Into the Darkness (52 page)

Something new seemed to occur to Swemmel. “In your plans for attacking Algarve, Marshal, you will assuredly have one wherein our armies strike through Yanina as well as through Forthweg.”

“Aye, your Majesty. More than one, in fact.” Rathar told the truth there without hesitation, even if he did not fully grasp why that mattered to the king.

“Make your dispositions according to whichever of those plans you reckon best, then,” Swemmel said. For once, he condescended to explain: “Thus we shall punish King Tsavellas for letting Penda slip through his fingers instead of yielding him up to us, as we demanded.”

“I serve your Majesty,” Rathar repeated. That struck him as a weak reason for choosing one course over another, but such choices lay in Swemmel’s hands, not his. And Yanina would likely be an enemy in any war against Algarve. Musingly, Rathar went on, “I do wonder where Penda is. King Mezentio has not got him—Tsavellas didn’t yield him up to Algarve, either, as I might have guessed.”

“Penda is not here. We ordered his person surrendered, and it was not.” King Swemmel folded his arms across his chest. “Tsavellas shall pay for his disobedience.”

Rathar had already got Swemmel to be reasonable once. Having won the larger battle, he yielded the smaller one, lest his victory come undone. “Aye, your Majesty,” he said.

Istvan and Borsos the dowser walked through the dirt streets of Sorong. An Obudan man wearing a sort of kilt of woven straw, a Gyongyosian army tunic, and a big straw hat was spreading fresh thatching over the roof beams of a wooden house.

Borsos watched in fascination. “It’s like coming to another world, isn’t it?” he murmured.

“Aye, so it is,” Istvan answered with a chuckle. “I expect you grew up in a solid stone house, same as I did—slates on the roof and everything?”

“Well, of course,” Borsos said. “By the stars, in Gyongyos a man needs a house he can fight from. You never know when you’ll be at feud with the clan in the next valley, or when a feud will break out in your own clan. A house like that”—he pointed—“wouldn’t be much more than kindling for a bonfire.”

Istvan chuckled. “That’s the truth, sir, the truth and to spare. This whole place has gone up in smoke a couple of times since we and the accursed Kuusamans started swapping Obuda back and forth. Wooden houses with thatched roofs don’t stand up to beams and eggs any too well.”

Borsos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “They wouldn’t, no indeed. But the Obudans didn’t know about beams and eggs before ley-line ships started going through the Bothnian Ocean.” He looked wistful, an expression so rarely seen on a Gyongyosian’s face that Istvan needed a moment to recognize it. “It must have been a quiet, peaceful sort of life.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but not likely,” Istvan said. “They went right after each other with spears and bows and with these funny almost-swords they made by edging flat clubs with volcanic glass. I’ve seen those things. You could cursed near cut a man in half with one of’em.”

The dowser gave him a sour look. “You’ve just ruined one of my illusions, you know.”

“Sorry, sir,” Istvan said: the common soldier’s last bastion. “Would you sooner have illusions, or would you sooner have what’s so?”

“Always an interesting question.” Now Borsos studied him in a speculative way. “I take it you’ve never been in love?”

“Sir?” Istvan stared in blank incomprehension.

“Never mind,” Borsos said. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, all the explaining in the world won’t tell you.”

A couple of Obudans coming down the street nodded to Istvan and Borsos. They wore straw hats like that of the fellow repairing his roof. The man of the couple had on a tunic of coarse local wool over trousers from a Kuusaman uniform. The trousers left several inches of shin showing above the Obudan’s sandals; his people were taller than Kuusamans. The woman’s tunic matched his. Below it, she wore a brightly striped skirt that stopped at about the same place his trousers did.

As she and her companion drew near, they both held out their hands and spoke in Gyongyosian: “Money?”

Istvan made a face at them. “Go milk a goat,” he growled: anything but a compliment in his language.

Borsos had a captain’s pay to spend, not a common soldier’s. He hadn’t been on Obuda nearly so long as Istvan had, either. Pulling a couple of small silver coins out of his pocket, he gave one to each of them, saying, “Here. Take this, and then be off.”

They showered loud praises on the dowser in Obudan, in broken Gyongyosian, and even in scraps of Kuusaman that proved they’d begged during the previous occupation, too. As they went on their way, they kept acclaiming him at the top of their lungs. He looked as pleased with himself as if he’d tossed a scrawny stray dog a bone with a lot of meat on it.

“Well, now you’ve gone and done it, sir.” Istvan rolled his eyes. No doubt Borsos was a fine dowser, but didn’t he have any sense? Istvan shook his head. Borsos had just proved he didn’t.

And, sure enough, those loud praises from the Obudans to whom the captain had given money brought what seemed like half the people of Sorong out of their houses, all of them—men, women, and children -with hands outstretched. “Money?” they all cried. If they knew one word of Gyongyosian, that was it. Istvan fumed. The man and woman hadn’t praised Borsos just to make him feel good. They’d done it to let their cousins and friends and neighbors know there was a Gyongyosian around from whom they could hope to get something.

Borsos doled out a few more coins, which Istvan thought was only compounding his foolishness. Then, far later than he should have, he too figured out what was going on. Instead of smiling, he began to frown, and then to scowl. Instead of saying, “Here,” he began to say, “Go away,” and then, in short order, “Go bugger a billy goat!”

The swarm of Obudans dispersed much more slowly than they’d gathered. The ones who hadn’t got any money—the majority of them -went off disappointed and angry. They showered Borsos with abuse in Obudan, Gyongyosian, and Kuusaman, just as the first couple had showered him with praise. “A goat’s horn up your arse!” a skinny little girl screeched at the dowser, and then, wisely, disappeared around a corner.

“By the stars!” Borsos said when he and Istvan were at last free of the crowd. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “It’ll be a long time before I do that again.”

“Aye, sir,” Istvan said stolidly. “They don’t much mind if you tell all of ‘em to jump off a cliff. They’re like beggars back home that way -they’re used to
no,
and they hear it a lot more than
aye.
But if you give to some of them, they think you have to give to everybody.”

Borsos still looked shaken. “Beggars back home are broken men, mostly, them and women too old and raddled to get by selling their bodies any more. Some of these folk were merchants and artisans and their kin: people able to live on their own well enough. Why should they shame themselves for silver when they already earn plenty?”

Istvan shrugged. “Who knows why foreigners do what they do? They’re only foreigners. I’ll tell you this, though, sir: the next Obudan I meet with a proper warrior’s pride, or even anything close to it, will be the first.”

“Aye, I’ve seen that myself, though never like today,” the dowser said. He looked thoughtful. “And why should they have a warrior’s pride? Set against us, set even against the Kuusamans, they aren’t proper warriors. They can’t stand against sticks and eggs and wardragons, not with spears and bows and clubs edged with volcanic glass. No wonder they’re blind to shame.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting?” Istvan murmured, more to himself than to Borsos. Just when he’d reckoned his superior a perfect fool, the dowser came out with an idea he’d been thinking about for days.

And Borsos went on, “It’s like that over big stretches of the world.

The folk of Derlavai—aye, and the Lagoans and the accursed Kuusamans, too—know too much magic for anyone else to withstand them. Too much of the mechanic arts, too, though those count for less. There was a tribe on an island in the Great Northern Sea where, a couple of lifetimes ago, all the men slew themselves because the Jelgavans—I think it was the Jelgavans—trounced them every time they fought. They saw they couldn’t win, and couldn’t bear to lose any more.”

“That, at least was bravely done,” Istvan said. “The Obudans fawn and cringe instead.”

“Nothing is ever simple,” the dowser said. “The Obudans are still here to fawn and cringe. When those other islanders slew themselves, they slew their tribe as well. Other men took their women. Other men took their land. Other men took their goods. Their name is dead. It will never live again.”

“It lives,” Istvan insisted. “It lives even in the memory of their foes. If it didn’t, sir, how would you have heard of it?”

“I am a scholar of sorts,” Borsos answered. “I make it my business to learn of such strange things. The Jelgavans wrote down what these tribesmen did, and someone found it interesting enough to translate into our language so people like me could read of it. I doubt that the descendants of these men, if any still live, have the slightest notion of what they did. Are you answered?”

“Sir, I am answered,” Istvan said. “If my great-great-grandchildren forget the deeds of Gyongyos in this war, why do we bother fighting it?”

“Even so,” Borsos said. He looked around. “Now that we’ve finally shaken free of that accursed swarm of beggars, where is this shop you were speaking of?”

“We go round this corner here, sir, and it’s about halfway down the lane toward the woods.” After rounding the corner, Istvan pointed. “That little building there, with the moldy green paint.”

Borsos nodded. “I see it.” He hurried on ahead of Istvan, opened the door, and then paused on the threshold, waiting for Istvan to join him. When Istvan stayed outside in the street, the dowser raised an eyebrow. “Come on in with me.”

“It’s all right, sir,” Istvan said. “You get what you came for. I’ll wait here.”

“Short of silver?” Borsos asked. “Don’t worry about that. You’ve been a lot of help to me since I got shipped out here. I’ll spring for one, if you like.”

Istvan bowed. “Very kind of you, sir,” he said, and meant it—no regular officer, not even a sergeant, would have made such a generous offer. “But you go ahead. I haven’t got anybody to send one to. And besides”—he coughed—“in the valley I come from, people would go on and on about newfangled city ways even if I did.”

Borsos shrugged. “Fewer clan feuds get started this way. I don’t know why the folk in the backwoods valleys can’t see as much if even the Obudans can.” Istvan only shrugged. So did the dowser, who said, “All right, have it as you’d have it.” He went into the shop.

A little old woman hobbling by asked Istvan for money. He stared through her as if she didn’t exist. She limped on down the narrow path. She wasn’t angry. No one else had succeeded where she’d failed.

Presently, Borsos came out with what looked like a long, thick sausage covered in smooth, supple leather. “I got a good price,” he said happily. “I’ll send it to my wife on the next supply ship. Better Gergely should use it and think of me than go looking for some other man and cause all kinds of trouble, eh?”

“Whatever pleases you, sir,” Istvan answered. Borsos started to laugh. So did Istvan, when he realized what he’d said. The toy wasn’t for Borsos’s pleasure, after all—only for his peace of mind.

Rain came down in sheets. Garivald supposed he should have been glad it wasn’t snow. Annore was certainly glad. Now that the freezing weather had gone at last, she’d driven the livestock out of the house. With the beasts gone, she had less work than she’d had before.

Garivald wished he could say the same. He’d be plowing and planting as soon as the thaw let him. Except for the harvest, spring was the busiest time of year for him. And, before long, the roads would dry enough for inspectors to make their way along them. He looked forward to that as much as he would have to the arrival of any other locusts.

He pulled on his worn leather knee boots. “Where are you going?” Annore asked sharply.

“Out to throw some garbage to the hogs,” he answered. “The sooner they put on fat, the sooner we can slaughter them. And besides”—he knew his wife well—“won’t you be just as well pleased to have me out from underfoot for a while?”

“That depends,” Annore said. “When you get drunk here, you mostly just go to sleep. When you get drunk in the tavern, you get into brawls, and then you come home with rips in your tunic or with bloodstains on it.”

“Did I say anything about going to the tavern?” Garivald demanded. “I said I was going to slop the hogs. That’s all I said.”

Annore didn’t answer, not with words. But the look she gave him was eloquent. His ears heated. His wife knew him well, too.

Getting out, then, felt like escaping. He squelched through the mud toward the hogs and flung them a bucketful of parsnip peelings and other such delicacies. The hogs weren’t fussy. He could have thrown them soggy thatching, and they probably would have enjoyed that, too.

He set the wooden bucket by the door to his house, thought about going back inside, and then decided not to. Out here, all he had to worry about were rain and mud: such small things, when set against his wife’s edged tongue.

He wasn’t the only man out of doors despite the nasty weather, either. “As long as I’m out here,” he muttered, “I may as well wander around a bit and say hello. Efficiency.” He laughed. In a village like Zossen, to which inspectors came but seldom, Unkerlanters could laugh at King Swemmel’s favorite word—provided no one knew they were doing it.

Rain beat down on his hat and his wool cape. The mud did its best to pull the boots right off his feet. It was thick and gluey, even deeper than in the fall. Each step took effort. He wondered if it would come up over his boot tops. That happened every so often, but usually later in the thaw.

When the first person Garivald spied through the curtain of rain was Waddo the firstman, he wished he’d gone indoors after all. Waddo saw him, too, which meant Garivald either had to ignore him, which was rude, or go over and talk with him, which he didn’t want to do. Whether he wanted to or not, he went. Waddo had a long memory for slights.