Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  A couple of days later, in casual tones, Ealstan said to Pybba, "Occurs to me you're missing something."

  "Oh?" The pottery magnate raised a shaggy eyebrow. "What's that? Whatever it is, you'll tell me. You're the one who knows everything, after all."

  Ealstan's cheeks heated. He hoped his beard kept Pybba from seeing him flush. But flushed or not, he stubbornly plowed ahead: "You want to do the redheads the most harm you can, right?"

  "Not much point to kicking 'em halfway in the balls, is there?" his boss returned, and laughed at his own joke.

  Ealstan chuckled, too, but went on, "Well, then, you are missing something. Who hates Mezentio's men more than anybody?"

  Pybba jabbed a thumb at his own thick chest. "I do, by the powers above."

  But Ealstan shook his head. "You don't hate them worse than the Kaunians do," he said. "And I haven't seen you doing anything to get the blonds to work alongside us Forthwegians. What they owe the Algarvians…"

  "Kaunians? Blonds?" The pottery magnate might never have heard the names before. He scowled. "Weren't for the miserable Kaunians, we wouldn't have got into the war in the first place."

  "Oh, by the powers above!" Ealstan clapped a hand to his forehead. "The Algarvians have been saying the same thing in their broadsheets ever since they beat us. Do you want to sound like them?"

  "They're whoresons, aye- the Algarvians, I mean- but that doesn't make 'em wrong all the time," Pybba said. "I'd sooner trust my own kind, thank you very much."

  "Kaunians are people, too," Ealstan said. His father had been saying that for as long as he could remember: long enough to make him take it for granted, anyway. But even if he took it for granted, he'd already seen that few of his fellow Forthwegians did.

  Pybba proved not to be one of those few. He patted Ealstan on the back and said, "I know you used to cast accounts for that half-breed musician. I suppose that's why you think the way you do. But most Kaunians are nothing but trouble, and you can take that to the bank. We'll kick the Algarvians out on their arses, we'll bring King Penda back, and everything will be fine."

  Most Kaunians are nothing but trouble, and you can take that to the bank. What would Pybba say if he knew Ealstan's wife, whom he'd met as Thelberge, was really named Vanai? He can't find out, Ealstan thought- an obvious truth if ever there was one.

  "Now get yourself back to work," Pybba said. "I'll do the thinking around here. You just cast the accounts."

  "Right," Ealstan said tightly. He almost threw his job in the pottery magnate's face then and there. But if he left now, Pybba would realize his reasons had to do with Kaunians. He couldn't afford that. As he went back to the ledgers, tears of rage and frustration made the columns of numbers blur for a moment. He blinked till they went away. He'd found the underground, and now he found he didn't fit into it. That hurt almost too much to bear.

  When he got home that evening, he poured out his troubles to Vanai. "No, you can't quit," his wife said, "even if Pybba has no use for Kaunians. If he has his way, people will despise us- the Forthwegians will, anyway. If the Algarvians win, we won't be around to despise. That makes things pretty simple, doesn't it?"

  "It's not right," Ealstan insisted.

  Vanai kissed him. "Of course it's not. But life hasn't been fair to us since the Kaunian Empire fell. Why should it start now? If Pybba and King Penda win, at least we get the chance to go on."

  What Ealstan wanted to do was get drunk and stay drunk. And if that doesn't prove I'm a Forthwegian, what would? he thought. He didn't do it. He drank less wine with his supper than usual, in fact. But the temptation remained.

  He felt Pybba's eye on him all the next morning. He went about his work as stolidly as he could, and made no waves whatever. In the face of Vanai's relentless pragmatism, he didn't see what else he could do. When he didn't come out with anything radical, Pybba relaxed a little.

  And then, a couple of days later, Ealstan jerked as if stung by a wasp. He looked around for Pybba. When he caught the pottery magnate's eye, Pybba was the one who flinched. "You've got that crazy look on your face again," he rumbled. "Mad Ealstan the Bookkeeper, that's you. Or that's what they'd've called you if you lived in King Plegmund's time, anyway."

  Thinking of King Plegmund's time only made Ealstan scowl, no matter how glorious it had been for Forthweg. To him, Plegmund's time meant Plegmund's Brigade, and Plegmund's Brigade meant his cousin Sidroc, who'd killed his brother. Thinking of Plegmund's Brigade only convinced him his idea would work. He said, "Can we go into your office?"

  "This had better be good," Pybba warned. Ealstan nodded. With obvious reluctance, his boss headed for the office. Ealstan followed him. Pybba slammed the door behind them. "Go ahead. You'd best knock me right out of my boots."

  "I don't know whether I can or not," Ealstan said. "But I don't think we're doing everything with magecraft that we ought to be."

  "You're right," the pottery magnate agreed. "I should have turned you into a paperweight or something else that can't talk a long time ago."

  Ignoring that, Ealstan plowed ahead: "A mage could write something rude on one recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund's Brigade and then use the laws of similarity and contagion to make the same thing show up on every broadsheet all over Eoforwic."

  "We are doing some of that kind of thing," Pybba said.

  "Not enough," Ealstan returned. "Not nearly enough."

  Pybba plucked at his beard. "It'd be hard on the mage if the redheads caught him," he said at last.

  "It'd be hard on any of us if the redheads caught him," Ealstan answered. "Are we lawn-bowling with the Algarvians or fighting a war against them?"

  The pottery magnate grunted. "Lawn-bowling, eh? All right, Mad Ealstan, get your arse back to your stool and start going over my books again."

  That was all he would say. Ealstan wanted to push him harder, but decided he'd already done enough, or perhaps too much. He went back to the books. Pybba kept on calling him Mad Ealstan, which earned him some odd looks from the other men who worked for the magnate. Ealstan didn't let that worry him. If you weren't a little bit crazy, you couldn't work for Pybba very long.

  When the next payday came, Pybba said, "Here. Make sure this goes on the books," and gave him another bonus. It was less than he'd got after being asked to look the other way about the discrepancies he'd found in Pybba's accounts, but it was a good deal better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

  A few days later, the Algarvians plastered a new recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund's Brigade all over Eoforwic. A FIGHT TO THE FINISH! it said. Two days after that, all those broadsheets suddenly sported a crude modification: A FIGHT FOR THE FINISHED! The Algarvians had paid Forthwegian laborers to put them up. Now they paid Forthwegians to take them down again.

  "Aye, Mad Ealstan the Bookkeeper, by the powers above," Pybba said. Ealstan didn't say anything at all. He didn't say anything when Pybba gave him one more bonus the following payday, either. Nobody but him noticed the bonus, and nobody noticed his silence, either. Most people were silent around Pybba most of the time, and only exceptions got noticed. Ealstan knew what he'd done, and so did the magnate. Nothing else mattered.

  ***

  Skarnu settled into a furnished room in the little town of Jurbarkas with the air of a man who'd known worse. When the silver in his pockets began to run low, he took odd jobs for the farmers around the town. He quickly proved he knew what he was doing, so he got more work than a lot of the drifters who looked for it in the market square.

  Getting out into the countryside let him visit the farm near Jurbarkas run by a man who worked with the underground. After visiting, Skarnu wished he hadn't. Those fields grew rank and untended; the farmhouse stood empty. Three words had been daubed on the door in whitewash now rain streaked and fading: NIGHT AND FOG. Wherever the farmer had gone, he wouldn't be coming back. Skarnu hurried back to town as fast as he could.

  Jurbarkas wasn't far from Pavilosta. That thought kept echoing and reechoing in S
karnu's mind. If Merkela hadn't had her baby- his baby- yet, she would any day now. But if he showed himself around those parts, he would be recognized. Even if the redheads didn't catch him, he might give them the excuse they needed to write NIGHT AND FOG on Merkela's door. He didn't want to do that, no matter what.

  He wondered if Amatu would come after him. But as day followed day and nothing happened along those lines, he began to feel easier there. The returned exile was somebody else's worry now.

  He did wonder a little that no one from the underground tried to get hold of him. But even that didn't worry him so much. He'd spent three years sticking pins in the Algarvians. He was willing- even eager- to let somebody else have a turn.

  He stood in the market square at sunrise one morning. Despite the mug of hot tea he'd bought from a small eatery there, he shivered a little. Fall was in the air, even if the leaves hadn't started turning yet. Farmers came into town early, though, to get a full day's work from whomever they hired there and to keep from losing too much time themselves.

  A fellow who wasn't a farmer walked up to Skarnu and said, "Hello, Pavilosta."

  Only a man from the underground would have called him by the name of the hamlet near which he'd lived. "Well, well," he answered. "Hello yourself, Zarasai." That was also the name of a town, not a person. He didn't know the other man's real name, and hoped the fellow didn't know his. "What brings you here?"

  "Somebody got wind that you were in these parts, even if you have been lying low," answered the other fellow from the underground. "I just came around to tell you lying low's a real good idea these days."

  "Oh?" Skarnu said.

  "That's right." The man from Zarasai nodded. "We've got trouble on the loose. Some madman is leaking to the redheads, leaking like a cursed sieve."

  Skarnu rolled his eyes. "Just what we need. As if life weren't hard enough already." That got him another nod from the fellow who called himself Zarasai. Skarnu asked, "Who is the whoreson? Are we trying to kill him?"

  "Of course we're trying to kill him. You think we're bloody daft?" "Zarasai" answered. "But the Algarvians are taking good care of him. If I were in their boots, curse them, I'd take good care of him, too. As for who he is, I haven't got a name to give him, but they say he's one of the fancy-trousers nobles who came back across the Strait of Valmiera from Lagoas to fight Mezentio's men. Then he changed his mind. He should have stayed down there in Setubal, powers below eat him."

  "Powers below eat me," Skarnu exclaimed. The man from Zarasai raised a questioning eyebrow. Skarnu said, "That's got to be Amatu. The blundering idiot kept trying to get himself and everybody with him- including me- killed. He couldn't help acting like one of those nobles who want commoners to bow and scrape before 'em- that's what he was. Is. We finally fought about it. I gave him a good thumping, and we went our separate ways. I came here… and I guess he went to the redheads."

  "I can see how you wouldn't have had any use for him," "Zarasai" said, "but he's singing like a nightingale now. We've lost at least half a dozen good men on account of him. And even a good man'll sing sometimes, if the Algarvians work on him long enough and hard enough. So we'll lose more, too, no doubt about it."

  "Curse him," Skarnu repeated. "He wasn't important enough in the underground to suit him. He's important to the Algarvians, all right, the way a hook's important to a fisherman."

  "Zarasai" said, "Sooner or later, he'll run out of names and places. After that, Mezentio's men will probably give him what he deserves."

  "They couldn't possibly." Skarnu didn't try to hide his bitterness.

  "Mm, maybe not," the other underground leader said. "But you're safe here, I think. If you parted from him, he won't know about this place, right? Sit tight, and we'll do our best to ride things out."

  "I wish the redheads had caught him and not Lauzdonu over in Ventspils," Skarnu said. "He's not a coward. I don't think he would have had much to say if they'd just captured him. But he's a spoiled brat. He couldn't have everything he wanted from us, and so he went to get it from the Algarvians. Aye, he'd sing for them, sure enough."

  "You've given us a name," "Zarasai" said. "That'll help. When we listen to the emanations from the Algarvians' crystals, maybe we'll hear it, so we'll know what they're doing with him. Maybe he'll have an accident. Aye, maybe he will. Here's hoping he does, anyhow." He slipped away. Skarnu didn't watch him go. The less Skarnu knew about anyone else's comings and goings, the less the Algarvians could tear out of him if they caught him and squeezed.

  Lie low. Sit tight. Ride it out. At first, that all seemed good advice to Skarnu. But then he started to wonder, and to worry. He'd spent a lot of time with Amatu before they had their break. How much had he said about Merkela? Had he named her? Had he mentioned Pavilosta? If he had, would Amatu remember?

  That seemed only too likely. And if he remembered, what would make him happier than betraying Skarnu's lover to the Algarvians? Nothing Skarnu could think of.

  If he sat tight, if he lay low, he might save himself- and abandon Merkela, abandon the child he'd never seen, and, not quite incidentally, abandon his old senior sergeant, Raunu, to the tender mercies of Mezentio's men, to say nothing of the Kaunian couple from Forthweg who'd escaped the sabotaged ley-line caravan that was carrying them to their death. Ever since he'd fled Merkela's farm, he'd told himself he would endanger her if he went back. Now he decided she would face worse danger if he stayed away. He left Jurbarkas without a backwards glance and went off down the road toward Pavilosta with a smile on his face.

  He slept in a haystack that night, and had a chilly time of it: fall was on the way, sure enough. Because the night was cold, he woke in predawn grayness and got moving before the farmer knew he'd been there. After an hour or so, he came on a roadside tavern, and paid the proprietor an outrageous price for a sweet roll and a mug of hot herb tea thick with honey. Thus fortified, he set out again.

  Before long, the road grew familiar. If he stayed on it, he would go straight into Pavilosta. He didn't want to do that; too many of the villagers knew who he was. The fewer folk who saw him, the fewer who might betray him to the Algarvians.

  And so he left the road, heading down one narrow dirt track that looked no different from any of the others. The path, and others into which it led, took him around Pavilosta and toward Merkela's farm. He nodded to himself whenever he chose a new track; he knew these winding lanes as well as he knew the streets of Priekule. Soon, he thought. Very soon.

  But the closer to the farm he got, the more fear fought with hope. What would he do if he found only an empty, abandoned farmhouse with NIGHT AND FOG scrawled on the door or the wall beside it? Go mad, was the answer that sprang to mind. Setting one foot in front of the other took endless distinct efforts of will.

  "Powers above," he said softly, rounding the last bend. "There it is."

  Tears sprang into his eyes: tears of relief, for smoke rose from the chimney. The fields were golden with ripening grain, the meadows emerald green. And that solid, stolid figure with the crook, keeping an eye on the sheep as they fed, could only belong to Raunu.

  Skarnu hurried forward and climbed over the sun-faded wooden rails of the fence. Raunu trotted toward him, plainly ready to use that crook as a weapon. "Here now, stranger!" he shouted in a voice trained to carry through battlefield din. "What in blazes do you want?"

  "I may be shabby, Sergeant, but I'm no stranger," Skarnu answered.

  Raunu stopped in his tracks. Skarnu thought he might come to attention and salute, but he didn't. "No, Captain, you're no stranger," he agreed, "but you're an idiot to show your face in these parts. There's a hefty price on your head, there is. Nobody ever gave a fart about a sausage-seller's son" -he jerked a thumb at himself- "but a rebel marquis? The redheads want you bad."

  "They're liable to care about you if you're here," Skarnu said, "you and Merkela and the Kaunians from Forthweg." He took a deep breath. "How is she?"

  "Well enough, though she'll have that baby any
day now," Raunu replied.

  Skarnu nodded, but cursed softly under his breath. "That'll make moving fast harder, but we have to do it. I think- I'm pretty sure- this place has been betrayed to the Algarvians." In three or four sentences, he told of Amatu and what the other noble had done.

  Raunu cursed, too, with a sergeant's fluency. "You're right- we can't stay. Come on back to the house with me, and tell your lady."

  Merkela and Pernavai were kneading bread dough when Raunu and Skarnu walked in. Merkela looked up in surprise. "Why aren't you out in the-?" She broke off abruptly when she saw Skarnu behind the veteran sergeant. "What are you doing here?" she whispered, and then hurried to him.

  She moved awkwardly; she was, as Raunu had said, very great with child. When Skarnu took her in his arms, he had to lean forward over her swollen belly to kiss her. She was almost as tall as he. "You have to get away," he said. "The Algarvians know about this place- or they may, anyhow." And he told the story of Amatu again.

  Merkela cursed as vividly as Skarnu had. "Nobles like that… If the redheads had smashed them, plenty of people would be glad to follow Mezentio." Her fury made Skarnu ashamed of his own high blood. Before he could say anything, she went on, "Aye, we have to leave. Pernavai, fetch Vatsyunas."

  The woman from Forthweg nodded. She'd come to understand Valmieran well enough, even if she still spoke much more classical Kaunian. She hurried off to get her husband.

  "We'll need to take the wagon," Skarnu said to Merkela. "You can't get far on foot." He too cursed Amatu with all the venom he had in him. That did no good.

  "It'll make us easy to spot, easy to catch," Merkela protested.

  "So would having you die by the roadside," Skarnu growled, and she subsided. They didn't run into a squad of Algarvians rushing to seize them as they rattled away from the farm. As far as Skarnu was concerned, that put them ahead of the game right there.