful to see real soldiers here," Garivald said. He knew the real fighting still lay far to the west, which led to an obvious question: "What are you doing here?"

  "Being efficient." The Unkerlanter soldiers spoke together. The one who might have thought Garivald too efficient continued, "We've brought you a crystal."

  "Have you, now?" Garivald wondered how efficient that was. "Can I keep it activated without have to sacrifice somebody every month or two, the way a mage had to do back in my home village?"

  Before the soldiers could answer, Sadoc's big head bobbed up and down. "Aye, you can," he said. "There's a power point in these woods- not a very big one, but it's there. If it wasn't, I couldn't work any magecraft at all."

  In Garivald's view, that would have been an improvement, but he didn't say so. Instead, he gave a sharp, quic
k nod and turned back to the soldiers. "All right. I guess I can run a crystal. Now what will I do with it?"

  "Whatever his Majesty's officers tell you to do, by the powers above," answered the one who'd mentioned the crystal. "We're getting these things out to as many bands behind the Algarvian line as we can. The more you people work with the regular army, the more efficient the fight against the redheads becomes."

  That made a certain amount of sense. It also fit in with everything Garivald knew about King Swemmel: he wanted control as firmly in his fists as he could make it. The other Unkerlanter soldier said, "We'll also bring you weapons and medicines whenever we can."

  "Good. I'm glad to hear it. We can use them." Garivald eyed the two regulars. "And you'll tell us what to do whenever you can."

  They looked at each other for a moment. Then they both nodded. "Well, of course," they said together.

  ***

  Bembo walked up to Sergeant Pesaro in the constabulary barracks and said, "Sergeant, I want some leave time."

  Pesaro looked him up and down. "I want all sorts of things I'm not going to get," the fat sergeant said. "After a while, I get over it and go about my business. You'd better do the same, or you'll be sorry."

  "Have a heart!" Bembo exclaimed- not a plea likely to win success when aimed at a superior. "I haven't been back to Tricarico in forever. Nobody's got out of Forthweg in a demon of a long time. It's not fair. It's not right."

  Pesaro opened a drawer of the desk behind which he sat. "Here." He handed Bembo a form- a form for requesting leave, Bembo saw. "Fill this out, give it back to me, and I'll pass it on up the line… and it'll bloody well get ignored, the way every other leave-request form gets ignored."

  "It's not fair!" Bembo repeated.

  "Life's not fair," Pesaro answered. "If you don't believe me, go dye your hair blond and see what looking like a Kaunian gets you. They aren't taking many leave requests from soldiers, and they aren't taking any from constables. But if you want to volunteer to go fight in Unkerlant so you have a little chance of getting leave, I've got a form for that, too." He made as if to reach into the desk drawer again.

  "Never mind," Bembo said hastily. "I feel better about things already." Compared to leave in Tricarico, patrolling the streets of Gromheort wasn't so good. Compared to fighting bloodthirsty Unkerlanter maniacs, it wasn't so bad.

  "There, you see?" Pesaro's round, jowly face radiated as much goodwill as a sergeant's face was ever likely to show. But he didn't keep on beaming for long. The scowl that spread over his countenance was much more in character. "What in blazes are you doing now?"

  "Filling out the leave form," Bembo answered, doing just that. "You never can tell. Lightning might strike."

  "Lightning'll strike you," Pesaro rumbled. But he waited till Bembo finished checking boxes, and he didn't throw the form in the wastebasket by the desk. In fact, he read through it. "What's this?" His coppery eyebrows leaped up. " 'I want to start a family'? You son of a whore, you're not married!"

  "Sergeant, you don't have to be married to do what it takes to start a family." Bembo was the picture- the implausible picture, but the picture nonetheless- of innocence.

  Pesaro snorted. "If you think his Majesty is going to ship you back to Tricarico so you can get your ashes hauled, you've been chewing on Zuwayzi hashish. You know where the brothels are in town."

  "It's not the same in a brothel," Bembo complained.

  "No- you have to pay for it." Pesaro looked down at the form again. His shoulders shook with silent laughter. "Beside, how do you know you'd get laid if you did go back to Tricarico? It's not like you even had a girlfriend there or anything."

  That really hurt, not least because it was true. "Sergeant!" Bembo said reproachfully.

  But Sergeant Pesaro lost patience- not something of which he'd ever had any great supply. "Enough!" he growled. "Too fornicating much! Get your arse out on the street. I'll send the stinking form up the line. Just don't hold your breath waiting for a ley-line caravan ticket back to Tricarico, that's all." To add insult to injury, he started eating one of the flaky, many-layered pastries full of honey and nuts in which Forthweg specialized. He didn't offer Bembo any.

  Stomach gurgling, head full of a sense of injustice that would have been worse still if he hadn't paused to contemplate the idea of going to Unkerlant, Bembo stomped out of the barracks. He couldn't even complain to Oraste; his partner was nursing a sprained ankle, and couldn't walk his beat for a few days. On reflection, Bembo decided that wasn't so bad. He'd met a lot of people more sympathetic than Oraste. Had he met anybody less sympathetic? He wasn't so sure about that.

  Even early in the morning, the day was fine and mild. He didn't mind Gromheort's weather, which wasn't much different from Tricarico's. Now that winter had given way to spring, the rain had pretty much stopped. Before long, he would be sweating and glad of his broad-brimmed hat to keep his face from burning.

  Forthwegians on their way to work and to Gromheort's market square crowded the streets. Men wore knee-length tunics, women garments that reached almost to their ankles. Bembo wondered how many of them were Kaunians in sorcerous disguise. He couldn't do anything about that, not by himself, not unless somebody's features changed right before his eyes.

  Just before he rounded a corner, he heard raucous hoots and jeers. When he did round it, he spied a bright blond head coming his way. As the woman drew closer, he realized the Forthwegians weren't raising an uproar only because she was a Kaunian. Seeing her made him want to raise an uproar himself. She was young and pretty, and wore a tunic of transparent green silk, while her trousers might have been painted onto her hips and haunches, display all the more startling in a land where most- almost all- women didn't try to show off their shapes.

  She stopped in front of Bembo, letting him look her up and down. The way she looked at him was half respectful, half as if he were something nasty she'd found on the sole of her shoe. He tried to keep his voice brisk, but couldn't help coughing a couple of times before saying, "You'll have a pass, I expect."

  "Aye, Constable, of course I do," she answered in good Algarvian- he'd expected that, too. She opened out her belt pouch, took out a folded sheet of paper, and handed it to him.

  "Doldasai daughter of Daukantis," he read, and the Kaunian woman nodded. The pass did indeed allow her out of the Kaunian quarter when and as she chose: for all practical purposes, it made her an honorary Forthwegian. The price she'd paid to get it was obvious enough. "Aye, I've seen you before," Bembo said, handing the paper back to her. He smiled. "I've always been glad when I have, too."

  Doldasai made sure of the precious pass before answering him: "I am a woman for officers, you know." Her voice also held that mixture of respect and contempt. He was an Algarvian, so she couldn't ignore him as she had the jeering Forthwegians, but the pass proved she had powerful protectors. And, he realized a moment later, he was a man- like a lot of courtesans, she likely despised his whole sex.

  He said, "I'm keeping my hands to myself." To prove as much, he clasped them behind his back. "Dressed the way you are, though, you can't expect me not to look."

  "I am a Kaunian in Forthweg," Doldasai said. "How can I possibly expect anything?" She didn't even sound bitter- just very tired.

  Bembo said, "Powers above, if you don't like the life you're living, why don't you get your hands on the charm that makes you people look like Forthwegians? Then you could just disappear."

  Doldasai stared at him, perhaps for the first time noticing the person inside the uniform. "You say this?" she asked. "You say this, a constable of Algarve? You tell me to break the law your own people made?" She dug a finger in one ear, as if to be sure she heard correctly. Her nails were carefully trimmed and painted the color of blood.

  "I did say it, didn't I?" Bembo spoke in some surprise. Maybe, by doing something like that for her, he could take a tiny step toward making up for all the Kaunians he'd forced into their tiny district or simply sent west. Maybe, too, he'd j
ust been staring at the pink-tipped breasts so plainly visible through the thin silk of her tunic. He shrugged. Now that the words were out of his mouth, he made the best of them: "You could do it, you know. Who'd be the wiser?"

  "Curse you," she muttered in classical Kaunian before going back to Bembo's language. "Every time I steel myself to see you Algarvians as nothing but pricks with legs, one of you has to go and remind me you're people, too." She set a hand on his arm, not provocatively but in a friendly way. "Kind of you to say that. Kind of you to think that. But I can't."

  "Why not?" Bembo asked. "Seems like about every third Kaunian around has already done it. More, for all I know."

  Doldasai nodded. "True. But your folk don't hold hostage the parents of most Kaunians in Gromheort. They have way to make sure of my… good behavior. And so, you see, I can't just disappear."

  "That's…" Bembo didn't want to say what he thought it was. He could hardly denounce his own officers to a woman whose looks proclaimed her an enemy of Algarve. What he did say was, "Tell me where they're at and I'll see if I can't get 'em moved into the regular Kaunian district. After that- well, if you look like everybody else around these parts, who's going to ask any questions?"

  Now the Kaunian courtesan frankly gaped. "You would do that… for a blond?" She didn't make him answer; she might have been afraid of the result. She might have been wise to be afraid, too. Instead, she hurried on, "If you do that- if you can do that- I'll give you anything you want." She shrugged. Bembo watched, entranced. She said, "What difference would one more time make, especially if it was the last?"

  "If you think I'll go all noble and say, 'You don't have to do that, sweetheart,' you're daft," Bembo said. Doldasai nodded; she understood such deals. Bembo went on, "Now, where are they?"