Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “I hope so,” he answered, and then smiled and said, “You look very pretty tonight.”

  She squeezed his hand again, perhaps--he hoped--a little less archly than she was in the habit of doing. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s a handsome cloak you have on.”

  “Thank you,” Leofsig said. He’d borrowed it from his father, but Felgilde didn’t need to know that.

  She said, “Ethelhelm’s band is one of the two or three best in Forthweg. I’m so excited! This is the first time since the war they’ve come here from Eoforwic. They’re supposed to have all sorts of new tunes, too--that’s what everybody says, anyway. You were so lucky to be able to get tickets.”

  “I know,” Leofsig said. His father had helped there, too; Hestan cast accounts for the hall where Ethelhelm’s band was going to perform. But that was also nothing Felgilde needed to know.

  He slid his arm around her waist. She snuggled closer to him. He brought his hand up a bit, so that the top of his thumb and wrist brushed against the bottom of her breast. Most of the time, she slapped his hand away when he tried that. Tonight, she let it stay. His hopes, among other things, began to rise. Maybe he wouldn’t have to keep on being jealous of his younger brother for so long as he’d thought.

  The hall was in a part of town that had housed a good many Kaunians. Some of them still remained, looking shabby and frightened. An old man with fair hair stood on the street not far from the entrance to the hall, begging from the people who were coming to hear Ethelhelm’s famous band.

  Leofsig let go of Felgilde to rummage in his belt pouch and take out a couple of coins. He dropped them into the bowl at the scrawny old man’s feet. “Powers above bless you, sir,” the Kaunian said in Forthwegian. He’d had little luck till Leofsig came by; only a few other coins, most of them small coppers, lay in the bowl.

  “That was a waste of money,” Felgilde said as they walked on. She didn’t bother to keep her voice down, though the old Kaunian had already shown he could speak Forthweg’s majority tongue.

  “I don’t think so,” Leofsig answered. “My father always says Kaunians are people, too. That fellow looked like he could use a hand.”

  “My father says that if we hadn’t listened to the Kaunians in Forthweg, we wouldn’t have gone to war against Algarve when the blond kingdoms in the east did,” Felgilde said. “He says we’d be better off if we hadn’t, too.”

  Even the Kaunians in Forthweg would have been better off if King Penda hadn’t gone to war against Algarve--better off for a little while, anyhow. Leofsig said, “How long do you think it would have been before King Mezentio went to war with us if we didn’t stand by our allies?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Felgilde said with a toss of her head, “and I’m just as sure you don’t know, either.”

  Since that was true, Leofsig could hardly argue with it. He didn’t feel like arguing, anyhow. He knew what he felt like, and hoped Felgilde felt like it, too. To try to put her back in the mood, he slipped his arm around her waist again. She let him do that, but brushed his hand away when he tried to bring it up again. He gave her a resentful look. Hers in response might have said, So there.

  She did get friendlier when he took out the tickets and gave them to the tough-looking fellow standing in the doorway. The bruiser nodded, smiled a surprisingly warm smile, and stepped aside to let them pass. They both held out their hands to a woman with a stamp and an ink pad. She marked them with the word PAID, then she too stood aside and waved them into the hall.

  Ethelhelm’s band occupied a raised platform in the middle. The men on viol and double viol, lute and mandolin, were tuning their instruments. The trumpeter and flute-player made runs up and down the scale. So did the piper, with results that set Leofsig’s teeth on edge. Ethelhelm himself manned the drums. He was taller and slimmer than most Forthwegians, enough to make Leofsig wonder if he had a quarter part of Kaunian blood. If he did, he didn’t advertise it, for which prudent silence Leofsig could hardly blame him.

  Felgilde pointed. “Look--there are a couple in the first row that haven’t been taken. Come on! Hurry!”

  She and Leofsig got to the seats before anyone else could, and sat down with no small feeling of triumph. Rows of chairs had been placed around the whole inner perimeter of the hall, all facing inward toward the platform on which the band would perform. There was considerable space between the front row and the platform, though: room for people to dance as the mood took them.

  The hall filled rapidly. Before the war, Leofsig wouldn’t have seen many blonds at one of Ethelhelm’s appearances; Kaunians’s tastes in music were different from Forthwegians’. Now he saw no Kaunians at all. That didn’t surprise him, but did leave him sad.

  People began clapping their hands and stamping their feet on the floorboards, eager for the show to start. Leofsig stamped along with everyone else, but put his arm around Felgilde’s shoulder instead of clapping. She was clapping but, her good humor restored, leaned toward him while she did it.

  When all the lights in the hall faded except for those aimed at the band on the platform, she clapped louder than ever. Leofsig whooped. He turned toward Felgilde and gave her a quick kiss. Her eyes sparkled. He grinned as foolishly as if he’d had a glass of wine too many. It looked as if it might be a good night after all.

  “It’s grand to be in Gromheort,” Ethelhelm called. The crowd cheered. The band leader went on, “The way things are, it’s grand to be cursed anywhere, and that’s the truth.” Leofsig laughed. He’d had that feeling more than once himself, after some narrow escape or another. Ethelhelm waved to the people who’d come to hear him. “Since we are all here, we may as well enjoy ourselves, isn’t that right?”

  “Aye!” the crowd roared, Leofsig and Felgilde loud among them.

  “Well, then!” Ethelhelm brought his stick crashing down onto the drums. The band struck up a sprightly tune. Forthwegian songs didn’t rely on thudding rhythms the way the music of the Kaunian kingdoms did, nor was it a collection of tinkling notes going nowhere in particular, which was how Algarvian music struck Leofsig’s ears. This was what he’d heard his whole life, and it felt right to him.

  The first few tunes Ethelhelm and the band played were familiar, some of them old favorites Leofsig’s father and grandfather would have known, others songs by which the drummer and his fellow musicians had made their reputation. Some people got up and started to dance from the very first note. Leofsig and Felgilde sat and listened for a while before heading out onto die floor.

  Then, after basking in yet another passionate round of applause, the band swung into a number that made Leofsig and Felgilde turn to each other and exclaim, “That’s new!” They both leaned forward to listen closely.

  Ethelhelm sang in raspy, angry-sounding bursts:

  “Doesn’t matter what you choose

  When you’ve got nothing left to lose.

  Doesn’t matter what you say

  When they won’t listen anyway.”

  Felgilde’s brow furrowed. “What’s he talking about?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Leofsig lied without hesitation. As he spoke, he looked around. The band had nerve--maybe more nerve than sense. Somewhere in the audience was bound to be an Algarvian spy. Singing about what life in an occupied kingdom was like struck Leofsig as gloriously foolish: the same sort of foolishness that had led Forthwegians on unicorns to charge Algarvian behemoths. He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

  “All right.” Felgilde rose with alacrity. “I usually have to start you going.” She swayed forward into his arms.

  Dancing helped take his mind off his worries; he half expected Algarvian constables to come pushing through the crowd and haul Ethelhelm and his band off to gaol. After a moment, he realized he was being foolish. Seizing Ethelhelm now would touch off a riot. If the redheads wanted the musicians, they’d wait till after the performance. As long as Ethelhelm kept playing, he was likely safe.

  Leofsig didn’
t take long to stop worrying about Ethelhelm. Felgilde molded herself to him as closely as if they weren’t wearing tunics. When his hand closed on her backside, she didn’t squawk. She just sighed and pushed tighter against him still. “It’s safe here,” she murmured in a voice he couldn’t have heard if her mouth hadn’t been next to his ear.

  She was right. Nobody in the hall paid one couple clutching each other the least attention. Dozens, hundreds of couples clutching one another filled the dance floor. They’d escaped their parents, and they were going to have the best time they could in as many different ways as they could.

  Some of them were doing more out there on the floor than he and Felgilde had ever done in private. His eyes widened a few times. Up there on the platform, Ethelhelm saw everything that was going on. “You’ll get in trouble when you go home,” he warned the dancers between songs. Then he laughed raucously. “Good, by the powers above! If you’re going to get in trouble, get in trouble for something worthwhile. They’ll yell at you anyway--give ‘em something to yell about.”

  At his waved command, the band swung into another new tune, one so lascivious that a few couples, altogether carried away, hurried outside. Ethelhelm laughed again, harder than ever. Leofsig tried to steer Felgilde toward the door. That didn’t work. She might have kindled, but she wasn’t blazing.

  At last, after what seemed not nearly long enough despite repeated encores, the band put down their instruments, called their last good nights, and escaped. Leofsig and Felgilde reclaimed their cloaks and joined the stream of music lovers pouring from the hall.

  Outside, the stream divided. Many couples, instead of going straight home, ducked into doorways in dark side streets to continue what they’d started on the dance floor. Hopeful but not expectant, Leofsig started to swing down one of those alleyways himself. He thought Felgilde would steer him back toward their houses. Instead, with a throaty chuckle, she followed.

  Heart pounding, Leofsig found a doorway no one else had. He wrapped his cloak around both of them, though nobody could have seen much in the darkness anyhow. Felgilde’s mouth found his as his hands roamed over her. He slid one under her tunic; it closed on the smooth, soft flesh of her breast. She sighed and kissed him harder than ever.

  He rubbed at her crotch with his other hand. He’d never tried that before; he’d never thought she would let him try. “Oh, Leofsig,” she whispered, and spread her legs a little to make it easier for him. And then she was groping him, too, through his tunic and his drawers. He grunted in astonishment and delight. It was hard to remember to keep his hand busy.

  Felgilde whimpered and quivered. Her hand squeezed him painfully tight. A moment later, groaning, he made a mess in his drawers. Everything down there was wet and sticky, and he didn’t care at all. “I like Ethelhelm’s music,” Felgilde said seriously.

  “So do I,” Leofsig panted. Now he really did head home.

  If he couldn’t bring Vanai to Gromheort, Ealstan wanted to go to Oyngestun. He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to see her again till the next mushroom season. He was sure he’d go mad long before then.

  But if he did go see her, the first thing he’d want to do would be to find someplace where they could be alone. He knew that. He wondered if it would make her angry. He hoped not, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Maybe letters are better after all, he thought one morning at breakfast. Vanai had opened her soul, or at least some of it, to him, and he’d tried to do the same with her. He really felt he knew her now, which he couldn’t have said when they lay down together in the oak grove. He marveled that she kept living with her grandfather, who in her letters sounded even more difficult than he’d seemed when Ealstan briefly met him a couple of years before. Ealstan didn’t quite understand why Vanai and Brivibas had fallen out--she never did make that clear--but he was sure he would have fallen out with the stiff-necked old scholar, too.

  And maybe letters aren’t better, he thought. He couldn’t stroke a letter’s hair or kiss its lips or caress it. He couldn’t. . . Thinking about all the things he couldn’t do with a letter made him forget his morning porridge altogether, and he’d only been picking at it before.

  “Hurry up, Ealstan--you’re going to make both of us late.” Sidroc snorted. “There! For once I get to nag you, not the other way round.”

  “I think it’s the first time ever,” Elfryth said. Ealstan’s mother sent him an anxious glance. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Recalled to himself, Ealstan proved it by gulping his wine and inhaling the porridge left in his bowl. He still finished after Sidroc, but not by more than a couple of spoonsful. Elfryth looked happier. Ealstan got to his feet. “All right, cousin, I’m ready. Let’s get going.”

  They both exclaimed when they went outside. Sidroc said, “My nose is going to freeze.” He wrapped his cloak around himself in a dramatic gesture, but that did nothing to protect the organ in question.

  “Look!” Ealstan pointed to windows. “Frost!” Frost didn’t come to Gromheort very often; he admired its delicate traceries. Then he rubbed his nose. Like Sidroc’s, it was turning frosty, too.

  He spent the first couple of blocks on the way to school shivering and complaining. After that, he resigned himself to the weather and went back to thinking about Vanai. That warmed him at least as effectively as his cloak. It also made him oblivious to Sidroc. He’d long wished for something that could do that, but it irked his cousin. Sidroc gave him a shot in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Powers above, you haven’t heard a word I’ve told you.”

  “Huh?” Ealstan proved Sidroc right. Feeling foolish, he said, “Try it again. I really am listening now.”

  “Well, why weren’t you before?” Sidroc demanded. “Half the time these days, you go stumbling around like a moonstruck calf. What in blazes is wrong with you, anyhow?”

  I’m in love, Ealstan thought. But since he’d been rash enough to fall in love with a Kaunian girl, Sidroc was the last person he wanted to know it. If Sidroc knew, he could endanger Ealstan himself, he could endanger Vanai, and he could endanger Leofsig, too. Ealstan set his jaw and said nothing. He did try to pay more attention to what his cousin said, which struck him as more trouble than it was worth.

  “I know what it is!” Sidroc said with a guffaw. “Saying moonstruck made me think of it. I bet you’re mooning over that blond floozy in the tight trousers you keep meeting during mushroom season. Aye, that’s what it’s got to be. Powers above, why don’t you find a girl closer to home?”

  “Why don’t you soak your head?” Ealstan suggested, which made Sidroc laugh without letting him know how close to right he was. Why don’t I find a girl closer to home? Ealstan thought. Because I’ve lain with Vanai and I’m not interested in anyone else. He clamped his jaw tight on that answer, too.

  School loomed ahead, both literally and metaphorically. As he went into the gray stone building, he tried not to think about the long stretch of mostly meaningless, useless time ahead. The Algarvians seemed more determined every day that their Forthwegian subjects should learn as little as possible, which meant classes taught less and less. The one good thing about it was that it gave him more time to daydream about Vanai.

  He spent too much time daydreaming during his Forthwegian literature class; the master warmed the back of his jacket after he failed to recite when called on. Sidroc snickered. He was more used to having the switch fall on his own back than to seeing it land on his cousin’s.

  “Ha!” he said when they were walking home together. “That’s what you get for sighing over your yellow-haired tart.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Ealstan snapped. “I was so busy thinking about all the different ways you’re an idiot, I didn’t even hear the master call my name.” He and Sidroc had a more or less enjoyable time insulting each other till they got to their front door.

  When they went inside, Conberge came up to Ealstan with a smile and handed him an envelope. “Here’s another letter from your friend in Oyngestun.
”

  Ealstan had asked Leofsig not to tell anybody else about Vanai. Evidently, his brother had kept the promise he’d made. He hadn’t told Conberge, anyhow. Now, all at once, Ealstan wished he hadn’t forced the promise out of Leofsig. “Thanks,” he told Conberge with a rather sickly smile.

  “Oyngestun,” Sidroc said, as if wondering where he’d heard the name before. Ealstan had never before hoped so hard his cousin would stay stupid. By the way Sidroc’s gaze suddenly sharpened, he knew that was going to be one more blighted hope. Sidroc snapped his fingers. “Oyngestun! That’s where that what’s-her-name, that Vanai”--to Ealstan’s horror, he even came up with her name--”lives. And somebody’s writing you from there? Another letter, your sister said. If you aren’t a lousy Kaunian-lover, I don’t know who is.”

  Maybe he meant it as a joke. Ealstan thought of that only afterwards. At the moment, he handed Vanai’s letter back to Conberge and hit Sidroc in the face as hard as he could.

  Sidroc’s head snapped back; he didn’t get an arm up to block the blow. He staggered backwards, fetching up against the wall of the entry hall. But he was made of rugged stuff. After a muttered curse, he surged forward, fists churning. A solid right thudded into Ealstan’s ribs.

  But, however aggressive Sidroc was, he was also still dazed from that first punch. He moved a little slower than he might have otherwise. Ealstan punched him again, right on the point of the chin. The sudden sharp pain he felt in his own knuckles told how effective the blow was. Sidroc stood swaying a moment, then toppled. His head hit the floor with a dull thud.

  “Powers above!” Conberge exclaimed. “The way you went after him, anyone would think he knew what he was talking about.”

  “He did,” Ealstan said shordy. Conberge’s eyes widened. Ealstan knelt beside his cousin. “Come on, Sidroc. Wake up, curse it.” Sidroc didn’t wake up. He was breathing steadily--snoring, in fact--but he just lay there, his eyes half open. Ealstan glanced up at Conberge. “Get some water. We’ll flip it in his face and bring him around.”