Into the Darkness (64 page)

Annore found another question: “Well, what can we do about it?”

“Not a cursed thing,” Garivald said. “Not a single cursed thing. The only thing we could ever do about orders from Cottbus was pretend we never got them. Now we won’t even be able to do that.”

A couple of days later, he was one of the villagers the inspectors commandeered to build the cell to hold the condemned prisoners whose life energy would power the crystal. He couldn’t work in the fields. He couldn’t tend his garden or his livestock. The inspectors didn’t care. “This has to be done, and it has to be done on time,” one of them said. “Efficiency.”

“Efficiency,” Garivald agreed. Whenever anyone said that word, everyone who heard it had to agree with it. Dreadful things happened to those who failed to agree. Garivald worked on the cell with a will, sawing and hammering like a man beset by demons. So did the other peasants dragooned into building it. The sooner they got it done, the sooner they could get back to work that really needed doing, work that would keep them fed through the winter. That was the sort of efficiency Garivald understood.

After a couple of hours of offering suggestions that didn’t help, the inspectors wandered off to find something to drink, and maybe something to eat, too. Garivald wouldn’t have expected anything different; since the inspectors weren’t devouring their own substance, they made free with the village’s.

He said, “The really efficient thing to do would be to put the criminals in Waddo’s house. He’s the one who wants the crystal so much, so we ought to let him deal with what having it means.”

“Aye,” said one of the other peasants, a scar-faced fellow named Dagulf. He glanced over toward the firstman’s home, which stood out from the others in Zossen, and then spat on the ground. “Would hardly put him out, even. After all, he built that cursed second story, didn’t he? He could put the captives up there and slit their throats right by the cursed crystal.”

“Now,
that
would be efficient,” somebody else said.

“Who’s going to be the one to tell Waddo to do it, though?” Garivald asked. Nobody answered. He hadn’t expected anybody to answer. He went on, “He’d bawl like a just-gelded colt if anybody had the nerve to tell him he ought to do that. All that precious space is for his family, don’t you know?”

“Like anybody needs that much space,” Dagulf said, and spat again.

Everyone working on the cell grumbled and complained and called curses down on Waddo’s head and the heads of the inspectors. But all the curses were so low-voiced, no one more than a few feet away could have heard them. And no one would have guessed the peasants were complaining from the way they worked.

Not even the inspectors could find anything to complain about over the speed with which the cell went up. “There, you see?” one of them said when it got done two days sooner than they’d demanded. “You can be efficient when you set your minds to it.”

Neither Garivald nor his fellow carpenters chose to enlighten them. Annore had been doing much of Garivald’s work along with her own. The work had to get done. Who did it mattered less. That was efficiency, too, efficiency as the peasants of Unkerlant understood it.

Once built in such a driving hurry, the jail cell stayed empty for three weeks. Every time Garivald walked past it, he snickered. That was efficiency as King Swemmel’s men understood it: do something fast for the sake of nothing but speed, then wait endlessly to be able to do whatever came next.

At last, a column of guards marched up the road from the market town. There were a dozen of them to protect the villagers from four scrawny captives whose chains clanked and rattled with every step they took. Half the guards headed back toward the market town. The others prepared to settle down in Zossen. The first meal the villagers served them showed they were even more ravenous than the inspectors.

“Now all you need is the crystal and the mage to work the sacrifice and give it life, and you’ll be connected with the rest of the world,” one of the inspectors said, his tone somewhat elevated by strong drink. “Won’t that be grand for you?”

Garivald thought it would be anything but grand. The inspectors, however, had long since made it plain they cared nothing for his opinion or that of anyone else in Zossen. He kept quiet.

Sharp-tongued old Uote, though, was moved to speak up: “You mean you haven’t got a crystal here?”

“Of course we haven’t,” the inspector answered. “Do we look like mages?”

Uote rolled her eyes. “Call that efficiency?” she said. Maybe she’d had a good deal to drink herself, to dare to ask such a question.

Both inspectors and all six guards stared at her. A great silence fell over the village square. The inspector who’d spoken before snapped, “Efficiency is what we say it is, you ugly old sow.”

“Sow, is it?” Uote said. “You’re the pigs in the trough.”

The silence got louder and more appalled. “Curb your tongue, old woman, or we shall assuredly curb it for you. When the crystal does come here, would you have King Swemmel learn your name?” The inspector’s smile said he looked forward to informing on her.

Garivald had no use for Uote; even sober, she was a nag and a scold. But she was from his village. Hearing that gloating anticipation from the inspector—the king’s man, the city man—made him feel like a piece of livestock, not a man. And Uote crumpled like a scrap of paper. She sneaked away from the gathering in the village square and stayed inside her house for several days afterwards. Garivald did not think it would do her any good, not unless the crystal came so late, the inspector found other villagers at whom to be angry in the meanwhile.

When the crystal did arrive a week or so later, it too was escorted by a squad of guards. So many strangers didn’t come to Zossen in the course of an ordinary year. Along with the guards came a mage. His red nose and cheeks and red-tracked eyes said he had a fondness for spirits. So did the way he gulped from the flask at his belt.

Annore watched in distaste. “They’ve sent us a wreck, not a wizard.”

“Must be all they think we deserve,” Garivald answered. He shrugged. “It doesn’t take much of a mage to sacrifice a man.”

He never found out how they chose which condemned prisoner to sacrifice first. He’d done his best to pretend the prisoners and the guards and the mage weren’t anywhere near the village. Some of the villagers had got friendly with the condemned men, bringing good food to the cell instead of just enough swill to keep them alive till they were used up. He thought that pointless; odds were the guards ate the meat and jam instead of giving them to the captives.

The guards staked the prisoner out in the middle of the village square. “I didn’t do anything,” he said over and over. “I really didn’t do anything.” No one paid any attention to his feeble protests. Garivald stood and watched along with a lot of other villagers. No one had been sacrificed in Zossen for a long time. What was strange was always interesting.

Up came the wizard, wobbling as he walked. He set the crystal on the condemned criminal’s chest, then took a knife from his belt. Garivald wouldn’t have wanted to handle a knife while that drunk. He would have been as likely to cut himself as what he was supposed to be cutting.

“I really didn’t do—” The condemned man’s words faded into a wet, choking gurgle. Blood spurted from his neck, just as it did from that of a butchered hog. The mage chanted, hiccuping in between the words. Garivald wondered if he was too drunk to get the spell right, but evidently not: through the blood that covered it, the crystal began to glow.

One of the inspectors picked it up and carried it over to a bucket of water to wash it off. The other inspectors pointed to the criminal’s body, which was occasionally twitching. “Bury this carrion,” he said, and pointed to several men. “You, you, you, and you.”

Garivald was the second
you.
As he pulled up one of the stakes to which the condemned man had been tied, the inspector with the crystal said, “I’ve got Cottbus inside there.” He sounded pleased. Garivald wasn’t. That he wasn’t pleased changed things not at all. He picked up the dead man’s leg and helped carry him away.

Leudast tramped along the western bank of a small stream that marked some of the border between the part of Forthweg Unkerlant occupied and the part Algarve held. On the other side of the river, an Algarvian patrol mounted on unicorns drew near his squad.

One of the Algarvians waved to his squad. Not knowing whether to wave back, he glanced toward Sergeant Magnulf. Only when the squad leader raised a hand did he do the same. The Algarvians reined in. Their mounts were painted in splotches of dull brown and green. Unkerlant did the same thing, as had Forthweg when Forthweg had unicorns with which to fight. It made the beasts harder to see and to blaze. It also made them much uglier.

“Hail, Swemmel’s men,” an Algarvian called in what might have been either Forthwegian or Unkerlanter. “You understanding me?”

Again, Leudast looked toward Magnulf. He was a corporal, but Magnulf was the sergeant. Unkerlant and Algarve remained at peace. But they had been at war before, many times, and they might be again before long. All the drilling Leudast had been through lately made him think that likely. What if a military inspector found out he and his comrades had spoken with the almost-enemy?

“You understanding me?” the Algarvian called again when no one answered right away.

Magnulf must have been worrying about the same things as Leudast. The other side of the goldpiece was, what if the Algarvians had something important to say, something his superiors needed to know? “Aye, I understand you,” the sergeant said at last. “What do you want?”

“You have burning water?” the cavalryman asked. He tipped back his head and put a fist to his mouth as if it were a flask.

“He means spirits, Sergeant,” Leudast said.

“I know what he means,” Magnulf said impatiently. He raised his voice: “What if we do?”

“Want to tread?” The Algarvian smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “No—want to
trade
?”

“What have you got?” Magnulf asked. In a low voice, he added to his comrades, “It had better be something good, if they want us to trade spirits for it.”

“Aye,” Leudast said, the same thought having crossed his mind. All he wanted to do with spirits was drink them himself.

The Algarvian who was doing the talking held up something that glittered in the warm northern sunlight. Squinting across the stream, Leudast saw it was a dagger. “Fancy knife,” the redhead said, evidently not knowing how to say
dagger
in a language the Unkerlanters could understand. “Taking from Forthwegians in war. Got plenty.”

Magnulf rubbed his chin. Speaking to his fellow Unkerlanters, the sergeant said, “We ought to be able to trade fancy daggers for more spirits than we give the Algarvians to get ‘em, eh?” The soldiers nodded. Magnulf started shouting again: “All right, come on across. We’ll see what we can do.” He waved to invite the Algarvians over to the west side of the river.

“Peace between us?” the redhead asked.

“Aye, peace between us,” Magnulf answered. The Algarvians urged their unicorns into the river. Magnulf spoke to his own men: “Peace as long as they keep it. And don’t let your cursed jaws flap, or the inspectors will pull out your tongues by the roots.” Leudast shivered, knowing the sergeant wasn’t likely to be either joking or exaggerating.

The river was shallow enough that the unicorns had to swim only a few yards in midstream. They came up on to the western bank, dripping and snorting and beautiful in spite of paint splashed over their hides. Their iron-shod horns looked very sharp. Some of the Algarvians dismounted; others stayed on the unicorns, alert and watchful. They were veterans, all right. Leudast, a veteran himself, wouldn’t have taken anything for granted, either.

“Let’s see these daggers close up,” Magnulf said.

“Let us seeing—” The Algarvian spokesman made that drinking gesture again.

Magnulf nodded to the soldiers in his squad. Leudast let his pack slide off his shoulders. He opened it and took out a flask. He was unsurprised to see that every one of his squadmates had a similar little jug. Such flasks were against regulations, but keeping Unkerlanters and spirits apart was like keeping ham and eggs apart when the time to cook supper came.

Leudast held out his flask to an Algarvian. The redhead was several inches taller than he, but several inches narrower through the shoulders. Leudast had never seen anyone from Mezentio’s kingdom before, not close up, and curiously studied the Algarvian. The fellow pulled the stopper from the flask, sniffed, and whistled respectfully. He took a couple of staggering steps, as if drunk from the fumes. Leudast chuckled. Maybe the Algarvians weren’t so fearsome as people said they were.

This one put the stopper back in the flask, hefted it and shook it to see how much it held, and then took two knives off his belt. He pointed to one and then to the spirits before pointing to the other and the spirits. Leudast understood: the Algarvian was saying he could have one or the other but not both.

He examined the daggers. The blade on one was an inch or so longer than that on the other. The one with the shorter blade had a hilt decorated with what looked like jewels: red, blue, green. If they were jewels, that dagger was worth a lot. But if the dagger was worth a lot, the redhead wouldn’t swap it for a flask of spirits. The other knife had a hilt of some dark wood, highly polished, with Forthweg’s stag stamped into it and enameled in blue and white.

“I want this one,” Leudast said, and took the less gaudy knife. He closely watched the Algarvian as he did so. The man from the east made a good game try at not looking surprised and disappointed, but not good enough. Leudast didn’t smile, not on the outside of his face, but he was smiling inside. He handed the Algarvian the flask of spirits. That made the man in tunic and kilt look a little happier, but not much.

Leudast looked around to see how his comrades were making out in their bargains. Two or three of them had chosen the daggers with the colorful jewels. They were men he’d already tabbed as greedy. Now he did smile. Greed would get them what greed usually got. He had no doubt he’d done better.