Out of the Darkness

Because Ceorl was a war captive, he’d expected to be treated worse than the Unkerlanters who also had to labor in the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills. He didn’t need long to realize he’d made a mistake there. The guards in the mines and the barracks treated all their victims-Unkerlanters, Forthwegians, Algarvians, Kaunians, Gyongyosians, Zuwayzin-the same way: badly. They were all small, eminently replaceable parts, to be used till used up, and then discarded.

I’m going to die here, and die pretty soon unless I do something about it, the ruffian thought as he queued up for supper. He had a mess tin not much different from the one he’d carried in Plegmund’s Brigade. The only real difference was that he’d eaten pretty well as a soldier. The Unkerlanters fed the men in the mines horrible slop. He counted himself lucky when he found bits of turnip in the stew. As often as not, what he got were nettle leaves. He could have done more work with better food, but Swemmel’s men didn’t seem to care about that. And why should they have? They had plenty of people to take his place.

Behind him, an Algarvian said, “I’m too bloody worn to eat.”

He won’t last long, Ceorl thought. Men who gave up, who didn’t shovel every bit of food they could into themselves no matter how vile it was, quickly turned up their toes and died. Sooner or later, Ceorl was convinced, everyone in the mines would die; the Unkerlanters had set up the system with extermination in mind. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of making it easy.

The queue snaked forward. Ceorl thrust his tin toward the cooks behind their vats of stew. They were also captives. They had it soft, as far as anyone here did. At the very least, they were unlikely to starve to death. They’d probably had to sell their souls-and, for all Ceorl knew, their bodies, too-to get where they were. He didn’t care. He wanted the same chance.

“Fill it up,” he said, a phrase similar in Unkerlanter and Forthwegian. And the cook did, digging his ladle deep down into the big pot to give Ceorl the best of what there was. Ceorl hadn’t been here long, but he’d already got a name for himself as a man who wouldn’t tamely yield up his life.

The luckless Algarvian behind him got mostly water in his mess tin. He didn’t even complain. He just went off to find a spot where he could spoon it up. He would probably leave it unfinished, too. Someone else would get what he left. Before long, he would leave, feet first.

In the refectory, Sudaku was holding a space for Ceorl. “Thanks,” the ruffian said, and sat down beside the blond from Valmiera. Sudaku had a good thick bowl of stew, too; people knew he was Ceorl’s right-hand man.

“Another happy day, eh?” Sudaku said.

“Bugger happy. We got through it.” Ceorl shoveled stew into himself the same way he’d shoveled ore for so long. “It’ll be better tomorrow,” he went on. “The supervisor who’s on then doesn’t know anything. Powers above, he doesn’t even suspect anything. We won’t have to work so hard.”

“Quota,” Sudaku said doubtfully.

Scorn filled Ceorl’s laugh. “The Unkerlanters talk about efficiency, but they fornicating lie. They don’t keep quota, either. I know they lie about that.”

“Something to what you say,” Sudaku admitted. Ceorl wanted to laugh again, this time at the blond. Sudaku was a trusting soul, an honest man or something close to it-not far from a fool, the way Ceorl reckoned things. But he was strong and brave, and he’d had his eyes opened for him in the desperate fighting of the last few months of the war. Anyone who came through that without learning from it would have deserved whatever happened to him.

“Come on,” Ceorl said. “Let’s get back to the barracks. We’ve got to keep watch on things, or else we’re in trouble.”

“Right.” Sudaku didn’t doubt that. Nobody in his right mind could doubt it. Only the strong had any hope of lasting here. If you didn’t show your strength, you often couldn’t keep it.

Bunks in the barracks were in tiers that went up four high. In the warmth of the brief southern summer, where a man slept didn’t matter so much. But Ceorl had been through Unkerlanter winters. He and the gang from Plegmund’s Brigade he headed had taken bunks close by the coal stove in the middle of the hall. They’d taken them and defended them with fists and boots and improvised knives. When they settled down for the night now, nobody troubled them.

On the other side of the stove, a group of Algarvian captives had carved out a similar niche for themselves. Their leader was a burly fellow whose faded, tattered uniform didn’t quite match those of the soldiers alongside whom Ceorl had fought. That didn’t mean the ruffian was ignorant of what sort of uniform it was.

“Ha, Oraste!” he called. “Throw anybody in gaol lately?”