Through the Darkness

“The more we fight the Algarvians, the more efficient we get,” Rathar replied. “We have to. Either that, or we go under. And I’ll tell you something else, too: the redheads never figured we’d last this long. We’ve already given ‘em one surprise. Now we find how many more we’ve got.” He nodded, liking the sound of those words. “We find out pretty soon, by the powers above.”

“Come back here, you miserable, cursed thing!” Skarnu called to a sheep that had broken away from the flock. The sheep showed no interest in coming. It had found some good grass near the edge of the woods, and its thick woolly coat, which hadn’t been sheared in a while, shed the cold, nasty rain that pelted down out of a sky gray to begin with and now darkening toward evening.

Skarnu’s hooded cape shed rain, too, but not so well. He squelched toward the sheep, temper fraying with every step he took. He hefted his crook. When he got close enough to the infuriating animal, he intended to teach it who was boss, and in no uncertain terms.

But the sheep might have known what he had in mind--and it certainly knew just how far he could reach with that crook. Nimble as if it had grown up hopping from crag to crag in the Bratanu Mountains, it skipped away from him again and again. He wondered if it would try to jump the fence and cross the road so it could get in among the oaks and forage for acorns like a wild boar.

It didn’t jump, but it did evade him again, almost as if it were playing with him. Longingly, he looked back toward the farmhouse. Merkela would have a big pot of stew bubbling over the fire. He didn’t care if it was only barley and peas and beans and cabbage. It would fill him up and warm him from the inside out. As things were, he’d be lucky if he didn’t come down with chest fever by the time he finally chased down this pestilential sheep.

“You’d make good mutton,” he growled. “You’d make bloody wonderful mutton, do you know that?”

He wondered what Merkela would say if he cut the sheep’s throat when he finally caught it, gutted the carcass, and dragged it back to the farmhouse. He sighed. No, he didn’t really wonder what Merkela would say. He knew. The sheep would live, no matter how much he wished it dead.

In the driving rain and deepening gloom, he didn’t see the horsemen coming up the road till they were quite close. They didn’t see him, either--and then, all at once, they did. One of them called out in accented Valmieran: “You are being the peasant calling self Skarnu?”

Skarnu didn’t wait to admit or deny he was himself. He stood only a couple of strides from the rail fence. He scrambled up over it, dashed across the road, and ran off into the woods.

“Halting!” yelled the Algarvian who spoke his language. But Skarnu had no intention of halting. He could think of only one reason the redheads would want him, the same one that had made him hide in the woods before. He cursed his sister again for betraying him to her Algarvian lover.

Mezentio’s men didn’t just shout at Skarnu. They started blazing at him, too. Beams sizzled past, boiling raindrops as they went. But in weather like this, the beams weakened rapidly. When one struck him, it had enough force left to burn through his cloak, enough to burn through his trousers, but not enough to do much more than scorch his backside. On a rainless day, it might have brought him down.

As things were, he howled and yelped and sprang in the air and clapped a hand to the singed part, almost as if he were a comic actor up on the stage. He ran on for a couple of steps, wondering how bad the wound was. Then he decided he couldn’t be too badly hurt if he could keep on running so fast. He dodged in and out among the trees, trying to put as many trunks as he could between himself and the Algarvians.

They pounded after him on foot, calling to one another in their own language. There were four or five of them; he hadn’t bothered to count before fleeing. They all had sticks, and his throbbing right buttock proclaimed they weren’t shy about using them. But it was getting dark, and he knew the woods, and they didn’t. Once he stopped running in blind panic and started using his head, he had little trouble shaking them off.

Hood drawn down over his face, he sheltered in a thick clump of bushes while they ran past. One came within fifteen or twenty feet, but had no idea he was anywhere close by. Once they were all out of earshot, he got up and moved off to the side, away from the track they would have to take going back to their horses.

He was tempted to go back to the horses himself, to ride off on one and lead the others away after it. But he didn’t know whether the redheads had left a man to watch the animals. He would have, in their boots. And so, however alluring the prospect of giving them a good tweak was, he decided to content himself with escape.