Through the Darkness

As he drove the animals out to the meadow, he shaded his eyes with his free hand and looked over toward Raunu, who bent his back to grub weeds out of the ground. Skarnu sighed. The sergeant would ache tonight. Skarnu would also have ached had he gone weeding today, but he would have got over it faster than his comrade.

And the animals didn’t look as if they would give him any trouble today. They grazed contentedly, the cows not very far away from the sheep. By all the signs, they’d be content to keep on doing it till Skarnu drove them back into their pens when the sun set. For all they needed him, he could have lain down in the tall, thick grass and caught up on his sleep.

Then the first two men stumbled out of the woods that marked the border of the meadow.

They were both Kaunians: they had yellow hair and wore tunics and trousers, though of a cut that hadn’t been stylish in Valmiera since not long after the end of the Six Years’ War. They were also both filthy and unshaven and so scrawny that their old-fashioned clothes hung loosely on them.

Seeing Skarnu, they hurried toward him, arms outstretched beseechingly. They called out to him, their voices harsh, dry-throated croaks. He stared, clutching the staff, half ready to use it as a weapon, for he understood not a word they said.

But then, after a moment, he did, or thought he did. They weren’t speaking Valmieran. What came from their mouths was classical Kaunian, though with an accent different from the one he’d learned in school. They’re Kaunians from Forthweg, he realized, and a shiver ran through him.

He tried to remember the classical tongue, which he’d used little since his schooling stopped. “Repeat yourselves,” he said. “You are from the caravan?”

“Aye.” Their heads bobbed up and down together. “The caravan.” Then they both started talking at the same time, too fast for Skarnu to follow when they used what was for him a foreign tongue, and one spoken with an intonation he’d hardly ever heard before.

“Slowly!” he said, proud that he’d remembered the word. He pointed to the taller of them. “You. Talk.” Too late, he realized he’d used the intimate rather than the formal pronoun and verb form. His schoolmaster would have striped his back.

But the Kaunian from Forthweg didn’t criticize his grammar. Talk he did, though not so slowly as Skarnu would have liked. Out of the corner of his eye, Skarnu saw Raunu scramble over the fence that kept the livestock out of the crops and trot toward him, the hoe most definitely a weapon now.

After listening for a bit, Raunu asked, “What’s he saying? I can make out a word here or there, but that’s all.” As a sausage-seller’s son, he’d never had occasion to learn the classical language.

“I’m only getting about every other word myself,” Skarnu answered. Distracted by the veteran’s question, he didn’t even follow that much for a couple of sentences. But he thought he had the gist. “Unless I’m wrong, the redheads were sending them somewhere so they could kill them to draw their life energy for magic.”

As he understood bits and pieces of classical Kaunian, so the blonds from Forthweg could follow scraps of Valmieran. “Aye,” they said. One of them drew his thumb across his throat.

Raunu grunted. “Like they did against Yliharma this past winter, eh?” He nodded. “Sounds likely, powers below eat Mezentio and all his people. Wonder if they aimed to have another go at Kuusamo or hit Setubal in Lagoas.”

“They would know. I don’t,” Skarnu answered. His gaze met Raunu’s for a moment. They’d done more and better than they could have guessed by wrecking this ley-line caravan. Skarnu remembered the one he’d seen with Merkela not long before the attack on Yliharma, the one with shutters over all the windows. Had it been hauling doomed Kaunians down to the edge of the Strait of Valmiera?

“Help us,” one of the men from the caravan said. “Feed us.”

“Hide us,” the other one added.

Before Skarnu could answer, a man and a woman came out of the woods hand in hand. Seeing their countrymen, they pointed back toward the caravan. “Algarvian soldiers!” the woman exclaimed.

“Hide us!” the Kaunian man in the meadow said again.

But, before Skarnu could answer, all the Kaunians from Forthweg began running. They couldn’t stand the idea of being anywhere near King Mezentio’s soldiers. “Stop!” Skarnu and Raunu called after them, but they wouldn’t stop. And, when three more blonds burst out of the woods, they pelted past Skarnu and Raunu, too.

They’d all managed to get out of sight when half a dozen redheaded men in kilts stepped out onto the meadow. They came up to the two Valmierans. “You seeing escaping criminals?” one of them asked.

Skarnu looked at Raunu. Raunu looked at Skarnu. They both looked back at the Algarvian with the stolid, uncaring gaze of peasants. “Didn’t see nobody,” Skarnu answered. Raunu nodded agreement.