Out of the Darkness

He was running from one barricade towards another when he got blazed. One second, everything was fine. Next thing he knew, his left leg didn’t want to bear his weight any more. He landed hard, scraping both knees and one elbow.

At first, those small injuries hurt more than his wound. Then they didn’t, and he let out a raw-edged howl of pain.

He dragged himself into a doorway, leaving a trail of blood behind him like a slug’s trail of slime. An Unkerlanter soldier crouched by him and started bandaging the wound, which was in the outside of his thigh. “Not too bad,” the fellow said encouragingly.

“Easy for you to say,” Ealstan answered. “It’s not your fornicating leg.” The Unkerlanter laughed, finished the job, and ran deeper into the city to fight some more.

Ealstan tried once to get up, but couldn’t manage with the leg limp and useless. Having no other choice, then, he lay where he was and watched the bandage turn red. It didn’t fill with blood too fast, which he found moderately encouraging; if it had, he might have bled to death. Some unknown stretch of time went by. The Unkerlanters drove ever deeper into Gromheort, and the din of battle washed past him.

Maybe he slept, or passed out. He was certainly surprised when an Unkerlanter soldier started to drag him out of the doorway by his feet. “I’m not dead, you stupid son of a whore,” he snarled. He rather wished he were, for the sudden jerk on his wounded leg made it hurt like fire.

“Oh. Sorry, buddy,” the soldier said. He called to a pal: “Hey, Joswe! Come give me a hand. I’ve got a live one here.”

Between the two of them, they got Ealstan upright and lugged him back toward an infirmary Swemmel’s men had set up near the edge of town. He almost wished they’d let him lie where he was; the howls of pain coming out of the place sounded anything but encouraging. But, when they helped him inside, he discovered a couple of Unkerlanter healers were there, working like men possessed along with a bearded Forthwegian they’d probably impressed into their service.

Ealstan didn’t get a cot. He counted himself lucky not to have to lie on another wounded man: the place was packed, and getting more so by the minute. Healers and Forthwegian women with fresh bandages-also no doubt pressed into duty-had to walk carefully to keep from stepping on hands and feet.

After what seemed like forever, a healer got to Ealstan. He stripped off the field dressing and muttered a charm over the wound to keep it from going bad. A Forthwegian healer would have used a spell in classical Kaunian; the Unkerlanter spoke his own language. He said, “You’ll do all right, soldier,” shouted for one of the women to come give Ealstan a fresh bandage, and went on to the next hurt man.

The Forthwegian woman who stooped beside Ealstan was a couple of years older than he, on the skinny side, and looked weary unto death. She plainly had practice putting on bandages; maybe she’d done it for the Algarvians, too. “Thank you very much,” Ealstan said in Forthwegian; he hadn’t had many chances lately to use his own tongue,

“You’re welcome,” she replied, one eyebrow rising in surprise. Then she took another, longer, look at him. Her eyes widened; her mouth fell open. “Ealstan?” she whispered.

He recognized her voice where he hadn’t known her face. “Conberge?” he said, and reached up to embrace his sister. They both burst into tears, careless of the staring Unkerlanters all around them. Ealstan asked, “Are Father and Mother all right? And”-he felt absurdly pleased with remembering-”your husband?” She hadn’t been married when he fled Gromheort.

To his vast relief, she nodded. “They all were this morning, anyhow. We’ve spent a lot of time in the wine cellar, but most of the house is still standing. Well, it was, anyhow.”

“Powers above be praised,” Ealstan said, and let more tears fall. He added, “Mother and Father are grandparents. Vanai and I had a little girl, end of last spring.”

Conberge set a hand on her own stomach. “They will be again, come wintertime.” She added, “How did you turn into an Unkerlanter soldier? What will they do with you, now that you’re hurt?”

“They caught me and gave me a stick. As for the other”-he shrugged- “we’ll just have to find out.”

Ten

Sakarnu hadn’t been back to Pavilosta since not long before escaping from Merkela’s farm one jump ahead of the Algarvians. Whenever he’d gone into the village before, he’d played the role of a peasant. No, he’d done more than play the role: he’d lived it. He still had the calluses to prove it.

Now, though, he and Merkela and little Gedominu wouldn’t be living at the farm. They would be moving into the castle where the traitor Count Enkuru and his son and successor, the traitor Count Simanu, had dwelt. First, though, there was the matter of formally installing Skarnu as the rightful overlord for the marquisate (newly elevated, by royal decree, from a county).

He asked Merkela, “Are you sure you don’t mind having Raunu take over your farm?”