Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  He was right about that. Bembo had long since got sick and tired of the army-style stick he’d been issued for this assignment. Carrying it made his hand tired and his shoulder ache. Carrying it also worried him. If his superiors didn’t think a short, stubby constabulary stick would be enough to keep him safe in Oyngestun, how much trouble was he liable to find there?

  Pesaro, who had been slumping like suet on a hot summer day as the constables neared the village, rallied just before they got into it. “Straighten up, there,” he barked at his men. “We’re not going to let these yokels catch us looking like something the cat dragged in. Show some spunk, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Bembo was already sorry, from the feet up. Nevertheless, he and his comrades did their best to enter Oyngestun with proper Algarvian swagger, shoulders back, heads up, faces arrogant. If they weren’t the masters of all they surveyed, they acted as if they were. As with any magic, appearance could easily be made into reality.

  Oyngestun’s Forthwegians did their best to pretend the newly arrived constables did not exist. Most of the village’s Kaunians stayed behind closed doors. That would not do. Pesaro shouted for whatever Algarvian constables were already in Oyngestun. All three of them tumbled out. Pesaro handed the most senior one a scroll with his orders inscribed on it. After the fellow had read it and nodded, Pesaro said, “Turn out the Kaunians--all of ‘em--in the village square. We’ll help.”

  “Aye,” the constable quartered in Oyngestun said. As he handed Pesaro’s orders back to him, he added, “I see what you’re doing, but I don’t see why.”

  “You want to know the truth, I don’t see why, either,” Pesaro answered. “But they pay me on account of what I do, not on account of why I do it. Come on, let’s get moving. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get out of this place and leave it to you and the cobwebs.”

  “Heh,” the senior-most constable in Oyngestun said. He couldn’t very well quarrel with Pesaro, who outranked him and was following orders to boot. Instead, he yelled at his own men while Pesaro instructed the squad who’d come with him from Gromheort.

  The instructions were simple. They went through Oyngestun, especially the Kaunian section on the west side of the village, shouting, “Kaunians, come forth!” in classical Kaunian, in Forthwegian, and in Algarvian, depending on what they knew. “Come forth to the village square!”

  And some Kaunians did come forth. Some doors, though, remained closed. Bembo and Oraste had picked up a stout length of timber and were about to break down one of those doors when a local constable called, “Don’t bother. I know those buggers went out first thing this morning with a basket. They’re even madder for nasty mushrooms than most folk round these parts.”

  “Whoever wrote our orders had his head up his backside,” Bembo said. “How are we supposed to round up the stinking Kaunians if they’re all running through the woods with baskets?”

  “Powers below eat me if I can tell you,” Oraste said. “Maybe they’ll cook up some bad mushrooms and keel over dead, the way King What’s-his-name in the story did when he ate bad fish.”

  “Serve ‘em right if they did, sure enough,” Bembo agreed. He walked to the next house, pounded on the door, and shouted, “Kaunians, come forth!” in what he thought was Kaunian. He was about to pound again when the door opened. His eyebrows shot upwards. Behind him, Oraste let out a couple of short, emphatic coughs. “Hello, sweetheart!” Bembo said. The girl standing in the doorway was about eighteen and very pretty.

  She looked at him and Oraste as if they’d crawled off a dungheap. An older man appeared behind her--a much older man, his hair thinning and gone from gold to silver. Oraste laughed coarsely. “Why, the dog!” he said. He looked the girl up and down. “Aye, a young wife with an old husband can have a baby, as long as there’s a handsome young fellow next door.” He laughed again, and Bembo with him this time.

  Then the old Kaunian startled them both by speaking slow but very precise Algarvian: “My granddaughter does not understand when you insult us, but I do. I do not know if this matters to you, of course. Now, what do you want with us?”

  Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. Bembo tried not to offend except on purpose. Roughly, he said, “Get along to the village square, the both of you. Just do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.” The old man spoke in Kaunian to his granddaughter. She said something in the same language; Bembo couldn’t make out what. Then they headed in the direction of the square.

  On to the next house. “Kaunians, come forth!” This time, Oraste did the shouting.

  After they had pounded on doors till they were good and sick of it, the two constables went back to the village square themselves. A couple of hundred Kaunians milled about there, talking in their own old, old language and in Forthwegian, no doubt trying to figure out why they’d been summoned. All at once, Bembo was glad to be carrying the full-sized, highly visible military stick about which he’d groused most of the way from Gromheort. The blonds he and his comrades had assembled badly outnumbered them. They needed to see they’d pay if they started anything.

  Sergeant Pesaro was looking around the square, too. “Is that all of them?” he asked.

  “All of them that weren’t out chasing mushrooms,” one of the constables said.

  “Or hiding under the bed,” another added. He pointed to a Kaunian couple. The woman was tying a rag around the man’s bloodied head. “Those whoresons there tried that, but I caught ‘em at it. They won’t get gay again, I don’t suppose.”

  “All right.” Pesaro turned to another constable. “Translate for me, Evodio.”

  “Aye, Sergeant.” Unlike his fellows, Evodio hadn’t forgotten almost all the classical Kaunian he’d had rammed down his throat in school.

  Pesaro took a deep breath, then spoke in a parade-ground bellow: “Kaunians of Oyngestun, the Kingdom of Algarve requires the services of forty of your number in the west, to aid, with your labor, our victorious campaign against vile Unkerlant. Laborers will be paid, and will be well fed and housed: so declares King Mezentio. Men and women may serve Algarve here; children accompanying them will be well cared for.”

  He waited for Evodio to finish translating. The Kaunians talked among themselves in low voices. A man came forward. After a moment, a couple followed him, a man and woman holding hands. Two or three more unaccompanied men came out.

  Pesaro’s frown was fearsome. “We require forty from this village. If we do not have forty volunteers, we will choose to make up the number.” As if on-cue, a ley-line caravan pulled into Oyngestun from the east. Pesaro pointed to it. “There is the caravan. See?--there are already Kaunians in some of the cars.”

  “A lot of Kaunians in some of those cars,” Bembo murmured to Oraste. “They’re packed as tight as sardines in olive oil.”

  “Sardines are cheaper than olive oil,” Oraste answered. “The cursed blonds are cheaper than space in caravan cars, too.” He spat on the cobblestones.

  Three or four more Kaunians stepped out of the crowd. “This won’t do,” Pesaro said, shaking his head and setting hands on hips in theatrical dismay. “No, this won’t do at all.” In an aside to his own men, he added, “Hard to get this across when I can’t do it in Algarvian.”

  Someone in the crowd of Kaunians asked a question. Evodio translated: “She wants to know if they can bring anything with them when they go west.”

  Pesaro shook his head. “Just the clothes on their backs. They won’t need anything else. We’ll take care of them once they’re there.”

  Another question, this one from a man: “How long will we be there?”

  “Till the war is won, of course,” Pesaro said. Somebody shouted in his direction from the ley-line caravan. He scowled. “We haven’t got all day. Any more volunteers?” Another pair of Kaunians stepped forward. Pesaro sighed. “This isn’t good enough. We’ve got to have the full number.” He pointed to a man. “You!” He jerked his thumb. A woman. “You!” Another man. “You!” He point
ed to the pair Bembo and Oraste had summoned. “You--the old hound and his young doxy. Aye, both of you.”

  Bembo said, “She’s his granddaughter, Sergeant.”

  “Is she?” Pesaro rubbed his chin. “All right, never mind. You two instead.” He pointed at a pair of middle-aged men. “Probably a couple of quiffs.” Before long, the selection was done. Under the sticks of the Algarvian constables and the guards already aboard, the chosen Kaunians squeezed into the ley-line caravan cars. “Go home!” Pesaro shouted to the rest of the blonds. Evodio translated, for the ones who were dense. The Kaunians left the square a few at a time, some of them sobbing for suddenly lost loves. The caravan glided away.

  “There’s a good day’s work done,” Oraste said.

  “How much work do you think we’ll get out of them, hauled off the street like that?” Bembo asked. Oraste gave him a pitying look, one Sergeant Pesaro might have envied. A lamp went on in Bembo’s head. “Oh! It’s like that, is it?”

  “Got to be,” Oraste said, and he was surely right; nothing else made sense.

  Bembo was very quiet on the long tramp back to Gromheort. His conscience, normally a quiet beast, barked and snarled and whined at him. By the time he got back to the barracks, he’d fought it down. Somebody far above him had decided this was the right thing to do; who was he to argue? Tired as he was from marching, he slept well that night.

  Autumn in Jelgava, except up in the mountains, was not a time of great swings in the weather, as it was in more southern lands. People went from wearing linen tunics and cotton trousers to cotton tunics and trousers of wool or wool and cotton mixed. Talsu’s father had his business pick up a little as men and women bought replacements for what had worn out during the last cool season.

  “I need more cloth, though,” Traku grumbled. “Thanks to the cursed Algarvians, I can’t get as much as I could use. They’re taking half of what we turn out for themselves.”

  “Everybody needs more of everything,” Talsu said. “The redheads are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.”

  His father glowered. “This is what happens when a kingdom loses a war.”

  “Aye, it is,” Talsu agreed. “But powers above, I wish you’d get over the notion that I lost it all by myself.”

  “I don’t think that for a moment, son,” Traku said. “You had help, lots of help, starting with the king and going straight on down through your officers.” He did not bother to lower his voice. In the old Jelgava, that would have been insanely dangerous. But the Algarvians didn’t mind if the common people reviled King Donalitu--on the contrary. They didn’t even seem to mind too much if the common people reviled them. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try such tolerance too far, though.

  He was very pleased for a moment, thinking his father didn’t blame him for the kingdom’s defeat after all. Then he listened again in his mind to what Traku had said, and realized he hadn’t said anything of the sort. All he’d said was that Traku hadn’t been the only one who lost it.

  Before Talsu could start the argument up again, Dustbunny trotted into the tailor’s shop, tail held high and proud. The small gray cat, who had thus far managed not to become roof rabbit at the butcher’s shop, carried in her mouth a large brown rat. She dropped it at Talsu’s feet, then looked up at him with glowing green eyes, waiting for the praise she knew she deserved.

  Talsu bent down and scratched her ears and told her what a brave puss she was. She purred, believing every word of it. Then she pushed the dead rat with her nose so it half covered one of his shoes. Traku laughed. “I think she expects it to go into the stew pot tonight.”

  “Maybe she does.” Mischief kindled in Talsu’s eyes. He called up the stairs to the living quarters over the shop: “Hey, Ausra, come down here a minute.”

  “What is it?” his sister called back.

  “Present for you,” Talsu answered. He winked at his father, and held a finger to his lips to keep Traku from giving him the lie. Traku rolled his eyes but kept quiet.

  “A present? For me?” Ausra hurried down the stairs. “What is it? Who gave it to me? Where did he go?”

  “So you think you have boys leaving you presents all the time, do you?” Talsu said, relishing his joke more than ever. “Well, I have to tell you, you’re not quite right. A little lady delivered this one, and it’s all yours.” He brought his foot forward, shying the rat in Ausra’s direction.

  She disappointed him. Instead of screaming or running off, she picked up the rat by the tail, called Dustbunny, and told her what a fine kitty she was. Then she tossed the deceased rodent back to Talsu. “Here. If you liked it well enough to get it for me, you can be the one who gets rid of it, too.”

  Now Traku laughed loud and long. Talsu gave his father a dirty look, but could hardly deny Ausra had outdone him this time. He picked up the rat rather more gingerly than she had, carried it outside, and dropped it in the gutter. When he came back into the tailor’s shop, he was wiping his hands on his trouser legs.

  Dustbunny spoke up in feline reproach. Maybe she really had thought the rat would make the main course at supper that night. “Go catch me another one,” Talsu told her. “We’ll serve it up with onions and peas, or maybe with olives. I like olives a lot.” The cat cocked its head to one side, as if contemplating the possible recipes. Then she meowed in approval and departed with purposeful stride.

  “If you want rat with peas and onions, you can cook it yourself,” Ausra told Talsu. She waved a finger at him. “And if you try doing this to Mother, she’ll make you cook it and she’ll make you eat it, too.”

  Since Talsu thought his sister was right, he didn’t answer. He hoped Dustbunny wouldn’t come back with another rat too soon. If she did, Ausra was liable to have some unfortunate ideas about what to do with it.

  Before he could take that worrisome thought any further, someone came through the door. He started to put on the automatic smile of greeting he gave any customer. So did Traku. So did Ausra. The shop did not have so many customers as to let them omit any courtesy, no matter how small.

  Even so, the smile froze half formed on Talsu’s face. His father and sister also looked as much stunned as welcoming. The man standing before them wore tunic and kilt, not tunic and trousers. His coppery hair streamed out from under his hat. His mustache was waxed out to needle-sharp spikes; a little vertical strip of hair--not really a beard--ran up the center of his chin. He was, in short, an Algarvian.

  “Hello. A good day to you all,” he said in accented but understandable Jelgavan. He swept off that hat, bowed to Traku, bowed to Talsu, and bowed more deeply to Ausra.

  Slower than he should have, Traku answered, “Good day.” Talsu was content--more than content: relieved--to let his father do the talking.

  “This is the shop of a tailor, is it not so?” the redhead said. He was, Talsu saw by his rank badges, a captain. That no doubt meant he was a noble. Coming out and telling him to take his business elsewhere was bound to cause trouble.

  Traku must have reached the same unhappy conclusion. “Aye, it is,” he admitted.

  “Excellent!” The Algarvian sounded as delighted as if Talsu’s father had told him he was about to win his weight in gold. His eyes, green as Dustbunny’s, sparkled with glee. Algarvians, Talsu thought, were funny people. The fellow went on, “For I require the services of a tailor. I would not come here for a cabinetmaker, is it not so?” He thought he was the funniest fellow around.

  “You want me ... to make clothes... for you?” Traku sounded as if he didn’t believe it or, even, more as if he didn’t want to believe it.

  But the Algarvian nodded. “You understand!” he cried, and bowed again. “You are, you must be, a man of great understanding. You will make for me a set of clothes, I will pay you, and all will be well.”

  Talsu doubted that last. So, evidently, did his father, who said, “What kind of clothes... sir? How much will you pay me ... sir? When will you want them ... sir?

  “You do not trust
me?” The Algarvian sounded as if that had never crossed his mind. After a shrug suggesting the world was a crueler place than he’d imagined, he went on, “I want a good wool tunic and kilt, in civilian style, to wear for the coming winter. I will pay you silver, the price we agree by dickering, in the coin of either King Donalitu or King Mainardo--both circulate at par.”

  “They shouldn’t,” Traku said. “Mainardo’s coins are lighter.”

  “By law, they are at par,” the captain said. Talsu’s father kept quiet. He was a formidable man in a haggle, as Talsu knew. Talsu also knew his father had never made a kilt in his life. Traku didn’t let on about that, either. He just waited. At last, the Algarvian threw his hands in the air. “All right! All right! I will pay in Donalitu’s coin, or in silver by weight to match the price in Donalitu’s coin. There! Are you happy now?”

  “Happy? No, sir. I haven’t got a lot to be happy about.” Traku shook his head. “But fair’s fair. Now then, if we come to a price--and you’ll pay me half beforehand and half when you get the clothes--when will you need this outfit?”

  “Ten days,” the Algarvian said, and Traku nodded. That much, at least, proved easy. The redhead went on, “Price will depend on the cloth, is it not so?”

  Traku nodded again. “Wool, you said? I can show you some samples, if you care to take a look. You’ll have to tell me how long you’ll want the kilt, and how full, and how many pleats and how deep. That will let me know how much material I’ll need.”

  “Aye. I understand.” The Algarvian waggled a finger at Traku. “You are not to change for cheaper goods afterwards, mind.”