Through the Darkness d-3 Read online

  “Talk it over with the boys some more first,” the band leader replied. “It’s just what we want, right? — giving shows for a brigade full of traitors. But if it’s the only way we can stay out of trouble with the Algarvians, we may have to.”

  At not quite eighteen, some things looked very clear to Ealstan. “If you do play, how are you any different from the fellows who carry sticks for King Mezentio?”

  Ethelhelm’s lips tightened. “I wish you hadn’t asked it quite that way.” Now that the words were out of his mouth, Ealstan also wished he hadn’t asked it quite that way. He didn’t want to lose Ethelhelm as a client or as a friend. But he didn’t want to lose his respect for him, either. After a pause, the musician went on, “I don’t know what to tell you about that. There’s some truth to it. But if we don’t play for the Brigade, the Algarvians are liable to shut us up. Is that better?”

  He meant it seriously. This time, Ealstan thought before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just don’t know. We have to make some compromises with the Algarvians if we want to live.”

  “Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” the band leader agreed.

  Ealstan waved around the flat. The wave encompassed thick carpets, fine furnishing, books, paintings, drums and viols and flutes. “The other thing you have to ask yourself is, how much is all this worth to you?”

  Ethelhelm gave him an odd look. “I never thought I’d see my conscience sitting in a chair talking to me. What do you think I’ve been asking myself ever since the Algarvians came to me? It’s not an easy question.”

  “Why not?” It was easy for Ealstan.

  Now Ethelhelm did look exasperated. “Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because I’ve worked a long, long time, and I’ve worked really hard all that time, to get where I am. And now I have to throw it away by making the redheads angry? That’s why it’s not easy.”

  Ealstan hadn’t spent a long time working toward anything. The only thing he had that he couldn’t bear to give up was Vanai, and he’d already given up everything else for her. He got to his feet. “I think I’d better go.”

  “Aye, I think maybe you’d better,” Ethelhelm replied. “I haven’t told them we would yet, you know. I just haven’t told them we wouldn’t, either.”

  With a nod, Ealstan left. As usual, he noted the stairwell didn’t stink of cabbage or of anything worse. As much as all the fine furnishings in Ethel-helm’s flat, that reminded him of what the band leader had to lose.

  Heat smote when he left the block of flats. Summer in Eoforwic, like summer in most of Forthweg, was the savage season of the year, the sun beating down from high, high in the sky. Tempers could fray. His almost had, and so had Ethelhelm’s. He sighed, seeing himself in Ethelhelm’s place, listening to himself telling the Algarvians they had no business raising Plegmund’s Brigade, let alone expecting him to play for it.

  But he was his father’s son, too. After a moment, he laughed at himself- easy enough for a man with nothing to lose. Ethelhelm had rather more than that. Ealstan had already known as much. This whole block of flats told him as much. Ethelhelm didn’t want to lose it, either. Ealstan hadn’t known that, but he did now. He wondered how the bandleader would get around it, and if Ethelhelm could. For Ethelhelm’s sake and his own, he hoped so.

  He passed a recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund’s Brigade, and another, and another. The Algarvians made sure there were plenty about. Had Sidroc finally joined it, as he’d kept saying he would, or had he found better sense somewhere? For his cousin’s sake, Ealstan hoped that last was true.

  He walked by another one of those ubiquitous broadsheets. This one, though, had ALGARVE’s DOGS scrawled across it in bold strokes of charcoal. Seeing that made Ealstan smile. In spite of Plegmund’s Brigade, not all, or even most, of his countrymen had any use for their occupiers.

  He saw several more defaced broadsheets on his way back toward his own block of flats. They all had different slogans on them: either they’d been written by different hands or by one fellow with a lot on his mind. One of the slogans read, STOP KILLING KAUNIANS! Ealstan almost burst into tears when he spied it. He sometimes wondered if he were the only Forthwegian who cared. Being reminded he wasn’t felt good.

  A Forthwegian dashed round a corner and ran toward and then past him with what looked like a woman’s leather handbag pressed to his side. And so it was: a moment later, a couple of Algarvian constables, whistles shrilling, rounded that same corner in hot pursuit. They pointed at the fleeing Forthwegian and shouted, “Stopping thief!”

  No one on the crowded street showed the least interest in stopping the thief. Cursing, sweating, the Algarvians pounded after him. They didn’t get far before somebody stuck out a leg and tripped the one who was in front. His partner fell over him. Both of them howled.

  They got up with filthy tunics and with bleeding elbows and knees-the kilts they wore made their scrapes worse by leaving knees bare. Each of them yanked his bludgeon off his belt and started belaboring the Forthwegian they thought had tripped them. After he went down with a groan, the Algarvians started beating all the Forthwegians they could reach. One of them swung at Ealstan, but missed.

  And then a Forthwegian leaped on one of the constables. The other Algarvian dropped his bludgeon, grabbed for his stick, and blazed the Forthwegian. The fellow let out a shriek that echoed through the street. The redhead he’d jumped scrambled to his feet.

  A rock-probably a pried-up cobblestone-whizzed past the Algarvians’ heads. An instant later, another rock caught one of them in the ribs. They both started blazing then, blazing and shouting for help at the top of their lungs. Ealstan had no idea whether any help for them was close by. He didn’t wait around to find out, either, especially not after a beam zipped past his head and burned a scorched, smoking hole in the wooden front of the leather-goods shop by which he was standing.

  Forthwegians fell, screaming and thrashing. But more rocks flew, too, along with curses. One of the Algarvians went down when a stone caught him in front of the ear. His comrade stood over him, still blazing. Then someone tackled the standing constable from behind. Baying like wolves, the mob swarmed over both redheads.

  Ealstan cheered to see them go down. But he didn’t linger to help stomp them to death. He hadn’t seen a riot in Eoforwic, but the stories he’d heard about the one that had happened not long before Vanai and he came to the city made him want to get away rather than join in. His own countrymen would have things all their own way for a little while, but then the Algarvians would gather enough men to restore order-and they wouldn’t much care whom they killed while they were doing it, either.

  Breaking glass announced that the Forthwegians were starting to plunder the shops along the street. Ealstan stepped up his pace, hoping to put as much distance between himself and trouble as he could. He didn’t like to think about Forthwegians robbing other Forthwegians, but he’d heard stories about that, too. He hadn’t believed all of them. Now he realized he might also have been wrong about that.

  He’d just turned onto his own street when a couple of squads of Algarvian constables tramped up it, every one of them looking as grim as any soldiers he’d ever seen. The redheads carried infantry-style sticks, not the shorter, less powerful weapons they usually used. Their eyes swung toward him in frightening unison. He shrank away from them. He couldn’t help himself. Had he given them the least excuse, they would have blazed him, and he knew it.

  When he got up to his flat, Vanai exclaimed, “Powers above, what’s going on out there?”

  “Riot,” he answered succinctly. “For once, you can be glad you’re holed up in here. I’m going to stay right here, too, till things quiet down or till I have to go out for food.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that sounded less than heroic. After listening to himself again, he decided he didn’t care.

  Bembo and Oraste paced along the edge of the district into which Gromheort’s Kaunians and those from the surroun
ding countryside had been crowded. As long as the blonds stayed inside the district, everything was fine. When they didn’t, the Algarvian constables had to make them regret it.

  “Supposed to be a tough time over in that Eoforwic place,” Bembo remarked. “For a couple of days there, I was wondering if they were going to stick us on a caravan and send us over there to help put out the fire.”

  With a shrug, his partner answered, “Wouldn’t matter to me. If the Kaunians get out of line, we kick them around. If the Forthwegians get out of line, we kick them around, too.”

  “You hate everybody, don’t you?” Bembo meant the question sardonically, but it came out sounding half admiring.

  “I’m a fornicating constable,” Oraste answered. “It’s my fornicating job to hate everybody. Back in Tricarico, I hated Algarvians. I can still think of some Algarvians I hate, matter of fact.”

  Bembo hoped Oraste was talking about Sergeant Pesaro. He didn’t ask, though. Had Oraste’s disdain been aimed at him, the other constable wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him so. Instead, Bembo said, “How are we supposed to win the war if the places we’ve conquered keep giving us trouble?”

  His partner shrugged again. “We kill enough of those whoresons who think they’re so cursed smart, the rest will get the idea pretty stinking quick. One thing about dead men: they hardly ever talk back to you.”

  A live man, a scrawny Kaunian with a leather apron over his tunic and trousers, came out of his shop and beckoned to the constables. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. When a Kaunian actually wanted something to do with them, something fishy was liable to be going on. “What is it?” Bembo growled in his own language; if the blond didn’t speak Algarvian, the powers below were welcome to him.

  But the Kaunian did, and pretty well, too: “Can you gentlemen please help me with a quarrel I am having with my neighbor?”

  An unpleasant light blazed in Oraste’s eyes. Bembo understood what it meant. The Kaunian shopkeeper, perhaps luckily for him, didn’t. If Oraste decided this fellow was right-or if he could pay-his neighbor would regret it. If the neighbor had a better case-or more silver-this blond would rue the day he was born. Either way, Oraste would end up happy.

  “What’s he doing to you?” Bembo asked. “Or what does he think you’re doing to him?”

  The shopkeeper started to explain. A moment later, another Kaunian popped out of the shop next door and started screaming at him. This fellow’s Algarvian was worse than the first man’s, but he made up in excitement what he lacked in grammar. Bembo smiled to listen to him. Even if he didn’t talk any too well, in a way he sounded very Algarvian indeed.

  Before long, both Kaunians were dropping broad hints about what they would do if only things were decided in their favor. Bembo smiled some more. This was shaping up as a profitable afternoon. And then, just when the excitable blond was about to make a real offer, Oraste gave Bembo a shot in the ribs with his elbow. The other constable pointed. “Look at that old bugger. If he’s not sneaking back after he was out when he wasn’t supposed to be, what is he doing?”

  Sure enough, the silver-haired Kaunian was trying to edge past the constables and the argument and go deeper into the part of town where he was allowed to be. Since Bembo and Oraste were only paces inside the edge of that district, the Kaunian had to be coming from outside it. A schoolmaster’s logic couldn’t have cut more sharply.

  “Hold up there, pal,” Bembo called to the man, who turned back to him with surprise and alarm on his face. A moment later, Bembo was surprised, too: surprised that he recognized the fellow. “It’s that old son of a whore from Oyngestun,” he said to Oraste.

  “Well, kiss my arse if you’re not right,” Oraste said. “I knew he was mouthy. I didn’t know he was sneaky, too.”

  Bembo advanced on the Kaunian. So did Oraste. Behind them, the two shopkeepers both exclaimed. The constables ignored them. “All right, pal,” Bembo said. “What were you doing sliding through the parts of Gromheort where you’re not supposed to go?”

  “I was looking for word of my granddaughter,” the Kaunian answered in his slow, precise Algarvian. “I am concerned for her safety.”

  Oraste laughed. “She’s a Kaunian, right, same as you are? None of your buggers are safe. You sure aren’t safe, old man.” He pulled his bludgeon off his belt and twirled it by its leather thong.

  The scar where Bembo had struck the Kaunian on the road from Oyngestun to Gromheort was still bright pink. If he needed another lesson, Oraste looked eager to arrange it. The Kaunian licked his lips. He saw what was on Oraste’s face, too. One of his hands slid into a trouser pocket. Coins jingled. He said, “You never really saw me outside this quarter, did you?”

  “I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Although the Kaunian had proved pretty dense before, he had no trouble figuring out what that meant. He gave Bembo and Oraste enough silver to make them decide they hadn’t seen him sneaking back after all. And then, showing he really could learn, he got out of there in a hurry, to keep the constables from beating him even after he’d paid them.

  They turned back to the two Kaunian shopkeepers, only to discover the blonds had made up their quarrel. Oraste hefted his bludgeon. “I ought to bloody both of you for wasting our time,” he growled.

  Both the shopkeepers started jingling coins. Bembo, a mild enough sort most of the time, wouldn’t have got so much out of them. They were, however, plainly scared to death of Oraste-and they couldn’t very well bribe him without bribing Bembo, too. The plump constable’s belt pouch grew full and nicely rounded.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” he said as he and Oraste returned to their beat. Behind them, the two Kaunians started shouting at each other again. Bembo still had a miserable time following their language, but he thought the excitable one was berating the other for calling the constables.

  Oraste spat on the cobblestones. “Oh, aye, it’s some silver,” he said, “but what can we spend silver on? Not much, not in this rathole of a town. I’d sooner have broken some heads.”

  “You can always spend money in a tavern,” Bembo said. “If you feel like it, you can break heads in a tavern, too.”

  “It’s not the same,” Oraste said. “Breaking heads in a tavern is just brawling. If I do it on the job, I get paid for it.”

  Bembo had known a fair number of constables with that attitude, but few so open about it as Oraste. Preferring bribes to brawls, Bembo said, “There’ll be other chances. The way we’ve stuffed all these Kaunians into this little tiny stretch of town, they’re going to be at each other’s throats all the time, so we’ll get plenty to do.”

  Oraste looked down a cross street toward the heart of the Kaunian district in Gromheort. The blonds had set up a market along both sides of the street, which was too narrow to begin with. Bembo wondered what they sold one another; none of them could have had very much.

  “Aye, they are packed pretty tight,” Oraste allowed. “I just hope there’s no pestilence that starts going through ‘em.”

  “Why?” Bembo said in some surprise; his partner usually showed no concern whatever for Kaunians. “Because the pestilence might spread to us, you mean?”

  “Oh, that, too,” Oraste said, though he didn’t seem to have thought of it himself. “But what I mostly meant is, a pestilence would kill off the lousy blonds before we got the chance to use their life energy against the Unkerlanters or wherever else we need it.”

  “Oh,” Bembo said. “That’s true.” And so it was, even if his stomach did a slow flipflop every time he thought about it. “I wish we could have beaten King Swemmel without using magic like that.”

  “So do I, on account of it would have been easier on us,” Oraste said. “But the more Kaunians we get rid of, the better off everybody’ll be after we finally win the war. They’ve been stepping on our faces for too long. Now it’s our turn.”

  Bembo couldn’t disagree, not out loud. Oraste would have thought him a sl
acker or, worse, a closet Kaunian-lover. He wasn’t. He had no use for the blonds. He hadn’t back in Tricarico, and he didn’t here in Gromheort, either. But he was too easygoing to enjoy massacre.

  A couple of other constables came out of the district in the company of six or eight young Kaunian women. Half the women looked sullen and bitter, the other half anywhere from resigned to happy. “Where are you taking them?” Bembo called.

  “Recruits for a soldiers’ brothel,” one of his countrymen answered. He turned back to the women, saying, “Don’t any of you worry about a thing. By the powers above, you’ll have plenty to eat, and that’s no lie. Got to keep you good and plump to give the boys somewhere nice to lay down.” One of the women translated for the others. A couple of them, the skinnier ones, nodded.

  After the little procession was out of earshot, Bembo turned to Oraste and asked, “How long do you suppose they’ll last?”

  “In a soldiers’ brothel? Couple-three weeks,” Oraste replied. “They wear ‘em out, they use ‘em up, and then they bring in some fresh meat. That’s how it goes.”

  “About what I thought.” Bembo looked after the blondes. He sighed and shrugged. “They don’t know what they’re getting into, poor dears.” Like a lot of Algarvians, he was sentimental about women, even Kaunian women.

  Oraste wasn’t. “Maybe they don’t know what they’re getting into, but I bet they’ve got a pretty good notion of what’ll be getting into them.” He threw back his head and guffawed.

  “That’s not bad,” Bembo said, and, coming from Oraste, it wasn’t. The constables walked on for a few paces. Then Bembo stroked his chin. “I wonder why that old Kaunian from Oyngestun thought his granddaughter was somewhere outside the Kaunian quarter.”

  “Who cares?” Oraste answered, which threatened to kill off conversation altogether. But he went on, “She ran off, remember? That’s what the old geezer told us, anyhow. Maybe some Forthwegian’s hiding her here in town and taking it out in trade.” His leer was lewd, filthy.