Through the Darkness

That wasn’t quite true. If he didn’t come back from his shift, people would go looking for him. But would they find him soon enough to do him any good? He had his doubts.

A Kaunian Emperor from the days of old might have held court on the benches in the middle of the park without anyone outside being the wiser. When Bembo got to them, he found not a Kaunian Emperor but a couple of Forthwegian drunkards. By their unkempt, shaggy beards and filth, they made the park their home.

Bembo’s hand went not to his bludgeon but to the short stick he carried next to it. The Forthwegians watched him. He nodded to them. They didn’t move. He walked past them. Their eyes followed him. He didn’t want to turn his back on them, but he didn’t want them to see he was afraid, either. He ended up sidling away from them crab-fashion.

A rustling in the bushes made him whip his head around. Another Forthwegian, as grimy and disreputable as the two on the benches, waved his arms and shouted, “Boo!”

He laughed like a loon. So did the other two drunks. “You stupid bald-arsed bugger!” Bembo screamed. “I ought to blaze you in the belly and let you die an inch at a time!” As a matter of fact, he wasn’t sure he could blaze the Forthwegian; his hand shook like a fall leaf in a high breeze.

The fellow who’d frightened him hawked and spat. “Oh, run along home to mother, little boy,” he said in good Algarvian. “You cursed well don’t belong anywhere they let grown-ups in.” He laughed again.

“Futter your mother!” Bembo was still too rattled to hang on to his aplomb as a proper Algarvian should.

His shrill voice made all the Forthwegians start laughing. He thought about blazing them. He thought about blazing the tall grass that choked the paths, too, in the hope of roasting them alive. The only thing wrong with that was, he might end up roasting himself, too.

Instead, after cursing all the drunks as vilely as he knew how, he pushed on down the path toward the far side of the park. He passed two more Forthwegians, both of them curled up asleep or blind drunk in the grass with jars of spirits or wine beside them. One wore a tattered Forthwegian army tunic.

Seeing that made Bembo laugh, and he was sure his laugh was last and best. “Worthless clots!” he said, as if the three back by the benches were still close enough to hear. “This is what you get. This is what all of Forthweg gets. And oh, by the powers above, do you ever deserve it.”

Every time Ealstan saw a broadsheet praising Plegmund’s Brigade, he felt like tearing it from the wall to which it was pasted. He didn’t much care what happened to him afterwards--after what Sidroc had done to his brother, and after Sidroc had got away with it because he’d joined the Algarvians’ hounds, Ealstan ached for vengeance of any sort.

The only thing that held him back was fear of what would happen to Vanai if he were seized and cast into prison. She depended on him. He’d never had anyone depend on him before. On the contrary--he’d always depended on his father and his mother and poor Leofsig and even on Conberge. He hadn’t thought about everything loving a Kaunian woman meant when he started doing it. He’d thought about little except the most obvious. But now . . .

Now, very much his father’s son, he refused to evade the burden he’d assumed. And so, in spite of scowling at the broadsheets, he walked on toward Ethelhelm’s flat without doing anything more. Scowling wouldn’t land him in trouble; most of the Forthwegians in Eoforwic scowled when they walked by broadsheets urging them to join Plegmund’s Brigade.

Most, but not all. A couple of fellows not far from Ealstan’s age stared at one of the broadsheets, their lips moving as they read its simple message. “That wouldn’t be so bad,” one of them said. “Cursed Unkerlanters deserve a good boot in the balls, you ask me.”

“Oh, aye.” His pal nodded; the sun gleamed off the grease with which he made his hair stand up tall enough to give him an extra inch or so of apparent height. The nasty-sweet odor of the grease didn’t quite cover the reek that said neither he nor his friend had gone to the baths any time lately. Their tunics were grimy, too; if they’d ever had any luck, they were down on it now.

“I bet they feed you good there,” the first one said, and his friend nodded again.

Both of them eyed Ealstan as he went by. He didn’t need to be a mage to see into their thoughts: if they knocked him over the head and stole his belt pouch, they might also eat well for a while. He hunched his shoulders forward and let one hand fold into a fist, as if to say he wouldn’t be easy meat. The two hungry toughs turned away to watch a girl instead.