Darkness Descending

And then a Forthwegian loomed in front of the constables. “Turn her loose,” he rumbled. “She ain’t done nothing.”

“Aye, that’s right,” a woman said from behind her.

“She is being a Kaunian,” the constable answered, as if that explained everything. Most places in Forthweg, it would have.

Not here. “Aye, she’s a Kaunian, and you’re a son of a whore,” said the burly man blocking the constables’ path. A crowd started to gather. The Forthwegian repeated, “Turn her loose, curse you.”

Had he shouted for Vanai’s blood, he might well have got that. As things were, everybody in the growing crowd shouted for the constables to let her go. The two Algarvians looked at each other. They were time-servers, not heroes. The bold, the young, the brave, were off doing real fighting. These fellows couldn’t hope to blaze everybody who was yelling at them. They would get mobbed, and a riot would start.

The one who had hold of Vanai’s arm held out his other hand. “Ten silvers’ fine, for being on street without permitting,” he declared.

Vanai gave him the coins without hesitation. The other constable stuck out his hand, whereupon the first one split the money with him. They both beamed. Why not? They’d made a profit, even if she hadn’t gone into the alley and done lewd things for them.

With a pat on the head as if she’d been a dog, the first constable let her go. “Run along home,” he told her.

She didn’t wait to let him change his mind--or for the crowd to disperse, which might have tempted him to do just that. And the crowd helped in another way, for it kept the Algarvians from seeing which building she entered. “Safe,” she breathed as she got inside. She hurried up the stairs to give Ealstan the medicine. She clutched the jar tightly. It had ended up being expensive, but oh!--how much more it might have cost.

Waddo came limping up to Garivald as the peasant tramped in from the fields with a hoe on his shoulder as if it were a stick. The firstman grabbed Garivald by the elbow and pulled him aside. “It’s gone,” he said hoarsely, his eyes wide with fear.

“What’s gone?” Garivald asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

“Why, the crystal, of course,” Waddo answered, proving him right. “It’s gone, and powers above only know who’s got it or what he’s going to do with it.” He stared at Garivald. “ You haven’t got it, have you? We were going to take it out of the ground together, the two of us.”

“No, I haven’t got it,” Garivald said. Waddo hadn’t asked him if he’d dug it up. Had the firstman asked him that, he would have denied it, too, not caring at all whether he lied. The less Waddo knew, the less anyone--particularly anyone Algarvian--could wring out of him.

At the moment, Waddo seemed not far from panic. “Someone has it!” he said. “Aye, someone has it. Someone who’ll use it against me. He’ll tell the redheads, and they’ll hang me. They’re bound to hang me.”

He wasn’t a brave man. Garivald had known that since before he’d started to shave. The firstman had enjoyed his petty authority in Zossen while he had it. Now that he had it no more, he lived in constant fear lest the Algarvians make him pay for everything he’d done while the village was under King Swemmel’s rule.

“Try not to worry,” Garivald said, though he might as well have told the sun not to rise tomorrow. He thought about letting Waddo know the Unkerlanter irregulars who roamed the woods had the crystal--thought about it and put it out of his mind. The less Waddo knew, the better, sure enough.

“Don’t tell me that! How can you tell me that?” the firstman said. Garivald only shrugged; no answer he gave the firstman would satisfy him. Wide-eyed, Waddo stumped away, digging the end of his stick into the ground at every stride.

“What’s chewing on him?” Garivald’s friend Dagulf asked.

“Powers above only know,” Garivald answered. “You know how Waddo gets sometimes. It never means anything.”

“I haven’t seen him that heated up since the Algarvians came into Zossen,” Dagulf said, rubbing the scar on his cheek. “And he thought they were going to boil him for soup then.”

“They’d have to skim a lot of fat off before they could eat it if they did,” Garivald said, which made Dagulf laugh. It also made the other peasant stop asking questions, which was what Garivald had had in mind.

As the peasants and their wives were going out to work the next morning, the Algarvian sergeant in charge of the little occupying force started beating on the lid of a pot with a hammer to summon them to the village square. He read a proclamation from a sheet of paper, which meant his Unkerlanter was grammatically accurate even if badly pronounced: “His Majesty, King Raniero of Grelz, announces that, with the help of his brave allies from Algarve, the wicked invasion of his domain by the forces of Swemmel the usurper has been beaten back, crushed, and utterly quashed. Now let us all give three hearty cheers to thank the powers above for this grand and glorious victory, the harbinger of many more.”