Through the Darkness

“Hello, Pavilosta,” said the man with the glass of spirits. Names were in short supply among the irregulars. They called him by that of the village from whose neighborhood he’d had to flee. Considering how urgent his departure had been, even that came too close to identifying him to leave him quite comfortable with it.

“Hello yourself, Painter,” he said. No one could make much out of a nickname taken from a fellow’s job. He nodded to the other men. “Butcher. Cordwainer.”

They raised their mugs in greeting and salute. The barmaid came back with Skarnu’s ale. She pointedly stood by the table till he paid her. Then, her face still pinched with disapproval, she a walked back to the bar.

In a low voice, the fellow who made boots said, “You’re smart not to want any of her. She’s so cold, you’d freeze your joint off once you got it in there.” He sipped from his own mug, then added, “I ought to know.”

“You bragging or complaining?” asked the man who painted houses. Skarnu tried his ale. It wasn’t bad. He sat and waited. Ventspils wasn’t his town, not even by adoption. He couldn’t make plans here, as he had back near Pavilosta. He had to be part of other people’s plans. He didn’t care for that, but he didn’t know what to do about it, either.

“Tell him what you heard,” the bootmaker said, instead of coming back with a sally of his own.

“I’ll get round to it, never fear.” As Skarnu had been a power round Pavilosta, so the painter was a power in Ventspils. He did things his way, not the way anyone told him to do them. As if to say he wouldn’t be rushed, he finished his drink and waved for another one. Only after he’d got it did he remark, “The redheads will be bringing some captured Lagoan dragonfliers through town tonight, on the way to the captives’ camp outside Priekule.”

Lagoans were redheads, too, but nobody used the word to include them. Skarnu asked, “Can we filch ‘em?”

“We’re going to try,” the painter answered. “I know you can use a stick, so I want you in on it.” Skarnu nodded. The underground knew he’d blazed Count Simanu, Count Enkuru’s even more unsavory son. Unfortunately, that meant the Algarvians were also good bets to know. Traitors everywhere, he thought. But some traitor to the Algarvian cause had let them know the dragonfliers would be coming. It evened out--though even wasn’t good enough to suit Skarnu. The man from Ventspils went on, “We’ll meet behind the clock tower a little before midnight.”

Meeting before midnight sounded romantic. In reality, it was bloody cold. Men straggled in a couple at a time. They got sticks easily concealable down a trouser leg--not the sort of weapon Skarnu would have wanted to take to war, but one with which he could walk through the streets of the town.

“They’re not coming by ley-line caravan?” he asked the painter.

“Not from what I heard,” the local answered. “I don’t know whether they got blazed down someplace where there aren’t any ley lines or Mezentio’s men didn’t feel like laying on a caravan, but they’re not. Just a carriage. If they’re coming up through town, they’ll get in by Duchess Maza Road, up from the southeast.”

Having come into Ventspils from the southwest, Skarnu knew nothing of Duchess Maza Road. He tagged along with the other Valmierans who hadn’t given up on their kingdom. He wondered what they would do if they ran into an Algarvian patrol, but they didn’t. With the war in Unkerlant sucking men west, fewer Algarvians were left to watch the streets.

“Keep an eye out for Valmieran constables, too,” the painter warned. “Too many of them are in bed with the redheads.” That made Skarnu think of Krasta again, but he shook his head. Too many Valmierans of all sorts were in bed with the redheads.

They spied only one pair of constables on the way to the road into town from the southeast, and ducked out of sight before the constables saw them. Then it was on to Duchess Maza Road, into ambush positions behind tree trunks and fences, and wait.

Skarnu wondered how they would know the right carriage, but they had no trouble. Four Algarvian horsemen guarded it, two in front, two behind. But, by the way they rode, they thought they were there to make a fine procession, nothing more. Because they weren’t looking for danger, it found them.

“Now!” the painter said in a low, savage voice. His double handful of followers blazed the redheads off their horses and the driver off his carriage. The Algarvians managed only startled squawks before they went down. The next group of redheads who came through Ventspils with captives would doubtless be more alert, but that did these men no good at all.

Skarnu ran toward the carriage. He paused a moment to finish an Algarvian who still writhed on the cobbles, then seized a horse’s head to keep the beast from bolting. Another man blazed off the stout padlock that held the carriage door closed. As it fell with a clank, he spoke in Lagoan.