Out of the Darkness

“Shut up,” the guard said, but his steps slowed. Fariulf didn’t shut up. He kept on giving a splendid impression of a man in distress. The guard never noticed Ceorl sliding under the fence. Ceorl had had practice killing men silently before joining Plegmund’s Brigade, and much more practice since. He slid up behind the Unkerlanter, clapped a hand over his mouth, and drew the razor across his throat. Even he had trouble hearing the whimpering gurgle that was the only sound the fellow made. He eased the body to the ground, picked up the guard’s stick, and started walking his beat.

Fariulf rose and hurried over to him. “Stay down,” Ceorl hissed. “Don’t draw eyes.” Fariulf flattened out on the ground. Ceorl gave him a kick in the ribs to remind him to keep low. “Get going. I’ll be along.”

He marched along till he saw another guard coming out of the darkness and made sure the other fellow saw him. Then he turned, as if going back along the beat. He almost went past the spot where he’d killed the guard; Fariulf had dragged the corpse somewhere out of the way. “Efficiency,” Ceorl muttered: nearly too much efficiency.

He hurried out, and soon caught up with the Unkerlanter. The trenches and fences around the mine were designed to keep captives in. Before the war, they probably would have done a good enough job. They weren’t adequate for confining men who’d faced worse barricades, and better manned ones, in Unkerlant and Forthweg and Yanina and Algarve. Ceorl killed another guard on the way out, again without a sound.

“We’re leaving a trail,” Fariulf said.

“Did you want him to nab us?” Ceorl snarled, and the Unkerlanter shook his head.

For all of King Swemmel’s preaching about efficiency, the guards took a long time to realize anything was amiss. Ceorl and Fariulf were out of the enclosure around the cinnabar mine by then, looking around for somewhere to lie up during the approaching day. “I didn’t think it would be this easy,” Fariulf said. “Why doesn’t everybody escape?”

“Most people are sheep,” Ceorl said scornfully. “Would you have tried breaking out if I hadn’t pushed you?” A troubled look on his face, Fariulf shook his head.

But the search, once it started, was not to be despised. No matter how Sudaku muddled the count, two dead guards got noticed. Dragons circled low overhead. Teams of guards swept through the hills. Had Ceorl and Fariulf not learned their trade in a harder school than this, they might have been taken that first day. As things were, they stayed hidden in scrubby bushes, and pushed north after nightfall. Fariulf did have food of his own, which was as well, for Ceorl had no intention of giving him any of his.

To Ceorl’s amazement, Fariulf had no idea where in his own kingdom the Mamming Hills lay. “Once we get over the Wolter, we’ll be back in regular country, without all these bastards snooping around,” Ceorl said.

“Inspectors are everywhere,” Fariulf told him sadly.

The warning made Ceorl fight shy of approaching the few herdsmen he saw in the hills. Perhaps it didn’t make him wary enough, though. He and Fariulf were nearing the Wolter when dogs started baying close behind them. A moment later, men shouted, their voices harsh as crows’ caws. “They’ve seen us!” Fariulf said, panic in his voice.

Ceorl shoved the Unkerlanter away. “Split up!” he said. “It’ll be harder for them to catch us both.” What he expected was that the pursuer would go after Fariulf, for the other man wasn’t so good in open country as he was himself. Maybe Fariulf had been an irregular, but he hadn’t learned enough.

So Ceorl thought. But the men in rock-gray came after him instead. Some of them were veterans, too. He could tell by the way they spread out and came forward in waves, making him keep his head down.

He blazed one at close range anyhow, then whirled and blazed another. When he whirled again, a beam caught him in the chest. As he crumpled, he thought, Maybe living in a cage wouldn’t have been so bad after all. But, as he’d given no second chances, he got none. Darkness swallowed him.

Garivald stared at the Wolter. He’d never imagined a river could be so wide-he hadn’t been able to see out when the ley-line caravan car took him over it to the mine in the Mamming Hills. He wasn’t a bad swimmer, but knew he would drown if he tried to cross it. If he stayed here on the south bank, the guards would hunt him down. He was sure of that, too, even if they hadn’t pursued him after he left Ceorl.

I need a boat, he thought. He saw none, though at night that proved little: a big one might have been tied up a quarter of a mile away, and he would never have known it. He doubted one was; Swemmel’s men knew more about efficiency than to make things easy for their captives. A raft, he thought. A tree trunk. Anything to keep me afloat.