Out of the Darkness

Captain Tivadar would have been within his rights to blaze them all. He hadn’t done it. After they’d stuck fingers down their throats to puke up their appalling meal, he’d cut every one of them to atone for their inadvertent sin. Not a man had cried out. They’d all counted themselves lucky. To be known as a goat-eater in Gyongyos. .. Istvan shuddered. He hadn’t done it on purpose, but how much difference did that really make? He still often wondered if he was accursed.

Tivadar was dead, killed in those endless woods. So far as Istvan knew, he’d never said a word about what he’d done there in the clearing. The other men in the squad had died in other fights. Szonyi, as good a fighting man as any Istvan had known, had chosen to let his throat be cut here on Obuda. Istvan hadn’t been able to talk him out of it.

Only Kun and me, sure enough, Istvan thought. His eyes slid toward the ex-mage’s apprentice. He wished no one else knew what he’d done. He wished it with all his soul. But, on the other hand, how much difference did a wish like that make? He knew he’d had goat’s flesh on his tongue, and its mark scarred his spirit as Tivadar’s knife had scarred his hand.

Perhaps deliberately changing the subject, Kun said, “Just as well the Kuusamans didn’t ask us too many questions after Frigyes loosed his spell.”

“Why should they have?” Istvan returned. “We didn’t have anything to do with it. We’d both come down with the runs hours before it happened.”

Kun walked a little straighter for a couple of paces. He’d found the leaves that turned their guts inside out. But then he said, “If I’d been the one picking up the pieces after that sorcery, I’d’ve wondered why a couple of men just happened to get sick right then. I’d’ve wondered whether they knew more than they were letting on.”

“By the stars, you’ve got a nasty, suspicious mind,” Istvan said.

“Thank you,” Kun answered, which spoiled the insult. Kun went on, “If I’m the fellow investigating something like that, I’m supposed to have a nasty, suspicious mind, eh?”

“Maybe,” Istvan said. “I guess so. Somehow, I get the feeling Kuusamans aren’t as suspicious as they ought to be.”

“You may be right.” Kun thought it over as they neared their barracks. “Aye, sure enough, you may be right. It doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous, though.”

“I never said it did,” Istvan replied. “We fought them here on Obuda, you and I, but it’s their island now. Most of the islands in the Bothnian Ocean are theirs now.”

“I know,” Kun said. “I can’t help but know, can I? And what does that tell you?”

“What, that you know? It tells me you’re not a complete fool--just mostly.”

Kun gave Istvan a sour look. “You’re being stupid on purpose. You’re not nearly so funny when you do that as when you’re stupid because you don’t know any better. What does it tell you that the Kuusamans hold most of the islands in the Bothnian Ocean, and that we aren’t taking any back the way we would when the war was new?”

The barracks loomed ahead: an ugly, leaky building of raw timber. The cots inside, though, were better and less crowded than had been the cots in the Gyongyosian barracks where Istvan had stayed before while stationed on Obuda. But that wasn’t why the barracks felt like a refuge now. If he got inside, maybe he wouldn’t have to answer his comrade’s question.

Kun coughed sharply. Again acting as if his rank were higher than Istvan’s, he said, “You know the answer as well as I do. Why won’t you say it?”

“You know why, curse it,” Istvan mumbled.

“Is the truth less the truth because you don’t name it?” Kun asked inexorably. “Do you think it will go away? Do you think the stars won’t shine their light on it? Or do you just want me to have to do the dirty work and say it out loud?”

That’s exactly what I want. But Istvan didn’t want anyone to say it out loud, because he did feel that somehow made it more real. But if he’d gone forward against the Kuusamans, if he’d gone forward against the Unkerlanters, couldn’t he go forward against the truth, too? Almost as if he were attacking Kun, he shouted into the smaller man’s face: “They’re taking the fornicating islands because we’re losing the fornicating war! There! Are you fornicating happy now?”

Kun gave back a pace--a couple of paces, in fact. Then he had to rally, and he did. “You’re honest, at any rate,” he said. “The next question is, what do we do if we keep on losing?”

“I don’t know,” Istvan answered. “And you don’t know, either. It’s been a long time since Gyongyos lost a war.” He spoke with the pride to be expected of a man from a warrior race.

“That’s because we haven’t fought a whole lot of them lately,” Kun said. “When you think about what all’s gone on in this one, that’s not so bad, is it?”