Through the Darkness

“And you,” Skarnu said. The tough hadn’t waited for his reply, but was already strolling down the alley as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Skarnu strolled up it, trying to act similarly nonchalant. He felt easier when he ducked into another alleyway that ran into the one behind the tavern. That second alley led him to a third, and the third to a fourth. Tytuvenai seemed to have a web of little lanes going nowhere in particular. By the time Skarnu emerged onto a real street, he was several blocks away from the Drunken Dragon. He hoped more of the men who kept on resisting the Algarvians had got out after the tough and him.

“You, there!” The call was sharp and peremptory. Skarnu turned. A constable was pointing at him. “Aye, you, bumpkin. What are you doing here?”

If he was trying to panic Skarnu, he failed. For all the world as if he were nothing but a bumpkin, the marquis jingled coins in his pocket. “Sold some eggs,” he answered. “Now I’m heading home.”

“Well, go on, then,” the constable growled. He might not have caught hold of foes of the Algarvians, but he had exercised his petty authority. That was enough to satisfy him.

Skarnu hurried out of Tytuvenai. He breathed easier once he was out in the countryside. Most people on the roads outside the towns looked like farmers--which made sense, because most of them were farmers.

He wondered how the Algarvians had got word of the meeting their enemies were having. Someone betrayed us. The thought was inescapable. And everyone who’d sat around that table now knew what he looked like and near which village he lived. If the Algarvians caught his comrades and squeezed them, would they send a company of soldiers--or a couple of officers and a company of Valmieran constables--looking for him on the farms round Pavilosta? In their boots, he would have. That worried him more than anything.

“Come on!” Sergeant Pesaro boomed to the squad of Algarvian constables he led west from Gromheort. “Keep moving! You can do it!”

Bembo lifted off his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with his other sleeve. “Fat old bugger,” he grumbled. “Why doesn’t he have an apoplexy and fall over dead?”

“He’s not even as fat as he used to be,” Oraste said.

“I know.” Bembo didn’t like that, either, and wasn’t shy about saying why: “It’s all this fornicating marching we’re doing. Powers above, even I’m starting to get skinny.”

“Not so you’d notice, you’re not,” Oraste answered, which made Bembo send him a wounded look and tramp along for some little while in silence.

Sergeant Pesaro wasn’t shy about filling silences. “Keep it moving,” he repeated. “Won’t be much longer before we get to that stinking Oyngestun place.”

“Oh, aye, and won’t they be glad to see us when we get there?” Bembo said. “We’ve already taken one lot of Kaunians out of the lousy dump. What’ll they do now that we’re coming back for more?”

“Forthwegians’ll cheer, just like I would,” Oraste said. “As far as the blonds go, well, who cares?”

No one cared what happened to the Kaunians in Forthweg--except those Kaunians themselves, and there weren’t enough of them to matter. That was why dreadful things kept happening to them. If the Kaunian kingdoms were winning the war, what would they be doing to Algarvians? Bembo wondered. Nothing good--he was sure of that.

Another thought crossed his mind: if the Unkerlanters do win the war, what will they do to Algarvians? He didn’t care to imagine that. He was ever so glad to be marching through eastern Forthweg rather than through Unkerlant, even if King Mezentio’s men were moving forward again there. The Forthwegians might not love Algarvian constables, but some of the rumors that came drifting out of Unkerlant made the hair on the back of his neck try to prickle up.

“Here we are,” Pesaro said, lifting him out of his unhappy reverie. “Beautiful Oyngestun, the garden spot of all Forthweg.”

“Huh,” Oraste said, looking at the small, decrepit village with his usual scorn. “If Forthweg needed a good purging, this is where they’d plug in the hose.”

Bembo thought about that, then snorted. As long as Oraste was making jokes about villages and not about him, he thought his squadmate was a pretty funny fellow.

Oyngestun’s two or three Algarvian constables were waiting for the squad from Gromheort. So were a couple of dozen Kaunians, all standing glum and dejected in the village square. “Powers above, you lazy buggers,” Pesaro shouted to the local constables. “Where’s the rest of ‘em?”

“We haven’t got enough men to do a proper roundup,” one of the men posted to Oyngestun answered. “Miserable blonds start sliding away whenever our backs are turned.”