Through the Darkness

He spent a long, cold night in the woods. Without the cloak, he might have frozen. With it, he was merely miserable. He slept very little, no matter how tired he was. However much he wanted to, he couldn’t go back to the farm. He hoped the Algarvians had only been after him, not after Merkela and Raunu and the two Kaunians from Forthweg who’d joined them. He didn’t dare find out, though, not now.

What do I do? Where do I go? The questions ate at him. For the time being, he wasn’t going anywhere, not unless he heard the Algarvians coming after him in the darkness. He was too likely to blunder into them. Instead, he waited for dawn or something close to it, and tried to stay as dry as he could. That wasn’t easy, not the way the rain kept pouring down.

When at last he could see his outstretched hand in front of his face, he got moving. He struck the northbound road about where he thought he would. A slow smile stretched itself across his face. After a couple of years here, he was starting to know his way around as well as the locals did. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than he chuckled. Any local to whom he was rash enough to say that would laugh himself silly.

The redheads had men posted about where he thought they would: at the main crossroads. Had he been panicked, they would have nabbed him with ease. But he saw them before they spied him, and slipped in among the trees to slide around them.

Before long, he left the road for one of the many little paths that meandered from one farm to another. He stayed on the verge wherever he could; the path was almost as full of water as a creek. It was lower than the surrounding countryside, which made it the drainage channel. He wondered how long people and animals and wheels had been wearing it down. Since the days of the Kaunian Empire? He wouldn’t have been surprised.

After half a mile or so of hard, wet, slippery going, he walked up to another farmhouse. Rain rivered down the wood shakes of the roof and off the eaves, making a small lake around the house. Skarnu splashed through it, went up the stairs, and knocked on the front door.

For a few minutes, nothing happened. He knocked again, and called: “It’s me. I’m by myself.” Then he had to wait some more.

At last, though the door, did swing open. The farmer who stood in the doorway had a Valmieran military stick in his hands. Behind him, his hulking son held another. “It’s all right,” the farmer said, and they both lowered their weapons. The farmer stood aside. “Come in, Skarnu, before you catch your death.”

“My thanks, Maironiu,” Skarnu answered. “I won’t stay long. The redheads were on my trail, but I lost ‘em. Some food, maybe a chance to rest a little--and whom do you know that lives east of here?”

“Shed your cloak. Shed your boots. Eat some bread,” Maironiu said. “You’re sure you lost the redheaded buggers?” At Skarnu’s nod, he relaxed a little, but not much. His wife brought out the bread, and a mug of ale to go with it. Skarnu tore into the food like a starving wolf. Maironiu asked, “Did they scoop up everybody at old Gedominu’s place, the way they do sometimes?”

It would be Gedominu’s place till the last man who’d known Merkela’s husband died of old age. Skarnu had long since resigned himself to that. He shook his head now. “I don’t think so. I think they were after me in particular.”

Maironiu scowled. “That’s not good. That’s not even close to good. How could they know about you? Somebody blab?”

Skarnu nodded again. My sister, he thought. He didn’t want to believe it of Krasta, but he didn’t know what else to believe. “I don’t think they know about anybody else in these parts,” he said. “I hope they don’t, anyhow.”

“They’d better not,” Maironiu’s son burst out. “Life’s hard enough around here as is.”

Seeing how Skarnu ate, Maironiu’s wife brought him another big chunk of bread. He bowed to her as he might have bowed to a duchess. He didn’t usually show off his court manners. For one thing, he seldom had the need. For another, he was so tired now, he hardly knew what he was doing. Maironiu and his wife exchanged glances; they knew what that bow was likely to mean. Maironiu asked the question with surprising subtlety: “You have enemies in the big city?”

“Huh?” Skarnu needed a moment to figure out what that meant. He’d almost forgotten about his noble blood; a couple of years of farm work made him think it nothing very special after all. “It could be,” he said at last.

“Well, go on out to the barn and curl up for a few hours, whoever you were once upon a time,” Maironiu told him. “Then I’ll take you east. I do know somebody who’s not part of our regular group, but he’ll know somebody else. They’ll pass you along, get you away from here.”