Into the Darkness (50 page)

That he should recognize such an obscure piece and recall where the original was displayed flabbergasted Vanai. Her grandfather said only, “A shame it was carried away from its original site.”

Spinello wagged a finger at him, like an actor playing an Algarvian on the stage. “The original site for this one was in Unkerlant, if I recall,” he said in his excellent Kaunian. “The local barbarians probably would have smashed it when they were drunk.”

“Hmm,” Brivibas said. Vanai watched him weighing one dislike against another. At last, brusquely, he nodded. “It could be so. And now, if you will, tell me why a major of the occupying army seeks me out.”

Spinello bowed again. Watching him made Vanai dizzy. He said, “I am a major, true: I serve my king, and serve him loyally. But I am also an antiquarian and, being an antiquarian, I seek to learn at the feet of the great scholar whose home, I discover, is in the otherwise unimpressive village where I find myself stationed.”

Vanai thought he laid it on with a trowel. She looked for her grandfather to send him away, probably with his ears ringing. But Brivibas proved no more immune to flattery than most men. After coughing a couple of times, he said, “In my own small way, I do what I can.”

“You are too modest!” Spinello cried. However well he spoke Kaunian, he did so with Algarvian theatricality. “Your studies on late imperial pottery in the Western Kaunian Empire? First-rank! Better than first-rank!” He kissed his fingertips. “And the monograph on the bronze coinage of the usurper Melbardis? Again, a work scholars will use a hundred years from now. Could I ignore the opportunity to seek wisdom from such a man?”

“Ahem!” Brivibas ran a finger inside the neck of his tunic, as if it had suddenly become too tight for comfort. He turned pink. Vanai couldn’t remember the last time he’d flushed. He coughed again, then said, “Perhaps we should discuss this in the parlor, rather than standing here in the hall. My granddaughter, would you be good enough to pour wine for the major and me—and for yourself, of course, if you would care for some?”

“Aye, my grandfather,” Vanai said tonelessly. She was glad to escape to the kitchen, even though the goblet of wine the Algarvian major would drink meant one goblet fewer that she and Brivibas could share.

When she went back to the parlor, Spinello was knowledgeably praising the ornaments in the chamber. He took his goblet and beamed at Vanai. “And here is the finest ornament of them all!” he said, lifting the wine cup in salute to her.

She was glad she hadn’t taken any wine. She had nothing that made her linger in the parlor. As soon as she gave her grandfather his goblet, she could—and did—leave. Her ears felt on fire.

She stayed in the kitchen, soaking peas and beans and chopping an onion for the meager stew that would be supper. She didn’t have enough of anything. Since the war ended, she’d given up on the idea of having enough of anything. That she and Brivibas weren’t starving she reckoned no small accomplishment.

Her grandfather’s voice and Spinello’s drifted across the courtyard to her. She could not make out much of what they said, but tone was a different matter. Spinello sounded animated. Spinello, though, was an Algarvian—how else would he sound? She hadn’t heard her grandfather so lively in … She tried to recall if she’d ever heard him so lively. She had trouble being sure.

After what seemed like forever, Brivibas escorted Spinello out to the street once more. Then her grandfather came to the kitchen. His eyes were wide with wonder. “A civilized Algarvian!” he said. “Who would have imagined such a thing?”

“Who would have imagined such a thing?” Vanai echoed coldly.

Brivibas had the grace to look flustered, but said, “Well, he was, however strange you may find that. He discoursed most learnedly on a great many aspects of classical Kaunian history and literature. He is, as it happens, particularly interested in the history of sorcery, and sought my assistance in pinpointing for him some of the power points the ancient Kaunians utilized in this area. You will perceive at once how closely this marches with my own researches.”

“My grandfather, he is an Algarvian.” Vanai set the peas and beans and onions over the fire to start cooking.

“My granddaughter, he is a scholar.” Brivibas coughed on a note different from the one he’d used when Spinello praised him; no doubt he was remembering the unkind things he’d said about non-Kaunian scholars in the past. “He has shown himself to be really quite an excellent scholar. I have a great deal to teach him.” Vanai busied herself with supper. After a while, Brivibas gave up justifying himself and went away. He came back to eat, but the meal passed in gloomy silence.

That, however, did not solve the problem of Major Spinello. The Algarvian returned a couple of days later. He did not come emptyhanded, either: he carried a bottle of wine, another bottle full of salted olives, and greasy paper enclosing a couple of pounds of ham cut so thin, each slice was almost transparent.

“I know times are not easy for you,” he said. “I hope I can in some small way be of assistance.” He laughed. “Call it my tuition fee.”

The food was very welcome. Neither Brivibas nor Vanai said how welcome it was. Spinello likely knew. He never showed up without some sort of present after that: dried fruit, a couple of dressed squab, fine olive oil, sugar. Vanai’s belly grew quieter than it had been in a long time. Her spirit …

She did not go out on to the streets of Oyngestun that often. When she did, though, she discovered she had more to fear from her own folk than from the Algarvian soldiers. Small boys threw mud at her. Kaunian youths her own age spat on her shadow. Blond girls turned their backs on her. Adults simply pretended she did not exist.

In the night, someone painted ALGARVIANS’ WHORE on the front of the house she shared with Brivibas. She found a bucket of whitewash and covered over the big red letters the best she could. Her grandfather clucked sadly. “Disgraceful,” he said. “That our own folk should not understand the call of scholarship …” He shook his head. If the villagers harassed him, too, he’d never spoken a word of it.

“They understand that they’re hungry and we’re not,” Vanai said. “They understand we have an Algarvian visitor every few days and they don’t.”

“Shall we throw the food away?” Brivibas asked, more than usually tart. Vanai bit her lip, for she had no good answer to that.

And so Major Spinello kept visiting. The rest of the Kaunians of Oyngestun—and some of the Forgiathwens, too—kept ostracizing Vanai and Brivibas. Brivibas cared more for antiquities than for his neighbors’ opinions. Vanai tried to match his detachment, but found it hard.

When the weather was fine, as it was more often as winter waned, Brivibas led Spinello out of Oyngestun to show him some of the ancient sites nearby. Vanai stayed home as often as she could, but she couldn’t always. Sometimes Spinello asked her to come along. He always chatted gaily when she did. Sometimes Brivibas did a little digging at one site or another, and used her as a beast of burden.

Once, east of Oyngestun, he held up a Kaunian potsherd as if he’d invented it rather than pulling it from between the roots of a weed. Spinello applauded. Vanai sighed, wishing she were elsewhere. She’d seen too many sherds to let one more impress her.

Bushes rustled. Vanai turned to look. Neither Brivibas nor Spinello, lost in antiquarian ecstasies, noticed. Through burgeoning new leaves, Vanai saw a Forthwegian peering out at her—and at the others. After a moment, she recognized Ealstan. He’d already recognized her … and Spinello. He pursed his lips, shook his head, and slipped away.

Vanai burst into tears. Her grandfather and the Algarvian major were most perplexed.

Leudast wore one thin black stripe on each sleeve of his rock-gray tunic. He had his reward for living through the desert war against Zuwayza: promotion to corporal. That was the reward the Unkerlanter military authorities thought they’d conferred on him, at any rate.

In his own view, being transferred back to occupation duty in western Forthweg counted for far more. He’d seen enough naked shouting black men to last him the rest of his days. If he missed the chance to see some naked black women—well, that was a privation he’d have to endure.

Discussing such matters with Sergeant Magnulf, he said, “The burnt-skinned wenches are probably ugly, anyway.”

Magnulf nodded. “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. Besides, far as I’m concerned, any woman who’d sooner spit in my eye than smile at me is ugly, and I don’t care whether she’d naked or not.”

“That’s so, I expect,” Leudast said after a little thought. “More efficient to go after the ones who do smile.”

“Of course it is.” Magnulf had no doubts. Why should he? He was a sergeant. “And if you have to lay out a little cash to make ‘em smile, so what? What else were you going to spend it on?” He changed the subject: “Go see that the men have gathered plenty of firewood.”

“Aye, Sergeant.” One of the things Leudast liked about being a corporal was that it freed him from duties like gathering wood and hauling water.

He’d never seen such a pack of lazy bastards as the common soldiers to whom he delivered Magnulf’s order, either. “Come on, you shirkers,” he growled. “Shake a leg, or you’ll eat your supper raw.” Had he been so useless when he was just a common soldier? He looked back across the immense distance of a few weeks—looked back and started to laugh. No wonder the underofficers in charge of him had spent so much time screaming.

The next morning, Colonel Roflanz, the regimental commander, assembled the entire regiment, something he hadn’t done since they came back to Forthweg. In addition to a colonel’s three stars grouped in a triangle on his shoulder, Roflanz also wore the silver belt of an earl. He was a good-sized man; a lot of silver had gone into that belt.

He said, “Enough of rest, men. Enough of relaxation. A little is efficient. Too much, and the rot begins. We start exercises today. We need to be ready. We always need to be ready. Anything can happen. Whatever happens, we will be ready.”

Leudast wondered if he talked that way because he was stupid or because he was convinced his men were stupid. Then he wondered if both those things might not be true at once. It probably didn’t matter, anyhow. A stupid commander would get a lot of his men killed. A commander who thought his men were stupid wouldn’t care how many of them he got killed.

The exercise was against cavalry, but the horses had been tricked out with gray blankets. “For this drill, you are to make believe those animals are behemoths,” Sergeant Magnulf said solemnly.

“Shall we make believe we’re dragons?” somebody asked—somebody well back of the first rank, who had sense enough to disguise his voice.

“Silence!” Magnulf shouted, and Leudast surprised himself by echoing the sergeant. The horsemen advanced at a lazy trot. Magnulf glowered at his squad. “Here come the behemoths. What are you going to do about it?”

Had they been real behemoths, Leudast’s thoughts would have gone back and forth between
Run like blazes
and
Die on the spot.
Because it was only an exercise, he could look on things in a more detached way. “We’d better scatter,” he said, “so they can’t take out all of us with one egg or one long blaze from a heavy stick.”

Magnulf beamed at him, not something he was used to from a sergeant. “Maybe we should have promoted you a while ago,” Magnulf said. “Scattering is the efficient thing to do, all right. And then what?”

Leudast knew the answer to that, too, but he’d already spoken up once. Somebody else deserved a chance. A trooper named Trudulf said, “Then we try and blaze the bastards up on the behemoths.”

Each horse was carrying only one rider. All the horses looked as if they’d fall over dead if asked to carry more than one rider. Even so, it was the right answer, for real behemoths bore sizable crews. “Good,” Magnulf said. “Now we’d better do it, before they trample us into the dust.”

The soldiers dove into the bushes. The riders on the horses made as if to bombard them. Leudast and his comrades pretended they were picking off the riders. Every so often, someone would pretend to be slain and thrash about or dramatically fall off a horse. It was not a very realistic exercise.

Even so, Leudast wondered why Colonel Roflanz’s superiors had ordered this particular drill now. All Leudast wanted to do was go on peacefully occupying Forthweg. He didn’t think the Forthwegians were going to come after him with thundering herds of behemoths. What Forthweg had had along those lines, she’d thrown at Algarve—and then got thrown back.

After picking himself up and brushing dry grass off the front of his tunic, Leudast peered east. Unkerlanter occupation of Forthweg stopped not far east of Eoforwic, which had been the capital. The redheads held the rest of the kingdom. Leudast’s father and one of his grandfathers had fought the Algarvians during the Six Years’ War. If a quarter of the stories they’d told were true, only a madman would look forward to facing the armies of Algarve.

Leudast looked from east to west, toward Cottbus. Some of the things people whispered about King Swemmel … Who could guess if those things were true? Leudast hoped they weren’t, for Unkerlant’s sake. But Zuwayza hadn’t had many behemoths—the black men, curse them, had gone in for camels instead. The Gongs might have had herds of the great beasts—truth about Gyongyos was as hard to come by as truth about King Swemmel—but couldn’t use many of them against Unkerlant, not in the mountains that marked the far western frontier.

Which left … Algarve. “Hey, Sergeant!” Leudast called. Magnulf looked a question his way; he didn’t want to ask what was in his mind so everyone could hear. He almost whispered it, in fact, when the veteran came over: “Are King Mezentio’s men going to jump us?”

Magnulf also glanced around to see who might be listening. When he’d satisfied himself no one was too close, he answered, “Not that I’ve heard. How come? Do you know something I don’t?”

“I don’t
know
anything,” Leudast said. A spark glowed in Magnulf’s eyes, but he didn’t make the obvious joke. Leudast went on, “If we’re not worried about Algarve, though, why drill against behemoths?”