Out of the Darkness

Looking around the refectory, Fernao saw several Kuusamans with bowls like his in front of them. If it doesn’t hurt them, it probably won’t kill me, either, he thought. Pekka eyed him inscrutably as he picked up his spoon.

Of all the things he’d expected, actually liking the soup was among the last. “That’s good!” he said, and sounded suspicious even as he spoke: as if he suspected someone of tricking him. But it was. The broth was hot and greasy and salty and full of the flavors of garlic and chopped scallions. And the tripe, while chewy, didn’t taste like much of anything. His headache receded, too. Maybe that was the tea. But, on the other hand, maybe it wasn’t.

He beamed at Pekka. “Well, if this is barbarism, who needs civilization?” She laughed. Why not? Her bowl was already empty.

Like all the Forthwegians in Plegmund’s Brigade, Sidroc hated winters in the south. This was the third one he’d been through, and they got no easier with practice. He didn’t think Yanina was quite so cold as southern Unkerlant had been, but it was a lot worse than Gromheort, his home town. There, snow had been a curiosity. It was nothing but an eternal nuisance here.

He remembered throwing snowballs with his cousins, Ealstan and Leofsig, one day when white did cover the ground up there. He’d been perhaps nine, the same age as Ealstan, with Ealstan’s older brother in his early teens. Sidroc grunted in his frozen hole in the ground. No more playing with them. Ealstan had done his best to break his head, and he himself had broken Leofsig’s- broken it with a chair. Whoreson gave me one hard time too many, Sidroc thought. Good riddance to him. The whole family’s a pack of filthy Kaunian-lovers.

Somebody called his name-an Algarvian, by the trill he put in it. “Here, sir!” Sidroc sang out, speaking Algarvian himself. Even now, after more than two years of desperate fighting, there wasn’t a Forthwegian officer in Plegmund’s Brigade-nobody higher than sergeant. The redheads reserved the top slots for themselves.

Lieutenant Puliano wasn’t an Algarvian noble, though. He was a veteran sergeant who’d finally become an officer for the most basic and desperate reason of all: there weren’t enough nobles left to fill the places that needed filling. All but invisible in a white snow smock, Puliano slithered along the ground till he dropped into the hole next to Sidroc. “I’ve got something for you,” he said. “A present, you might say.”

“What kind of present?” Sidroc asked suspiciously. Some of the presents officers gave, he didn’t want to get.

Puliano laughed. “You weren’t born yesterday, were you?” With his gravelly voice and no-nonsense attitude, he sounded like a sergeant. In fact, he put Sidroc in mind of Sergeant Werferth, who’d been his squad leader-and, without the rank, his company commander-till he got blazed outside a Yaninan village.

That village didn’t exist anymore; Sidroc and his comrades had slaughtered everybody there in revenge for him. Puliano went on, “It’s nothing bad. No extra sentry-go. No volunteering to storm the enemy bridgehead over the Skamandros singlehanded.”

Sidroc just grunted again. “What is it, then?” He remained suspicious. Officers didn’t go around handing out presents. It felt unnatural.

But Lieutenant Puliano dug into his belt pouch and gave Sidroc a straight cloth stripe for the shoulder straps of his tunic and two cloth two-stripe chevrons for the tunic sleeve-Forthwegian and Algarvian blazons of rank. Men of Plegmund’s Brigade wore both when they could get them, though the Algarvian insignia were more important. “Congratulations, Corporal Sidroc!” Puliano said, and kissed him on both cheeks.

Sergeant Werferth never would have done that. ““Well, dip me in dung,” Sidroc said, startled into Forthwegian. He was more polite in Algarvian: “Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome,” Puliano said. “And who knows? You may make sergeant yet. You may even make officer yet.”

That startled Sidroc. In fact, it startled him right out of politeness. “Who, me?” he said. “Not fornicating likely-uh, sir. I am a Forthwegian, in case you had not noticed.”

“Oh, I noticed. You’re too ugly to make a proper Algarvian.” Puliano spoke without malice, which didn’t necessarily say he meant it for a joke. Before Sidroc could sort that out, the redhead went on, “If they made me into an officer, who knows where they’ll stop?”

He had something there. The only kingdom that really didn’t care whether its officers were noblemen or not was Unkerlant. Swemmel had got rid of old nobles much faster than he’d created new ones. If the Unkerlanters hadn’t let commoners become officers, they wouldn’t have had any.