Darkness Descending (27 page)

“We did,” Ealstan said. “Really. We had to wait for a bunch of Unkerlanter captives to shuffle through the middle of town. I suppose they’re on the way to a camp.” As soon as he’d spoken, he knew he’d punctured the magic. Captives and camps didn’t go with heedless laughter.

From out of the south, a cloud rolled across the sun, plunging the street into gloom. Ealstan wondered how he could have let himself be so silly, even if only for a little while. By Sidroc’s expression, the same thought was in his mind. Ealstan sighed. “Come on, let’s go in,” he said. “It’s getting chilly out here.”

Bembo did not like marching along a road roughly paved with cobblestones and other bits of rubble, especially not when the cobbles and other bits of rubble were slick and wet with last night’s rain. “If I slip and fall, I’m liable to break my ankle,” the Algarvian constable complained.

“Maybe you’ll break your neck instead,” Oraste said helpfully. “That would make you shut up, anyhow.”

“Both of you can shut up,” Sergeant Pesaro growled. “We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it, that’s all. End of story.” He tramped along, full of determination, his big belly bouncing ahead of him at every stride, and set a good pace for the squad of constables he led.

In a low voice, Bembo told Oraste, “I’ve got silver that says he’ll be done in long before we get to this Oyngestun place.”

“I know you’re a fool,” the other constable answered, “but I didn’t know you thought I was one, too. I’m not stupid enough to throw my money away on a bet like that.”

They tramped past fields and almond and olive groves and little stands of woods. Here and there, Bembo saw Forthwegians and Kaunians, sometimes in small groups but more often alone, examining the ground and occasionally digging. “What are they doing?” he asked.

“Gathering mushrooms.” Pesaro rolled his eyes. “They eat them.”

“That’s disgusting.” Bembo stuck out his tongue and made a horrible face. None of the other constables argued with him. After a moment, he added, “It’s liable to be dangerous, too—to us, I mean. They could be sneaking around doing anything at all while they’re pretending to go after mushrooms.”

Pesaro nodded, then shrugged. “I know, but what can you do? The soldiers say these whoresons’d revolt if we tried to keep ‘em inside their towns this time of year. We’re stuck with a little trouble—I hope it’s a little trouble—but we stay out of big trouble. And we can’t afford big trouble here right now. We’ve got too much farther west.”

“Ah.” Trades like that made sense to Bembo. They were part of a constable’s life. “Maybe we ought to make ‘em pay to go out and hunt the cursed things, the way you get a free one from a floozy now and then so you won’t haul her in.”

Some sergeant would have pitched a fit to hear something like that. Pesaro only nodded again. “Not a half bad idea. Maybe we ought to pass it on up the line. Anything we can squeeze out of this miserable place puts us that much further ahead of the game.” He walked on for another few paces, then took off his hat and wiped at his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “Long, miserable march.” Bembo gave Oraste an I-told-you-so look. Oraste ignored him. Pesaro went on, “This big, heavy stick doesn’t make things any easier, either.”

He was right about that. Bembo had long since got sick and tired of the army-style stick he’d been issued for this assignment. Carrying it made his hand tired and his shoulder ache. Carrying it also worried him. If his superiors didn’t think a short, stubby constabulary stick would be enough to keep him safe in Oyngestun, how much trouble was he liable to find there?

Pesaro, who had been slumping like suet on a hot summer day as the constables neared the village, rallied just before they got into it. “Straighten up, there,” he barked at his men. “We’re not going to let these yokels catch us looking like something the cat dragged in. Show some spunk, or you’ll be sorry.”

Bembo was already sorry, from the feet up. Nevertheless, he and his comrades did their best to enter Oyngestun with proper Algarvian swagger, shoulders back, heads up, faces arrogant. If they weren’t the masters of all they surveyed, they acted as if they were. As with any magic, appearance could easily be made into reality.

Oyngestun’s Forthwegians did their best to pretend the newly arrived constables did not exist. Most of the village’s Kaunians stayed behind closed doors. That would not do. Pesaro shouted for whatever Algarvian constables were already in Oyngestun. All three of them tumbled out. Pesaro handed the most senior one a scroll with his orders inscribed on it. After the fellow had read it and nodded, Pesaro said, “Turn out the Kaunians—all of ‘em—in the village square. We’ll help.”

“Aye,” the constable quartered in Oyngestun said. As he handed Pesaro’s orders back to him, he added, “I see what you’re doing, but I don’t see why.”

“You want to know the truth, I don’t see why, either,” Pesaro answered. “But they pay me on account of what I do, not on account of why I do it. Come on, let’s get moving. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can get out of this place and leave it to you and the cobwebs.”

“Heh,” the senior-most constable in Oyngestun said. He couldn’t very well quarrel with Pesaro, who outranked him and was following orders to boot. Instead, he yelled at his own men while Pesaro instructed the squad who’d come with him from Gromheort.

The instructions were simple. They went through Oyngestun, especially the Kaunian section on the west side of the village, shouting, “Kaunians, come forth!” in classical Kaunian, in Forthwegian, and in Algarvian, depending on what they knew. “Come forth to the village square!”

And some Kaunians did come forth. Some doors, though, remained closed. Bembo and Oraste had picked up a stout length of timber and were about to break down one of those doors when a local constable called, “Don’t bother. I know those buggers went out first thing this morning with a basket. They’re even madder for nasty mushrooms than most folk round these parts.”

“Whoever wrote our orders had his head up his backside,” Bembo said. “How are we supposed to round up the stinking Kaunians if they’re all running through the woods with baskets?”

“Powers below eat me if I can tell you,” Oraste said. “Maybe they’ll cook up some bad mushrooms and keel over dead, the way King What’s-his-name in the story did when he ate bad fish.”

“Serve ‘em right if they did, sure enough,” Bembo agreed. He walked to the next house, pounded on the door, and shouted, “Kaunians, come forth!” in what he thought was Kaunian. He was about to pound again when the door opened. His eyebrows shot upwards. Behind him, Oraste let out a couple of short, emphatic coughs. “Hello, sweetheart!” Bembo said. The girl standing in the doorway was about eighteen and very pretty.

She looked at him and Oraste as if they’d crawled off a dungheap. An older man appeared behind her—a much older man, his hair thinning and gone from gold to silver. Oraste laughed coarsely. “Why, the dog!” he said. He looked the girl up and down. “Aye, a young wife with an old husband can have a baby, as long as there’s a handsome young fellow next door.” He laughed again, and Bembo with him this time.

Then the old Kaunian startled them both by speaking slow but very precise Algarvian: “My granddaughter does not understand when you insult us, but I do. I do not know if this matters to you, of course. Now, what do you want with us?”

Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. Bembo tried not to offend except on purpose. Roughly, he said, “Get along to the village square, the both of you. Just do as you’re told, and everything will be fine.” The old man spoke in Kaunian to his granddaughter. She said something in the same language; Bembo couldn’t make out what. Then they headed in the direction of the square.

On to the next house. “Kaunians, come forth!” This time, Oraste did the shouting.

After they had pounded on doors till they were good and sick of it, the two constables went back to the village square themselves. A couple of hundred Kaunians milled about there, talking in their own old, old language and in Forthwegian, no doubt trying to figure out why they’d been summoned. All at once, Bembo was glad to be carrying the full-sized, highly visible military stick about which he’d groused most of the way from Gromheort. The blonds he and his comrades had assembled badly outnumbered them. They needed to see they’d pay if they started anything.

Sergeant Pesaro was looking around the square, too. “Is that all of them?” he asked.

“All of them that weren’t out chasing mushrooms,” one of the constables said.

“Or hiding under the bed,” another added. He pointed to a Kaunian couple. The woman was tying a rag around the man’s bloodied head. “Those whoresons there tried that, but I caught ‘em at it. They won’t get gay again, I don’t suppose.”

“All right.” Pesaro turned to another constable. “Translate for me, Evodio.”

“Aye, Sergeant.” Unlike his fellows, Evodio hadn’t forgotten almost all the classical Kaunian he’d had rammed down his throat in school.

Pesaro took a deep breath, then spoke in a parade-ground bellow: “Kaunians of Oyngestun, the Kingdom of Algarve requires the services of forty of your number in the west, to aid, with your labor, our victorious campaign against vile Unkerlant. Laborers will be paid, and will be well fed and housed: so declares King Mezentio. Men and women may serve Algarve here; children accompanying them will be well cared for.”

He waited for Evodio to finish translating. The Kaunians talked among themselves in low voices. A man came forward. After a moment, a couple followed him, a man and woman holding hands. Two or three more unaccompanied men came out.

Pesaro’s frown was fearsome. “We require forty from this village. If we do not have forty volunteers, we will choose to make up the number.” As if on-cue, a ley-line caravan pulled into Oyngestun from the east. Pesaro pointed to it. “There is the caravan. See?—there are already Kaunians in some of the cars.”

“A lot of Kaunians in some of those cars,” Bembo murmured to Oraste. “They’re packed as tight as sardines in olive oil.”

“Sardines are cheaper than olive oil,” Oraste answered. “The cursed blonds are cheaper than space in caravan cars, too.” He spat on the cobblestones.

Three or four more Kaunians stepped out of the crowd. “This won’t do,” Pesaro said, shaking his head and setting hands on hips in theatrical dismay. “No, this won’t do at all.” In an aside to his own men, he added, “Hard to get this across when I can’t do it in Algarvian.”

Someone in the crowd of Kaunians asked a question. Evodio translated: “She wants to know if they can bring anything with them when they go west.”

Pesaro shook his head. “Just the clothes on their backs. They won’t need anything else. We’ll take care of them once they’re there.”

Another question, this one from a man: “How long will we be there?”

“Till the war is won, of course,” Pesaro said. Somebody shouted in his direction from the ley-line caravan. He scowled. “We haven’t got all day. Any more volunteers?” Another pair of Kaunians stepped forward. Pesaro sighed. “This isn’t good enough. We’ve got to have the full number.” He pointed to a man. “You!” He jerked his thumb. A woman. “You!” Another man. “You!” He pointed to the pair Bembo and Oraste had summoned. “You—the old hound and his young doxy. Aye, both of you.”

Bembo said, “She’s his granddaughter, Sergeant.”

“Is she?” Pesaro rubbed his chin. “All right, never mind. You two instead.” He pointed at a pair of middle-aged men. “Probably a couple of quiffs.” Before long, the selection was done. Under the sticks of the Algarvian constables and the guards already aboard, the chosen Kaunians squeezed into the ley-line caravan cars. “Go home!” Pesaro shouted to the rest of the blonds. Evodio translated, for the ones who were dense. The Kaunians left the square a few at a time, some of them sobbing for suddenly lost loves. The caravan glided away.

“There’s a good day’s work done,” Oraste said.

“How much work do you think we’ll get out of them, hauled off the street like that?” Bembo asked. Oraste gave him a pitying look, one Sergeant Pesaro might have envied. A lamp went on in Bembo’s head. “Oh! It’s like that, is it?”

“Got to be,” Oraste said, and he was surely right; nothing else made sense.

Bembo was very quiet on the long tramp back to Gromheort. His conscience, normally a quiet beast, barked and snarled and whined at him. By the time he got back to the barracks, he’d fought it down. Somebody far above him had decided this was the right thing to do; who was he to argue? Tired as he was from marching, he slept well that night.

Autumn in Jelgava, except up in the mountains, was not a time of great swings in the weather, as it was in more southern lands. People went from wearing linen tunics and cotton trousers to cotton tunics and trousers of wool or wool and cotton mixed. Talsu’s father had his business pick up a little as men and women bought replacements for what had worn out during the last cool season.

“I need more cloth, though,” Traku grumbled. “Thanks to the cursed Algarvians, I can’t get as much as I could use. They’re taking half of what we turn out for themselves.”

“Everybody needs more of everything,” Talsu said. “The redheads are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down.”

His father glowered. “This is what happens when a kingdom loses a war.”

“Aye, it is,” Talsu agreed. “But powers above, I wish you’d get over the notion that I lost it all by myself.”

“I don’t think that for a moment, son,” Traku said. “You had help, lots of help, starting with the king and going straight on down through your officers.” He did not bother to lower his voice. In the old Jelgava, that would have been insanely dangerous. But the Algarvians didn’t mind if the common people reviled King Donalitu—on the contrary. They didn’t even seem to mind too much if the common people reviled them. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try such tolerance too far, though.

He was very pleased for a moment, thinking his father didn’t blame him for the kingdom’s defeat after all. Then he listened again in his mind to what Traku had said, and realized he hadn’t said anything of the sort. All he’d said was that Traku hadn’t been the only one who lost it.