Through the Darkness

Some of the farms around the village of Pavilosta had a new hand or two working on them. Merkela’s did. As for Skarnu, he was glad to have extra help, and especially glad the help came from Forthwegian Kaunians who’d been on their way to almost certain destruction.

These days, Raunu slept downstairs in the farmhouse, leaving the barn for Vatsyunas and Pernavai, a husband-and-wife pair who’d managed to stay together when the ley-line caravan carrying them got wrecked. “You’ll have to find yourself a lady friend, too,” Skarnu teased him one day while they were weeding together. “Then you’ll have somewhere better to sleep than a rolled-up blanket in front of the fire. Powers above, if I managed to find somebody, cursed near anyone can.”

The veteran underofficer snorted. “A blanket suits me fine, Captain,” he answered. “As for the ladies, well, if you know a blind one, she might think I suited well enough.” He ran a hand over his tough, battered features.

“You’re not homely,” Skarnu said, on the whole sincerely. “You’re ... distinguished-looking, that’s what you are.”

Raunu snorted again. “And I’ll tell you what distinguishes me, too: that none of the ladies wants to look at me.”

“Shows how much you know,” Skarnu answered. “Take Pernava, now. If she doesn’t reverence the ground you walk on . . .”

“It’s not the same.” Raunu shook his head. “She looks at you the same way. It’s because we took her and Vatsunu in instead of giving ‘em to the cursed redheads, that’s all. It’s not because she’s hot for us. She isn’t--she’s got him instead.”

Like Skarnu, he used the Valmieran forms of Pernavai and Vatsyunas’ names, not the classical versions they’d worn in Forthweg. Having ordinary names kept them from drawing Algarvian notice.

And Skarnu had to admit the justice of Raunu’s comment. “All right,” he said, “but she’s not the only woman around, either.”

“You’ve got a woman and you’re happy, so you think everybody needs one,” Raunu said. “Me, I’m fine without, thanks. And when the itch gets strong, I can go into Pavilosta and scratch it without spending a whole lot of silver.”

Skarnu threw his hands in the air. “I’ll shut up,” he said. “This is one argument I’m not going to win--I can see that.” He picked up his hoe, which had fallen down between rows of ripening barley, and beheaded several dandelions growing in a little clump.

“Don’t just let them lie there,” Raunu warned him. “Merkela’ll use the leaves for salad greens.”

“I know.” Skarnu picked up the dandelions and stuffed them into his belt pouch. “This farm was fine for two, and it’s done pretty well for three. Things are liable to be lean if it’s got to feed five, though. Every little bit helps.”

“Pemava and Vatsunu don’t eat as much as two regular Valmierans would,” Raunu said. “They look at what Merkela sets out like they’ve never seen so much food in all their born days.”

“By the look of them, they haven’t seen much food any time lately, that’s for sure,” Skarnu said, and Raunu nodded. Skarnu’s hand gripped the hoe handle as if it were an Algarvian’s neck. “And from what they say about the way the redheads treat our kind back in Forthweg ...” He grimaced and hacked down some more weeds, these inedible.

Raunu nodded, once more. “Aye. If I hadn’t wanted to go on fighting Mezentio’s men before, hearing the stories from Forthweg would tip me over the edge. Tip me? No, by the powers above--it’d throw me over the edge.”

“Me, too,” Skarnu said. But not everyone felt that way. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why. Some of the farmers around Pavilosta were only too glad to let the Algarvians have the Forthwegian Kaunians who’d escaped into the countryside when the ley-line caravan was sabotaged. Some of the local peasants let it go at that. Others went out of their way to betray fugitives to the redheads. Vatsyunas and Pernavai weren’t safe even here. If one of those locals should walk by and spy them working in Merkela’s fields . . .

If that happened, the Algarvians were all too likely to learn this farm was a center of local resistance. Logically, Skarnu supposed that meant he and Merkela and Raunu should have sent the Kaunian couple from Forthweg packing when they came out of the woods, lost and hungry and afraid. Somehow, logic hadn’t had much to do with it then.

With shouldered hoes, Skarnu and Raunu trudged toward the farmhouse when the sun sank in the west. Vatsyunas was feeding the chickens, Pernavai weeding with Merkela in the herb garden near the house. Neither of them had known the first thing about farming. Before war swallowed Forthweg, he’d been a dentist and she’d taken care of their two children and those of several of their neighbors. They didn’t know where the children were now. The two girls hadn’t come out of the wreck of the ley-line caravan. Vatsyunas and Pernavai hoped they still lived, but didn’t sound as if they believed it.