Out of the Darkness

“Futter you, Ceorl,” the redhead replied without rancor. “You’d have done better if somebody had jugged you. Sooner or later, they’d’ve let you out. But let’s see you get out of this.”

Ceorl gave back an obscene gesture. Oraste laughed at him, though the Algarvian’s eyes never lit up. Like any redhead, Oraste was indeed here for good. Even if he escaped the mines, he’d be hunted down in short order, for he stood out among the Unkerlanters like a crow among sea gulls. Because he couldn’t get away, he naturally thought nobody else could.

You’re not as smart as you think you are, Ceorl thought. Thinking themselves more clever than they really were-and than anybody else was-had always been the Algarvians’ besetting vice. But Ceorl looked like anybody else around these parts. Forthwegian wasn’t impossibly far removed from Unkerlanter. If he managed to escape, he thought he could stay free.

A couple of Unkerlanter thieves swaggered into the barracks, each with some of his followers in train. They waved to Ceorl and to Oraste as equals. Their gangs held the other bunks close by the stove. They’d made as much of their captivity as they could. Even the guards treated them with respect.

They and their henchmen took their places. Beyond, back toward the walls, came Algarvian captives and Unkerlanters who didn’t belong to any of the principal gangs in the barracks. They were the luckless ones, the spiritless ones, who would soon lose the battle for survival. And as they died off, new men, just as lost, would pour in to take their places. Ceorl knew a sort of abstract admiration for King Swemmel. He made sure he was never short of captives.

Between supper and lights-out, men gossiped, told stories-told lies-about what they’d done in the war (except for who was talking about whom, and in which language, those of Algarvians and Unkerlanters sounded very much alike, and nobody cared who’d been on which side-here in the Mamming Hills, they were all losers), gambled, and passed around jars of clandestinely brewed spirits. Some of them, especially those beginning to fail, fell asleep as soon as they could and stayed asleep in spite of all the noise the others made.

Ceorl had learned better than to roll dice with Oraste. He couldn’t prove the redhead’s dice were crooked, but he’d lost to him too often to believe it nothing but chance. He didn’t say anything as Oraste started fleecing a young Unkerlanter too new here to know better than to accept such invitations. Ceorl didn’t care what happened to the Unkerlanter, and he was curious about how Oraste cheated so smoothly.

He didn’t find out that night, any more than he had when the redhead had taken his money. After a while, even though the sky remained pale-which it would do through most of the night-a guard came in and shouted, “Lights out!”

That meant shuttering the windows, too, so that something approaching real darkness filled the barracks. Ceorl lay down on his bottom bunk, which boasted one of the thickest mattresses in the building. He’d made himself as comfortable, as well off, as one of Swemmel’s captives could be. Things could have been a lot worse-he even knew that. He also knew it wasn’t remotely close to being enough. He would break out if he ever found the chance.

As usual, he slept hard. The next thing he knew, the guards were screaming at the captives to get out of their bunks and line up for roll call. Routine there hadn’t changed since the captives’ camp outside of Trapani. Ceorl took his place, waited to sing out when his name was called, and wondered if the Unkerlanters would make a hash of the count, which they did about one day in three. Efficiency, he thought, and laughed a mocking laugh.

To complicate things, a ley-line caravan full of new captives chose that moment to arrive in the barracks. The guards bringing in the new fish and those trying to keep track of the ones already there started screaming at one another, each group blaming the other for its troubles. Ceorl spent his time eyeing the newcomers.

Most of them looked to be Unkerlanter soldiers-or rather, former Unkerlanter soldiers. No, Swemmel wasn’t shy about jugging his own people, any more than he’d been shy about murdering his own people when the Algarvians started killing Kaunians. Swemmel wanted results, and he got them.

No one cared about roll call for a while. The captives just stood there. Had it been winter, they would have stood there till they froze. Nobody dared ask permission to go to breakfast. Eating before roll call and the count were done was unimaginable. In fact, they didn’t have breakfast at all. The delay just meant they went straight to the mines. If they had nothing in their bellies, too bad.