Into the Darkness (34 page)

Before long, the two-pronged Jelgavan attack drove the Algarvians from the pear orchard. But, just as victory became assured, a cry rose from the men who’d made the assault on the front of the orchard: “The colonel’s down! The stinking redheads blazed Colonel Adomu!”

“Powers above!” Talsu groaned. “What sort of overbred fool will they foist on us now?” He didn’t know. He couldn’t know, not yet. He was afraid of finding out.

Brivibas gave Vanai a severe look, as he’d been doing for the past couple of weeks. “My granddaughter, I must tell you yet again that you were too forward, much too forward, with that barbarian boy you met in the woods.”

Vanai rolled her eyes. Brivibas had trained her to dutiful obedience, but his carping was wearing thin. No: by now, his carping had worn thin. “All we did was swap a few mushrooms, my grandfather. We were polite while we did it, aye. You have taught me to be polite to everyone, have you not?”

“And would he have stayed polite to you, had I not happened to come up when I did?” Brivibas demanded.

“I think so,” Vanai answered with a toss of her head. “He seemed perfectly well behaved—better than some of the Kaunian boys here on Oyngestun.”

That distracted her grandfather, as she’d hoped it would. “What?” he said, his eyes going wide. “What have they done to you? What have they tried to do to you?” He looked furious. Was he, could he possibly have been, remembering some of the things he’d tried to do to girls before he met Vanai’s grandmother? That was hard to imagine. Even harder was imagining him doing things like that
with
her grandmother.

“They’ve tried more than that Ealstan ever did,” she said. “They couldn’t have tried less, because he didn’t try anything at all. He spent a lot of time talking about his brother, who’s an Algarvian captive.”

“I do pity even a Forthwegian in Algarvian hands,” Brivibas said. By his tone, he pitied Kaunians in Algarvian hands far more. But, again, he found himself distracted, this time by a historical parallel: “The Algarvians have always been harsh on their captives. Recall how, under their chieftain Ziliante, they so cruelly sacked and ravaged the city of Adutiskis.” He spoke as if the sack had happened the week before rather than in the waning days of the Kaunian Empire.

“Well, then!” Vanai tossed her head again. “You see, you don’t need to worry about Ealstan after all.”

She’d made a mistake. She knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. And, sure enough, Brivibas pounced on it: “I would worry far less had you forgotten the young barbarian’s name.”

Had he stopped nagging her about Ealstan, she probably would have forgotten the Forthwegian’s name in short order. As things were, he looked more attractive every time her grandfather made a rude comment about him. If such a thing had happened to Brivibas during his long-ago youth, it had fallen from his memory in the years since.

“He was very nice,” Vanai said.
Even handsome, in the dark, blocky Forthwegian way,
she thought. Having made one mistake, she did not compound it by letting her grandfather learn of that thought.

He did not need to learn of it to keep on carping. After a while, Vanai got tired of listening to him and went out to the courtyard around which the house was built. She didn’t stay as long as she’d thought she would. For one thing, a raw breeze made her shiver. The sun ducked in and out from behind gray, nasty-looking clouds. And the courtyard, no longer bright with flowers as it had been through spring and summer, seemed a far less pleasant refuge than it would have been then. The alabaster bowl into which the fountain splashed was a genuine Kaunian antiquity, but it too failed to delight her. Her lip curled. Living with her grandfather was living with an antiquity. She needed no more examples.

She wished she could have gone out on to the streets of Oyngestun. These days, though, with Algarvian soldiers patrolling the village, she went out as seldom as she could. The Algarvians had committed relatively few outrages: fewer, certainly, than she’d expected when they occupied the place. But she knew they could. She might speak well of a Forthwegian, but of a redhead? About Algarvians, she completely agreed with Brivibas.

Why not? Indeed, how could she have done otherwise? He’d taught her. But that thought never crossed her mind, no more than the thought of water disturbed a swimming fish.

“My granddaughter?” Brivibas called from his study, where they’d been quarreling. Far more slowly than he should have, he realized he’d really irked her.
If only some ancient Kaunian had written a treatise on how to bring up a granddaughter!
Vanai thought.
He’d do a better job.

She didn’t want to answer him. She didn’t want to have anything to do with him, not just then. Instead of returning to the study, she went into the parlor through a different door. Brivibas had set his mark there, too, as he had through the whole of the house. Bookshelves almost overwhelmed the spare, classical—and none too comfortable—furniture. All the ornaments were Kaunian antiquities or copies of Kaunian antiquities: statuettes, painted pottery, a little glass vial gone milky from lying underground for upwards of a thousand years. She’d known them her whole life; they were as familiar to her as the shapes of her own fingernails. Now, suddenly, she felt like smashing them.

On the wall hung a print of an old painting of the Kaunian Column of Victory in faraway Priekule. Vanai sighed. Thinking of Kaunians victorious didn’t come easy now. Neither did thinking of a kingdom nearly all Kaunian, as Valmiera was. What would living in a land where everyone looked more or less the way she did be like?
Luxurious
was the word that sprang to mind. The Kaunians of Forthweg, remnants left behind when the tide of ancient empire receded, enjoyed no such luxury.

She went into the kitchen. A terra-cotta low relief of a fat little demon with a big mouth and a bigger belly hung on the wall there. Her imperial ancestors had fancied the demon of appetite looked like that. Sorcerous investigation had long since proved there was no such thing as the demon of appetite. Vanai didn’t care what sorcerous investigation had proved. She liked the relief. Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have looked like that.

Had there been a demon of appetite, he would have turned up his nose at what he saw in that kitchen. Cheese, a little bread, mushrooms, strings of garlic and onions and leeks, an ever-shrinking length of sausage … not much to keep a spirit dwelling in a body.

Brivibas hardly cared what he ate, or sometimes even if he ate. His mind ruled; his body did strictly as it was told. Vanai sometimes wished she were the same way. Her grandfather assumed she was, though he would have been angry at others who judged people using themselves as a touchstone. But Vanai enjoyed good food. That was why, as soon as she grew big enough, she’d taken over the kitchen. Till the war came, she’d done as well as she could without much money.

Now … Now there wasn’t much food of any sort to be had. Ley-line caravans carried what the Algarvians told them to carry, not what the towns and villages of Forthweg needed. The redheads plundered what they would. Fighting had wrecked many farms and left many farmers dead or captive.

Vanai wondered where it would end. Forthweg hadn’t known famine during her lifetime, but she’d read of it. If this went on …

The wood bin and the coal scuttle weren’t so full as they should have been, either. Coal, especially, was hard to come by. She might reach the point where she had food but no fuel with which to cook it.

With such gloomy reflections filling her, she didn’t hear Brivibas come into the kitchen. “Ah, here you are, my granddaughter,” he said.

“Here I am,” Vanai agreed resignedly.

“I try my best to do what is right for you,” her grandfather said. “I may not always be correct, but I do have your interest at heart.” With no small surprise, she realized he was, in his fusty way, trying to apologize.

“Very well, my grandfather,” Vanai said; arguing with Brivibas was more trouble than it was worth. In any case, she would see Ealstan again only by accident. Sooner or later, Brivibas would realize that for himself, and then, with luck, he would stop bothering her. Hoping to get his mind off the subject of the Forthwegian, she asked, “Can I cut you some bread and cheese?”

“No, never mind. I have no great appetite,” Brivibas said. Vanai nodded; that was true most of the time. Then, to her surprise, her grandfather brightened. “Did I tell you the news I had yesterday?”

“No, my grandfather,” Vanai answered. “What news is this? So little gets into Oyngestun these days, I’d be glad to hear any.”

“Well, I had a note from
the Journal of Kaunian Studies
in Jekabpils,” her grandfather said, using the classical Kaunian name for Gromheort. “They tell me the Algarvian occupying authorities will allow them to resume publication before long, which means I shall have an outlet for my scholarship.”

“That
is
good news,” Vanai said. If he could not publish his articles, Brivibas would grow even more peevish than usual. He would also have more leisure in which to try to oversee every facet of her life, which was nothing she wanted.

“On the whole, it is good news,” he said, donning an indignant expression. “The drawback is, all submissions must henceforth appear in either Forthwegian or Algarvian. Those offered in classical Kaunian,
the
language of learning, must be rejected unread, by order of the occupiers.”

Vanai shivered, though the kitchen was warm enough. “What right have the redheads to say our language is not to be used?” she asked.

“The conqueror’s right: the right they understand best,” Brivibas answered bleakly. He sighed. “I have not attempted serious composition in Forthwegian for many years. Who would, with Kaunian to use instead? I suppose I must make the effort, though, if I am to continue setting my researches before any part of the scholarly community.” Not setting his researches before the scholarly community plainly never occurred to him.

Before Vanai could reply, shouts and the sound of running feet came from outside. She peered through the kitchen window, a narrow slit intended to give a little fresh air, not any great view: for views, all folk of Forthweg, regardless of their blood, far preferred their courtyards to the streets. She got a glimpse of a yellow-haired man running as if his life depended on his feet. And so it might have, for a couple of Algarvian soldiers pounded after him, sticks in hand.

They shouted again, first in their language, then in Forthwegian: “Halt!”

One of them dropped to a knee to take dead aim at the fleeing Kaunian. The fellow must have ducked around a corner before he could blaze, though, for he sprang to his feet once more with what sounded like a curse. “Halt!” his comrade yelled again. They both pounded after the fugitive.

“I wonder what he did,” Vanai said. “I wonder if he did anything.”

“Probably not.” Her grandfather’s voice was weary and bitter. “Having done something is by no means a requirement for punishment, not where the Algarvians are concerned.” Vanai nodded. She’d already seen as much for herself.

Bembo tramped up and down the meadow outside Tricarico’s municipal stadium. Though the day was on the chilly side, sweat ran down his face and threatened to leave his mustache as limp as if he’d forgotten to wax it. The constable, a pudgy man, hadn’t done much in the way of marching for a good many years.

Not that the drill sergeant cared. “Powers below eat all of you!” he screamed, in a temper extravagant even by Algarvian standards. “I bite my thumb at you! I bite my thumb at your fathers, if you know who they are!” From a civilian, that would have provoked a flock of challenges. But a soldier in the service of King Mezentio enjoyed even broader immunity from having to defend his honor than did a constable.

The sergeant waved the shambling column to a halt. Bembo had all he could do not to collapse on the grass. His legs felt like overcooked noodles. He could smell himself. Beneath their perfumes, he could smell the men around him.

“We’ll try it again,” the drill sergeant grunted. “I know you’re stupid, but try and work at remembering which is your left foot and which is your right. If those stinking towheads from Jelgava break out of the mountains,
you
get to go into line to throw ‘em back. Maybe you’ll be able to fool them into thinking you’re soldiers, at least for a little while. I doubt it, but maybe. Now … forward,
march!”

Along with the rest of the men of Tricarico dragooned into this makeshift militia, Bembo started marching. The Jelgavans hadn’t broken out of the Bradano Mountains yet, though they’d come close a couple of times. Bembo hoped the regulars could hold them. If they couldn’t, if Algarve had to rely on the likes of him to fight, the kingdom was in a lot of trouble.

“Left!” the drill sergeant roared. “Left! … Left-right-left! Sound off!”

“One! Two!” Bembo called, as he’d learned to do.

“Sound off!”

“Three! Four!”

“Left-right-left!” The sergeant gathered himself for the next order: “To the rear,
march!”
Raggedly, the militiamen obeyed. The drill sergeant clapped a hand to his forehead. “You don’t execute commands better than that, you’ll all get fornicating executed if you have to go up to the line. Aye, the Jelgavans are a pack of trouser-wearing scum, but they know what they’re doing, and you, you milk-fed virgins, you haven’t got a clue. To the left flank,
march!”

The fellow puffing along beside Bembo wheezed, “I’d like to see that loudmouthed oaf try to make pastries with no training, that’s all I have to say.”

“That’s your line of work?” Bembo asked, and the pastry chef nodded. With a calculating smile, the constable found another question: “Whereabouts in the city is your shop at?”

Before his comrade could answer, the drill sergeant screamed, “Silence in the ranks! Next man who squeaks out of turn will squeak soprano for the rest of his days, do you hear me?” Bembo was convinced the whole town of Tricarico heard him. The Jelgavans in the western foothills of the Bradano Mountains probably heard him, too. And the pastry chef certainly heard him, for he shut up with a snap.