Rulers of the Darkness

More irregulars met them at the edge of the woods and took the sacks the mules carried. The peasant headed off to Dargun. Garivald wondered if he should have kept him behind. Munderic might have. But Garivald didn't see much point to it. Everybody knew the irregulars denned somewhere in this forest. The peasant wouldn't find out where. As far as Garivald could see, that meant he was no great risk.

When he got back to the clearing the irregulars had reclaimed after the Grelzer raiders left the wood, he expected applause from the men and women who hadn't gone along to bring in the supplies. After all, he'd done what he set out to do. If anything, he'd done better than he expected. They wouldn't have to worry about food again for two or three weeks, maybe even a month.

And, indeed, people were staring at him and the men he led as they came into the clearing. Among the people staring were a couple of men Garivald had never seen before. He wondered if he ought to shrug the beans off his back and grab for his stick. But the irregulars who hadn't gone out to Dargun seemed to take the newcomers for granted. They wouldn't have if they'd thought the strangers meant trouble.

Obilot came up to one of those strangers and pointed toward Garivald. "That's our leader," she said, her voice not loud but very clear. A couple of the other irregulars nodded. Garivald straightened with pride despite the weight he carried.

Both newcomers strode toward him. They had on rock-gray tunics. At first, that meant little to him; a lot of the men in his band still wore the ever more threadbare clothes they'd used while serving in King Swemmel's army. But these tunics weren't threadbare. They weren't particularly clean, but they were new. Garivald didn't need long to realize what that meant. He let the sacks of beans down to the ground and stuck out his hand. "You must be real soldiers!" he exclaimed.

The two men looked at each other. "He's quick," one of them said.

"Aye, he is," the other agreed. "That's efficient." But, by the way one of his thick eyebrows rose, he might have thought Garivald too quick for his own good.

"Wonderful to see real soldiers here," Garivald said. He knew the real fighting still lay far to the west, which led to an obvious question: "What are you doing here?"

"Being efficient." The Unkerlanter soldiers spoke together. The one who might have thought Garivald too efficient continued, "We've brought you a crystal."

"Have you, now?" Garivald wondered how efficient that was. "Can I keep it activated without have to sacrifice somebody every month or two, the way a mage had to do back in my home village?"

Before the soldiers could answer, Sadoc's big head bobbed up and down. "Aye, you can," he said. "There's a power point in these woods- not a very big one, but it's there. If it wasn't, I couldn't work any magecraft at all."

In Garivald's view, that would have been an improvement, but he didn't say so. Instead, he gave a sharp, quick nod and turned back to the soldiers. "All right. I guess I can run a crystal. Now what will I do with it?"

"Whatever his Majesty's officers tell you to do, by the powers above," answered the one who'd mentioned the crystal. "We're getting these things out to as many bands behind the Algarvian line as we can. The more you people work with the regular army, the more efficient the fight against the redheads becomes."

That made a certain amount of sense. It also fit in with everything Garivald knew about King Swemmel: he wanted control as firmly in his fists as he could make it. The other Unkerlanter soldier said, "We'll also bring you weapons and medicines whenever we can."

"Good. I'm glad to hear it. We can use them." Garivald eyed the two regulars. "And you'll tell us what to do whenever you can."

They looked at each other for a moment. Then they both nodded. "Well, of course," they said together.

***

Bembo walked up to Sergeant Pesaro in the constabulary barracks and said, "Sergeant, I want some leave time."

Pesaro looked him up and down. "I want all sorts of things I'm not going to get," the fat sergeant said. "After a while, I get over it and go about my business. You'd better do the same, or you'll be sorry."

"Have a heart!" Bembo exclaimed- not a plea likely to win success when aimed at a superior. "I haven't been back to Tricarico in forever. Nobody's got out of Forthweg in a demon of a long time. It's not fair. It's not right."

Pesaro opened a drawer of the desk behind which he sat. "Here." He handed Bembo a form- a form for requesting leave, Bembo saw. "Fill this out, give it back to me, and I'll pass it on up the line… and it'll bloody well get ignored, the way every other leave-request form gets ignored."

"It's not fair!" Bembo repeated.