Darkness Descending

Nine

Halfway along the road from Gromheort to the village of Hwinca, the paving gave out. Bembo discovered that the hard way, by going into the mud almost up to his boot tops. Cursing, the Algarvian constable slogged through the soggy patch and up onto drier--if no more paved--ground.

“Don’t blaze my ears on account of it,” advised Oraste, whose boots were also befouled. “Take it out on the Kaunians when we finally get to this miserable place.”

“I will, by the powers above,” Bembo growled. “If it weren’t for them, I’d be sitting back in the barracks, all warm and cozy.” He was always ready to feel sorry for himself. “As a matter of fact, if it weren’t for those miserable buggers, we wouldn’t have a war, and I’d be back in Tricarico, happy as a clam at the beach, and not stuck here in stinking Forthweg.”

Sergeant Pesaro looked over at him. “Remember, while you’re cursing the Kaunians, odds are they’re cursing us, too. I don’t expect they’ll be as easy to round up here as they were in that Oyngestun place--too many stories going around about what happens after they go west.”

“They deserve it,” Oraste said. “Bembo’s right, Sergeant--weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have a war.”

Bembo wondered if Oraste was feeling well. The dour constable hardly ever agreed with him. Bembo also wondered if the Kaunians really deserved it. Most of the time, he tried not to wonder about that. It did no good. He’d been ordered to gather them together and send them off to the west. He couldn’t do anything about what happened to them afterwards. “What point, then, to puzzling over who deserved what?

The constables tramped through a hamlet of half a dozen houses. An old woman on her knees in an herb garden looked up as they went. Her nose was like a sickle blade. Her chin almost met it. Her face was a tight-woven net of wrinkles. Her smile . . . Her smile chilled Bembo’s heart. He’d seen some raddled old procuresses in his day, but none who could match the ancient, exultant evil this Forthwegian crone showed.

“No blonds here,” she called in bad Algarvian made worse by her being almost toothless. “Blonds there.” She pointed north, up the road toward Hwinca.

“Aye, granny, we know,” Pesaro answered. With a chortle and a nasty smirk, the peasant woman went back to her weeding.

Oraste chuckled. “She loves Kaunians, too, just as much as we do.”

“I noticed,” Bembo said dryly. “A lot of Forthwegians do, don’t they?”

“Keep moving, there,” Pesaro said. He was puffing and sweating himself; he’d done more marching since coming to Forthweg than in all the years since he’d made sergeant and comfortably ensconced himself behind the station-house desk back in Tricarico. But he kept on putting one big foot in front of the other, steady as a stream, inevitable as an avalanche. As for Bembo, he wanted a breather. Pesaro didn’t give him one.

It was most of an hour later when Oraste pointed ahead and said, “There. That must be the place. Miserable-looking little dump, isn’t it? How many are we supposed to take out of it, Sergeant?”

“Twenty.” Pesaro grunted. “Hardly looks like it’s got twenty people in it, does it, let alone twenty Kaunians? But if we don’t bring back twenty, we get blamed.” He kicked a clod of dirt. “Life’s not fair.”

“Sergeant?” That was a youngish constable named Almonio. Bembo looked at him in some surprise; he hardly ever said anything.

“What is it?” Pesaro sounded surprised, too.

“Sergeant...” Now that he had spoken, Almonio looked as if he wished he hadn’t. He marched along for several paces before going on, “When we get into this Hwinca place, Sergeant, may I have your leave not to help round up these Kaunians?”

“What’s this?” Sergeant Pesaro studied him as if he were a double rainbow or a golden unicorn or some other astonishing freak of nature. Pesaro’s beefy face clouded. “You telling me you haven’t got the stomach for it?”

Miserably, Almonio nodded. “Aye, I think that’s what it is. I know what’s going to happen to the whoresons once we take ‘em, and I don’t much want to be a part of it.”

Bembo’s eyes got wider and wider as he listened. “Powers above,” he whispered to Oraste, “the sergeant’ll tear him limb from limb.”

“Aye, so he will.” Oraste sounded as if he was looking forward to it.

Pesaro, though, seemed more curious than furious. “Suppose we’re rounding up the blonds and they try and fight us? What are you going to do then, Almonio? You going to stand there and let the Kaunians kill your comrades?”

“Of course not, Sergeant,” Almonio answered. “I just don’t want to have to. drag them out of their houses, that’s all. It’s a filthy business.”

“War is a filthy business,” Pesaro said, but he still didn’t sound angry. He rubbed his chins as he thought. At last, he pointed toward the reluctant constable. “All right, Almonio, here’s what you’ll do for today: you’ll stand guard while the rest of us winkle out the Kaunians. If they give any trouble--if they even look like they might give any trouble--you start blazing. Have you got that?”

“Aye, Sergeant.” Almonio stopped marching for a moment so he could bow. “I thank you, Sergeant.”

“Don’t thank me too much,” Pesaro answered. “And, by the powers above, keep your cursed mouth shut, or we’re both in hot water.” He shook his head. “Warm water would feel good right now, but not that hot.”

Well, well--isn’t that interesting? Bembo thought. I’ve got a hold on Pesaro, if I ever want one. He lifted off his hat so he could scratch his head. The way things were, he couldn’t see wanting one. He’d spent years getting used to Pesaro--and getting Pesaro used to him. Any other sergeant was too likely to be harder on him. He laughed a sour laugh. Wasn’t that the way of the world?--come up with something that looked good and then decide you couldn’t use it.

Into Hwinca marched the constabulary squad. The village was smaller and dingier than Oyngestun; it didn’t lie on a ley line, and so seemed more a product of a distant time than Oyngestun had. And Oyngestun, as far as Bembo was concerned, hadn’t been anything to write home about, either.

He didn’t write home very often, anyhow. He’d quarreled endlessly with his father before going out on his own; they still had little to do with each other. His sister had quarreled with the old man, too. But Lanfusa’s escape had been to marry a furrier who was now on his way to being rich. She didn’t like being reminded her brother was only a constable. If he sent a letter to Safta, she might write back. She was likelier to fall over dead from shock, though.

A few Forthwegians nodded to the constables. One of them grinned and winked and clapped his hands, almost as if he were an Algarvian. The leer on his face made Bembo remember that what he was doing in Forthweg probably ought not to go down in writing to anyone.

“Kaunians, come forth!” Pesaro shouted in a great voice when he got to Hwinca’s village square. Evodio turned his words from Algarvian into classical Kaunian. That was the tongue the blonds hereabouts still spoke, or near enough as to make no difference.

No matter what language the order came in, the Kaunians ignored it. Bembo turned to Oraste. “There--you see? They’ve got a notion of what’s going to happen to them. They won’t come out all by themselves, not anymore. We’re going to have to go in after ‘em. It’ll be a lot of extra work from now on.”

Oraste hefted his stick. “Liable to be dangerous work, too. If they figure they’re going to get shipped west anyhow, who’s to say they won’t decide they’ve got nothing to lose and try and take some of us with ‘em?”

“Aye.” That had occurred to Bembo, too. He wished it hadn’t.

Pesaro shouted again. His voice echoed off the houses and shops facing the square. Again, Evodio translated his words into classical Kaunian. Again, none of the yellow-haired men and women in Hwinca came forth. “Well, we’ll have to do it the hard way,” Pesaro said. His chuckle had a nasty edge. “You know what, though? I don’t think it’ll be too hard.” He beckoned to the Forthwegian who’d applauded the constables’ arrival. “Come here, pal. Aye, you. You speak Algarvian?”

With a show of regret, the villager shook his head. Pesaro looked exasperated. Neither he nor any of his men spoke any Forthwegian past what little they’d picked up since coming from Tricarico. Evodio said, “I’ll bet he speaks Kaunian, Sergeant.”

“Find out,” Pesaro said. Sure enough, intelligence lit on the Forthwegian’s face. Pesaro nodded. “Good. Tell him we’ll pay him--doesn’t have to be anything much or I’m a Yaninan--if he’ll show us which houses the Kaunians live in.”

That fellow turned out not to be the only villager who spoke Kaunian; three or four others clamored for a share of the reward, too. Bembo and Oraste followed one of them to a house that didn’t look any different from those to either side of it. The Forthwegian pointed at the door, as dramatically as if he were a hunting dog pointing at a woodcock.

“Kaunians, come forth!” the two constables shouted together. Nobody came forth. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. They drew back a couple of paces, then slammed the door with their shoulders. It flew inward, the brackets in which its bar rested pulled out of the wall. Bembo sprawled on hands and knees in the front hall; he’d expected to bounce off his first try. Oraste kept his feet, but barely.

“They’ll pay for that, the scum,” Bembo muttered as he got to his feet. “Come on, let’s turn this place inside out.”

Sticks at the ready, he and Oraste swept through the house. They didn’t have to search long or hard: they found the Kaunians--a man and woman of about Bembo’s age, with two little girls too young to be interesting--cowering in a pantry in the kitchen. Oraste gestured with his stick. “Come out, every cursed one of you!” he growled.

“Aye, sir,” said the man, in decent Algarvian. He was, Bembo judged, frightened almost out of his wits, but doing his best not to show it for the sake of his family. In a low, urgent voice, he went on, “Whatever you want so you will say you could not find us, I will give it to you. I have money. I am not a poor man. All of it is yours--only let us live.”

“Kaunian,” Oraste said: an all-inclusive rejection. Bembo gave his comrade a dirty look. He’d wanted to see how much the blond would offer. But he couldn’t get away with that if Oraste didn’t go along.

The yellow-haired man whispered something to his wife. She bit her lip, but nodded. “Not money, then,” the Kaunian man said rapidly, desperately. “But anything you want. Anything.” He gestured to the woman. She undid the top toggle of her tunic. She wasn’t bad-looking--she wasn’t bad-looking at all--but. ..

“Out in the street, all of you,” Bembo barked. He was disgusted at himself, but more disgusted at the Kaunians for sinking so low and for reminding him how low he’d sunk. The blond man sighed. Now that he saw it was hopeless, he regained a measure of the dignity he’d thrown away. He put his arms around his daughters and shepherded them out. His wife set her tunic to rights before following.

“Good. You’ve got four,” Pesaro said, seeing the Kaunians Bembo and Oraste had found. A double handful more already stood glumly in the square. Before long, the constables had their quota from Hwinca.

Pesaro paid the Forthwegians who’d helped his men round up the blonds. One of the villagers said something in Kaunian as he got his money. Evodio translated: “He wants to know why we’re only taking this many, why we’re not cleaning out all of them.”

“Tell him this is what we got ordered to do, so this is what we’re doing,” Pesaro answered. “It’s just our job.” That was how he thought of it, too. Almonio’s conscience needed more of a shield. It all came down to the same thing in the end, though. The constables marched the Kaunians off toward Gromheort, off toward the caravans that would take them west.

Traku shook his head back and forth, back and forth, a man seemingly caught in the grip of nightmare. Before throwing his hands in the air in despair, he stared toward his son. “I have more cursed orders than I know what to do with,” he moaned.

They’d been facing different problems a few weeks before. “That one Algarvian liked the outfit you made for him, so he went and told his friends,” Talsu answered. “By everything I’ve seen, the redheads do like to talk.”

“I wouldn’t mind if. . .” Traku corrected himself: “I wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t think all the talk going through Skrunda had to have some truth behind it. But if I’m slaving for the Algarvians while they’re doing horrible things to our folk, that’s hard to stomach.”

“Aye,” Talsu said, “but you know how rumors are. One day everybody says this was bound to happen, the next day it’s that, and then the day after it’s something else. In the war, the Algarvians weren’t any worse than we were, and that’s the truth. They might have been better.” He remembered Colonel Dzirnavu and the captive Algarvian woman he’d taken into his pavilion. Not a soul in the regiment had shed a tear when she cut Dzirnavu’s fat throat.

“Here’s hoping you’re right,” Traku said. “I don’t know that I think you are, but here’s hoping.”

Before he or Talsu could say anything further, the door to the tailor’s shop opened and an Algarvian officer came inside. Not just an Algarvian officer, Talsu saw, but the Algarvian officer: the one who’d made Traku popular among his countrymen garrisoned in Skrunda. “Good day, sir,” Talsu said, and then, on taking a closer look, “Are you all right?”

“All right? Of course I am all right. Why shouldn’t I be all right?” the redhead said in his accented Jelgavan. He staggered rather than walked, red tracked his eyes, and the stench of strong spirits came off him in waves. Pointing a peremptory finger at Traku, he said, “My good man, I require a cloak of the heaviest stuff you can buy, and I require it as soon as you can possibly turn it out, which had better be pretty cursed quick, do you hear me?”

“Aye, sir, I do,” Traku said, “though if you’ll forgive my saying so, a heavy cloak isn’t the sort of garment you’ll get much use from in Jelgava.”

“Jelgava?” the Algarvian officer cried. “Jelgava?” He might never have heard of the kingdom before. “Who said anything about cursed Jelgava? They’re shipping me to Unkerlant is what they’re doing. They haven’t had enough men killed there to satisfy them yet, so they’re going to try to put me on the list, too. Go ahead, tell me I won’t need a cloak like that in Unkerlant.”

“It’s supposed to be a cold kingdom, for true.” Traku turned brisk. “Now, then, sir, what will you pay me for such a cloak?”

‘As if money matters when I am going to Unkerlant!” the Algarvian exclaimed. As far as Talsu was concerned, that proved how drunk he was: money always mattered. The redhead fumbled about in his belt pouch and set two gold-pieces on the counter in front of Traku. “There! Does that satisfy you?”

“Aye,” Traku answered in a strangled voice. Talsu stared at the gold coins, both stamped with King Mezentio’s beaky visage. He didn’t blame his father for sounding astonished. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen gold. Traku gathered himself and asked, “When will you require the cloak, sir?”

“Day after tomorrow--no later,” the Algarvian answered. “The cursed ley-line caravan leaves the day after that. Unkerlant!” It was almost a howl of despair. “What did I do to make someone want to send me to Unkerlant?”

“Maybe Algarve is running short on soldiers,” Talsu said. He didn’t want to sound as if he was gloating but had trouble doing anything else. His father hissed at him in alarm, lest he queer the bargain. Traku might not want to serve the Algarvians, but he didn’t mind taking their money.

Fortunately, the officer paid Talsu’s tone no mind. “Someone still has to garrison Jelgava,” he said. “It might as well be me.”

This time, Talsu had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Traku said, “A cloak is not a complicated garment. I can make one for you in two days, sir. The heaviest wool I can lay my hands on, is that right?”

“Just exactly right.” The Algarvian officer snapped his fingers. “The heaviest light-colored wool you can lay your hands on. I don’t care to stand out like a lump of coal against the stinking snowfields.”

“Aye,” Traku said tonelessly. When Talsu glanced his father’s way, Traku wouldn’t meet his eye. Had he planned on giving the Algarvian a black cloak in the hope that it would get him killed? Talsu couldn’t prove it, and he couldn’t ask, either, no matter how drunk the redhead was. The fellow might note what he said and might remember it after leaving.

For now, the Algarvian just stood there, swaying gently. “Unkerlant,” he said again, his voice a mournful bleat. “What did I do to deserve being sent to Unkerlant?”

“I couldn’t say, sir,” Traku replied. “I’ll have your cloak ready day after tomorrow. Thick wool, light-colored. A very good day to you.”

He was, Talsu realized, trying to get the officer out of the shop. Rather to Talsu’s surprise, the Algarvian took the hint, too. He lurched back out onto the street, slamming the door behind him. When he was gone, Talsu stared at the coins he’d set on the counter. “Gold, Father,” he murmured.

“Aye, and enough to buy him half a dozen cloaks,” Traku answered. “Well, I’ll give him a good one. I could face it with fur--powers above, I could cursed near face it with ermine--but he didn’t ask for that, so he’ll have to do without.”

“You ought to give him something shoddy,” Talsu said. “Who cares if the whoreson freezes? He’ll do it a long way from here.”

“Maybe I ought to, but I won’t,” his father said. “My pride won’t let me. I’ll dicker hard on price, but not on the quality of the goods once I have a price, and besides, the lousy bugger may write to his friends back here, or he may even come back here himself one day. The Algarvians are still moving ahead, or that’s what the news sheets say, anyhow.”

“They say whatever the Algarvians want them to say,” Talsu pointed out. “They say Mainardo’s the best king Jelgava ever had, and everybody loves him.”

“Oh. That.” Traku shrugged. “Everybody knows that’s a lie, so what’s the use of getting upset about it? Most of the time, though, you can find out when they’re stretching things if you ask around a little. I haven’t heard anybody say the Algarvians aren’t still advancing. Have you?”

“No, not when you put it so,” Talsu admitted. “I wish I had.”

“That’s a different story.” Traku paused in thought. “Now, have I got the material he’ll need in stock, or am I going to have to scour Skrunda for it?” He went through what he did have, then called to Talsu: “Here, come feel this bolt of beige stuff. Do you think it would do?”

Talsu rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. “I think you could wear it instead of chainmail, matter of fact. You’d feel like you were carrying another man on your back with a cloak made from it.”

“He asked for heavy,” Traku said. “He can’t very well complain if it turns out even heavier than he looked for.” He reached under the counter and pulled out a stout pair of pinking shears. “Get me his measurements, will you, son? I want to make sure I have the length just right.”

When the Algarvian captain came into the shop to pick up the cloak, he was sober. He still looked no happier at the prospect of going off to fight in Unkerlant. From everything Talsu had heard about the weather in the huge western kingdom, he couldn’t blame the redhead for that.

Traku draped the cloak over the Algarvian’s shoulders, as fussy to get it right as if he’d made it for King Donalitu. “I put a lot of handwork into it, sir,” he said. “Not as much room to use magic in a cloak as there would be in, say, one of your kilts.”

Staggering a little under the weight of the garment, the redhead said, “Plain enough that you didn’t stint on the cloth.” Before the tailor could answer, the officer gave a shrug--an effort-filled shrug, with the cloak still heavy on his shoulders. “Fair enough. I will probably need all of this in Unkerlant.”

“I hope it is what you had in mind,” Traku said.

“Oh, aye, very much so.” The Algarvian shrugged again. “Even if it weren’t, I’d be stuck with it, because my ley-line caravan leaves before sunup tomorrow morning.” He took off the cloak and folded it with the sure hands of a man who knew how to care for clothing. “My thanks. I won’t be the only one, nor even the only one from Skrunda, heading down the ley lines, you know.”

“We hadn’t thought about it,” Traku said, including Talsu in his answer. To show he intended to be included, Talsu nodded.

“I am sorry for you,” the Algarvian said. “This gives your counts and dukes more power. From what I have seen of them, you would be better off if they had all fled with your coward of a king. You would be better off if we had decided to blaze all of them, too, but we didn’t.”

Talsu said, “They will still be taking orders from you.”

“And you don’t like that, either, do you?” the officer asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “How often does anyone of rank care what the common people think?”

Not often enough, was the answer that sprang into Talsu’s mind. He would have said as much to his mother or father or sister or to a close friend; he had said as much to men he trusted in the army. But, even in the army, he’d been careful about speaking his mind. He was not about to unburden himself to one of the occupiers, a man on whom he had no reason to rely.

Maybe the Algarvian understood as much. With a nod, he said, “I’m off, then. We may see each other again one day.” He bowed to Traku and said, “You do good work.” With a comic shrug, he carried the cloak away.

“He’s not a bad fellow.” Traku spoke as if he hated to admit anything of the sort.

“No, he’s not,” Talsu agreed. “I saw that in the field. One by one, the redheads aren’t much different from us. But put a bunch of them together and they turn into Algarvians. I don’t know how or why that works, but it does.”

“Put a bunch of them together and they start knocking over monuments,” Traku said. “Every time I go near the market square, I miss the old arch.”

Talsu nodded. “Aye, me, too. Put a bunch of them together, let them go conquering, and--” He broke off. “--And who knows what they might do?” he finished, not really wanting to give the rumors substance after all.

His father knew what he meant. “I still don’t care to believe that,” he said. “Not even Algarvians would sink so low.”

“I hope you’re right,” Talsu said, and then, in thoughtful tones, “I wonder just how many soldiers and officers they’re taking out of Jelgava to send to Unkerlant. I wonder if the ones who stay behind will be enough to hold down the kingdom. Of course, the other thing I wonder is if anyone would rise up for our nobles.”

“I don’t much fancy a cursed Algarvian calling himself my king,” Traku said. Talsu thought about that, then nodded again.

The wind howled and screamed like a mad ghost. Snow blew horizontally up from out of the south. Except in front of boulders and bushes, it had trouble staying on the ground. Istvan’s squad moved forward, leaning into that shrieking gale.

“What beastly weather!” Kun shouted. The scrawny little mage’s apprentice had tied his spectacles on with twine to keep them from blowing away.

“It’s only weather,” Istvan shouted back, into the teeth of the wind. “It’s like this every winter in my valley.”

“The stars must hate your valley, then,” Kun said. “In the capital, we have halfway decent weather in the wintertime.”

“It’s made you soft,” Istvan said. Kun gestured derisively. Istvan didn’t take the argument any further, but he felt he could have. Gyongyosians were a warrior race, weren’t they? What kind of warrior was a man who couldn’t even stand a blizzard?

Then Szonyi said, “I come from a little valley that’s as chilly as any die stars shine down on, and I’m stinking cold, too, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

“I never said I wasn’t cold.” Istvan backed a little way up the ley line, but not very far. “I said it’s only weather, and it is, and I said we have to deal with it, and we do.” He slapped at his chest. “We’ve got the gear for it, eh?”

Snow flew from his long sheepskin coat. He wore a wool blouse under the coat, and a wool undertunic beneath that. The coat went down below his knees. His baggy leggings were wool, and so were his long drawers, which itched in places it was embarrassing to scratch. Fur lined his boots and his mittens; he wore a fox-fur cap with earflaps and had a wool muffler tied over his nose and mouth so that only his eyes showed. He carried slit goggles in his belt pouch, in case the sun came out. By the way the blizzard raged, he wondered if it would ever come out again.

Kun said, “I can get by in this.” He was as well protected against the storm as Istvan. “Curse me if I know how anybody’s supposed to fight in it, though, us or the Unkerlanters.”

“They manage, and so do we,” Istvan answered. “They know about cold, the miserable whoresons, same as we do.” He peered ahead. All he could see was swirling whiteness. Discontentedly, he muttered, “I wish I knew exactly where we are. We could blunder into them without knowing it till too late.”

“Or some of them could be sneaking up on us, and we wouldn’t know that till too late, either,” Szonyi added.

“Aye, we would.” Even in the howling blizzard, Kun sounded smug. “I have a bit of magecraft, I’ll have you remember. It spotted Kuusamans and it spotted a mountain ape, so it should work even on brutes like Unkerlanters.”

Kun was proud of his little bit of magecraft. Istvan hoped he wasn’t prouder of it than it deserved. But it had worked, and more than once; no denying that. It wouldn’t work, though, if he didn’t use it. Istvan said, “Maybe you’d better check now, just on the off chance. Those goat-eating buggers could be half a blaze away, and we’d never know it, not through this.”

“Aye, Sergeant. That’s not the worst notion I ever heard.” By the way Kun said it, he managed to imply that Istvan had come out with most of the worst notions he’d heard.

“Don’t get clever with me,” Istvan snapped. He paused, appalled at how much like Sergeant Jokai he sounded. After a moment, he shrugged: where else to learn how to be a sergeant than from a sergeant? He hoped tlie stars treasured Jokai’s spirit. Whether they did or not, he had things to attend to here. “Squad halt!” he shouted over the howl of the wind. “All right, Kun--do what you need to do.”

“Aye,” Kun repeated, and set about it. “Whatever passes he made, his mittens hid. The wind blew away the words of his spell. After a couple of minutes, he turned to Istvan and said, “Sergeant, no Unkerlanters are moving toward us.”

“Well, that’s something,” Istvan said. “But you can’t be sure we’re not about to stumble over them?”

Kun shook his head. “The spell detects an enemy’s motion toward us, and nothing else. I wish I knew more.”

I wish you knew more, too, and not just about magic, Istvan thought. But Kun, this time, had done nothing to deserve an insult. “You tried your best,” Istvan said, “and we know more than we did, even if we don’t know as much as we’d like. Come on, lads--forward again. If we find the foe by falling over him, then we do, that’s all.”

“How do we even know we’re going in the right direction?” Szonyi asked. “With all this snow flying every which way, who can say where east is?”

“If we keep the wind almost at our backs, we won’t go too far wrong,” Istvan answered, but he didn’t sound happy about the reply even to himself. Nothing easier than for the wind to shift. He turned to Kun. “Do you know any spells for finding out which way we’re headed?”

“There is one, quite a good one, but it depends on a bit of lodestone, and I have none,” the mage’s apprentice answered regretfully.

“Anyone have any lodestone?” Istvan asked. No one admitted to it. He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t seen lodestone more than a couple of times in his life, both when traveling mountebanks did astonishing things with it. He turned back to Kun. “Any other ways?”

“I’m sure there are, Sergeant, but I don’t know how to use them,” Kun replied.

Istvan sighed through the muffler over his mouth. “All right, then. We’ll just have to keep on and see what happens. Stars be praised, we’re through the worst of the really rugged country. Not so much risk of blowing off a cliff here.”

“If we can hold where we are till spring, we’ll be in a place where we can stab deep into Unkerlant’s vitals,” Kun said.

“I thought you were a mage’s apprentice, not a news-sheet scribbler’s,” Istvan said. Kun was too swaddled in fur and fabric for Istvan to see if he changed expression, but he turned away and kept quiet for a while.

And then, up ahead, someone called a challenge--in Unkerlanter. Istvan knew no more than a handful of words of the language. Neither did anyone else in the squad. The challenge came again, sharper and more peremptory. “What do we do, Sergeant?” somebody asked.

“Get down, you fools!” Istvan shouted, suiting action to word. As he thumped down into the snow himself, he added, “Balogh, back to the rest of the company. Tell ‘em we’ve found the enemy!”

Actually, the Unkerlanters had found them. Beams hissed overhead, blasting snowflakes to steam. Istvan worried about them less than he would have in clearer weather; snow attenuated their force even faster than rain did. But how large an Unkerlanter position lay ahead there, shielded by the blizzard? If he’d uncovered a regiment of King Swemmel’s soldiers, they’d wipe out his squad as casually as he swatted a fly ... provided they knew he had only a squad.

He blazed at the Unkerlanters a couple of times, not so much in the hope of hurting them as to make them believe he led a good-sized force. “Kun!” he hissed. “Hey, Kun! You all right?”

“Aye, for the time being,” the mage’s apprentice answered from over to his left.

“Can you make the Unkerlanters think we’ve got more men here than we really do?” Istvan asked.

For a moment, he didn’t think the mage’s apprentice heard him. Then a voice--Kun’s voice, he realized, but bigger and deeper and more resonant than it had any business being--answered, “Aye, Colonel!” Istvan looked around to see where so exalted a figure as a colonel might have sprung from, but then started to laugh. Kun was doing his best to follow orders.

And his best turned out to be better than Istvan had expected. Other voices came out of the snow from different directions: nonexistent captains positioning equally nonexistent companies for a charge. Mythical sergeants who sounded much fiercer than Istvan ever had gave their mythical squads orders.

Off to the east, the Unkerlanters started shouting, nerving themselves for an attack: “Urra! Urra! Urra!” Istvan’s shiver had nothing to do with the snow on which he lay. From the sound of those shouts, he hadn’t stumbled over a regiment: That had to be at least a brigade. He wished Kun had given him an imaginary brigade of his own. He would have enjoyed being a brigadier, even an imaginary one, for the few brief moments till the Unkerlanters overran him.

Amid the calls and the shouts, Kun spoke in his own voice: “What next, Sergeant? This can’t last--they’re bound to test it, all the men they have over there.”

He was right, curse him. Balogh must have got lost, or else Captain Tivadar would have brought up real reinforcements. But Istvan, having begun the game, did not want to give it up. He got to his feet, advanced on the Unkerlanter position, and shouted a couple of the Unkerlanter phrases he knew: “You surrender! Hands high!”

King Swemmel’s men didn’t blaze him down out of hand. The shouts of “Urra! Urra!” died away. Only the wind spoke, the wind and Kun’s conjured-up officers and sergeants. And then, dejectedly, an Unkerlanter shouted back: “We surrender!”

Istvan gaped. He’d known how colossal a bluff he was running and was astonished past words that the Unkerlanters had fallen for it. If he showed that, though, everything was ruined. “Hands high!” he yelled again, not caring if he rasped his throat raw so long as he made his voice pierce the gale.

He aimed his stick eastward. He could do no more than that; the snow was blowing too hard to let him find a sure target. Out of that swirling snow came Unkerlanters in long, thick wool tunics with leggings beneath and long, hooded cloaks over them. They carried no weapons; their hands were above their heads. Catching sight of Istvan, the first one in the line repeated, “We surrender.”

Gesturing with his stick, Istvan sent them back toward his comrades. As they glumly tramped past him, he counted them. Only twenty men were marching into captivity. Had more stayed behind or . .. ? Sudden suspicion flowered in him. “Kun!” he shouted. “You’ve got to have more of their language than I do.”

“Maybe, Sergeant, though I haven’t got much,” the mage’s apprentice answered, sounding more respectful than he usually did.

“Tell ‘em you’re a first-rank mage who’ll know if they lie, then ask ‘em if all those cursed ‘ Urrafs were magic to scare us off,” Istvan said.

“I’ll try.” Kun sounded doubtful, but he spoke to the Unkerlanters. Istvan listened to gutturals going back and forth and watched gestures till Kun returned to Gyongyosian: “That’s what they were doing, all right. They knew the jig was up when they heard our regiment forming for the attack.”

Istvan laughed till tears came. The tears promptly started freezing his eyelashes together. He swiped at his face with his mittens. Then he heard shouts from the west: Captain Tivadar at last, bringing reinforcements against the Unkerlanter host. . . the Unkerlanter host Istvan had just captured. He made his way over to Tivadar. Saluting, he said, “Sir, the enemy position is ours,” and laughed again at the flabbergasted expression on his company commander’s face.

No one came back from the west. That, to Vanai, was the central fact to life in Oyngestun these days. No one came back. No one sent money from the wages the Algarvians had promised to pay. No one sent so much as a scrawled note. That continuing, echoing silence made the worst rumors easier and easier to believe as day followed day.

One chilly afternoon, Vanai went to the apothecary’s to get a decoction of willow bark for her grandfather, who’d come down with the grippe. As Tamulis handed her the small jar of green glass, he remarked, not quite out of the blue, “If you hear the Algarvian constables are on their way here again, you’d be smart to take to the woods before they start yelling, ‘Kaunians, come forth!’ “

“Do you think so?” Vanai asked, and Tamulis nodded vigorously. Then she asked another question: “Is that what you intend to do?”

“Aye, I expect I will,” the apothecary answered. “I’m no woodsman--anyone who know me knows that. I don’t know whether I’d starve before I froze or the other way round. But whatever happens, it has to be better than getting into one of those caravan cars bound for Unkerlant.”

Vanai bit her lip. “You may be right. And thank you for telling me that. You’ve been as kind as... as anyone in Oyngestun.” It wasn’t enormous praise, but she could give it without feeling like a hypocrite.

“Life’s hard,” Tamulis said gruffly. “Life’s hard for everybody, and especially for everybody with yellow hair. Go on, get out of here. I hope your grandfather feels better, the old fool. If he gets well, maybe you won’t have to come in here so often and listen to me complain.”

“It’s not as if there’s nothing to complain about.” Vanai bobbed her head and then turned and went out the door.

A couple of Forthwegian men two or three years older than she leaned against the wall of the apothecary’s shop. Vanai wasn’t too surprised to see them in the Kaunian part of Oyngestun; Tamulis knew three times as much as his Forthwegian counterpart, and had plenty of stocky, swarthy, dark-haired customers.

But one of the Forthwegians pointed at her and said, “So long, blondy!” He drew a thumb across his throat and made horrible gagging, gargling noises. While he was laughing, the other fellow grabbed his crotch and said, “Here, sweetheart. My meat’s got more flavor than an Algarvian sausage any day.”

That the earth did not swallow them proved the powers above were deaf. Vanai stalked past them, pretending they didn’t exist. She’d had plenty of practice doing that with both Forthwegians and Kaunians. But now she had to hide more fear than usual. Since the Algarvians sent that shipment of Kaunians west, Oyngestun’s Forthwegians had grown bolder toward their neighbors. Why not? Would the redheads punish them for it? Not likely!

If these two laid hands on her . . . I’ll fight, Vanai thought. I don’t have to lie there and take it, the way I did with Spinello. She chose not to dwell on what her odds would be against two men both stronger than she. To her vast relief, they did nothing worse than taunt her. After she slipped round a corner, she breathed easier.

She passed the postman on the way home. He was a Forthwegian, too, but decent enough. “Letter for you,” he said. “Something for your granddad, too.”

“I’ll take it to him,” Vanai said. She almost always took him whatever mail there was; these days, she made a point of getting it first. Holding up the little green bottle, she added, “He’s down with the grippe.”

“Aye, it’s been going around; my sister and her husband have it,” the postman said. “Hope he feels better soon.” With a nod, he went on his way.

Vanai hurried the rest of the way to the house she shared with Brivibas. Her heart sang within her. A letter for her had to be a letter from Ealstan. No one else wrote to her. She’d feared Spinello would, but he must have realized any letter he sent her would only go into the fire. Ealstan’s letters she cherished. Strange how a few minutes of fondling and grunting and thrashing could make two people open their souls to each other. She had no idea how that happened, but was ever so glad it did.

As far as her grandfather knew, no one sent her letters. That was why she made a point of picking up the mail before Brivibas could. It wasn’t hard; even well, he usually stayed in his study, on the far side of the house from the doorway.

But when Vanai opened the door, no letters shoved in under it lay on the entry-hall floor. She wondered if the postman had delivered them to the house next door by mistake, though he didn’t usually do things like that. Then she heard her grandfather moving about in the kitchen, and she realized she might have a problem.

She had to go into the kitchen anyhow, to mix the bitter willow-bark decoction with something sweet to make it more palatable for Brivibas. “I greet you, my grandfather,” she said when she saw him. “I have your medicine. How are you feeling?”

“I have been better,” he answered, his voice a rasping croak. “Aye, I have been better. I came out here to make myself a cup of herb tea, and heard that ignorant lout of a postman slide something under our door. I went to get it and found--this.” He’d taken Ealstan’s letter out of the franked envelope in which it had come.

“You read it?” Anger pushed fear from Vanai’s mind. “You read it? You had no business doing that. Whatever Ealstan says there, it’s not meant for you. Give it to me this instant.”

“Very well, my dearest sweet darling Vanai.” Brivibas quoted Ealstan’s greeting with savage relish. Two spots of color, from fever or outrage or both at once, burned on his cheeks. He crumpled the letter into a ball and flung it at Vanai. “As for its being none of my business, I would have to disagree. I would say, just as a guess from the style, that this is not the first such letter you’ve received.”

“That’s not your business, either,” Vanai snapped, cursing his literary analysis. She bent and picked up the letter and unfolded it far more carefully than Brivibas had wadded it up. Why couldn’t he have stayed in bed till she got back?

“I think it is.” His eyes glittered. “You still live under my roof. How much more shame must I endure on account of you?”

He still thought of what Vanai did in terms of how it affected him, not in terms of what it meant to her. Her chin lifted haughtily, as if she were a noblewoman from the days of the Kaunian Empire. “I don’t propose to discuss it.”

“It’s fortunate that we have no Zuwayzin or Kuusamans close by,” Brivibas said, “or you might seek to slake your lust with them as well.”

Vanai threw the bottle of willow-bark decoction at his head. Rage lent her strength, but not aim. The bottle flew past and shattered against the wall behind him. “If you think I was slaking my lust with the cursed Algarvian, you’re even blinder than I thought,” she snarled. “The only reason I sucked his prong was to keep you alive, and now--” And now I’m sorry I did it was in her mind, but she burst into tears before she could say it.

Brivibas took her words in a different direction: “And now this Forthwegian barbarian satisfies you better still, is that it?” he demanded.

When Vanai found herself looking toward the cutlery to see which knife was longest and sharpest, she spun away with a groan and fled to her bedchamber. It was less a refuge than she might have wanted, less a refuge than it would have been a year before. Lying on the bed alone, she couldn’t help thinking of the times when she’d had to lie there with Spinello. If her grandfather thought she’d wanted to lie with the Algarvian . . . If he thought that, he had even less notion of what went on around him than she’d imagined.

She didn’t know what she would have done had Brivibas knocked on her door then or come in without knocking. Luckily, she didn’t have to find out. Her tears--tears of fury rather than sorrow--quickly dried. She sat up and did a better job of smoothing the letter from Ealstan.

“At least someone cares about me,” she murmured as she began to read it. It was, as her grandfather had sneeringly shown, filled with endearments, as were the ones she sent to him. But it was also filled with his doings, and those of his father and mother and sister and his cousin and uncle. She wondered if he knew how lucky he was to have a good-sized family where everyone--except, she gathered, Sidroc and Hengist--got along. Probably not. To him, that would be like water to a fish.

I honor you for choosing to stay with your grandfather, even though it means we must be apart, Ealstan wrote. Please believe me when I say that. Please also believe me when I say I wish we could be together.

“Oh, I wish we could, too,” Vanai whispered. For the first time, she really thought of leaving the house where she’d lived almost all her life and traveling to Gromheort. She had no idea of what she would do there, or how she would keep from starving, but the idea of being away from Brivibas glowed in her thoughts like a fire catching hold in dry grass.

She shook her head, then wondered why she pushed the idea aside. When she was a child, she and Brivibas had fit together well enough. He did not fit her now, any more than one of the small tunics she’d worn then would. Why not go her own way, then, and leave him behind to go his?

Because if I leave him behind, he’ll die in short order. Because if I wanted him to die in short order, I never would have let Spinello have me. Because, since I did let Spinello have me, I’ve given up too much to let him die in short order. But oh!--how I wish I hadn’t!

After a little while, grimacing, she got up and opened the door. She couldn’t even stay and sulk, not if she wanted to--or felt she should, which came closer to the actual state of affairs--nurse her grandfather back to health. She had to go fix his supper and fetch it to him. It wouldn’t be much--vegetable soup and a chunk of bread--but she didn’t trust him to be able to do it for himself.

She’d known all along that he underestimated her. Now she discovered she’d underestimated him, too. Her nose told her as much as soon as she came out of the bedchamber: she smelled cooking soup. When she came into the kitchen, she found the pot over a low fire and a note on the table nearby.

Brivibas’ spidery hand was as familiar to her as her own: far more familiar than Ealstan’s. My granddaughter, he wrote in a Kaunian straight out of the glory days of the empire, judging it wiser that we not impinge on each other for some little while, I have prepared my own repast, leaving enough behind to satisfy, I hope, those bodily wants of yours susceptible to satisfaction through food.

Vanai stared in the direction of his study, where he was probably spooning up soup even now. She had to look at the note twice before she noticed the sting in its tail. “Bodily wants susceptible to food, eh?” she muttered, and the stare turned into a glare. “Why didn’t you come right out and call me a whore?”

In the end, though, she ate the soup Brivibas had heated. She was unhappy doing it, just as, no doubt, her grandfather had been unhappy eating a great many meals she’d made. When she was finished, she washed and dried her bowl and spoon and the ladle she’d used. She went to her bedchamber and started a letter to Ealstan. That made her feel better.

Felgilde squeezed Leofsig’s hand as they walked along the street together. “Oh, this will be fun!” she exclaimed.

“I hope so,” he answered, and then smiled and said, “You look very pretty tonight.”

She squeezed his hand again, perhaps--he hoped--a little less archly than she was in the habit of doing. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s a handsome cloak you have on.”

“Thank you,” Leofsig said. He’d borrowed it from his father, but Felgilde didn’t need to know that.

She said, “Ethelhelm’s band is one of the two or three best in Forthweg. I’m so excited! This is the first time since the war they’ve come here from Eoforwic. They’re supposed to have all sorts of new tunes, too--that’s what everybody says, anyway. You were so lucky to be able to get tickets.”

“I know,” Leofsig said. His father had helped there, too; Hestan cast accounts for the hall where Ethelhelm’s band was going to perform. But that was also nothing Felgilde needed to know.

He slid his arm around her waist. She snuggled closer to him. He brought his hand up a bit, so that the top of his thumb and wrist brushed against the bottom of her breast. Most of the time, she slapped his hand away when he tried that. Tonight, she let it stay. His hopes, among other things, began to rise. Maybe he wouldn’t have to keep on being jealous of his younger brother for so long as he’d thought.

The hall was in a part of town that had housed a good many Kaunians. Some of them still remained, looking shabby and frightened. An old man with fair hair stood on the street not far from the entrance to the hall, begging from the people who were coming to hear Ethelhelm’s famous band.

Leofsig let go of Felgilde to rummage in his belt pouch and take out a couple of coins. He dropped them into the bowl at the scrawny old man’s feet. “Powers above bless you, sir,” the Kaunian said in Forthwegian. He’d had little luck till Leofsig came by; only a few other coins, most of them small coppers, lay in the bowl.

“That was a waste of money,” Felgilde said as they walked on. She didn’t bother to keep her voice down, though the old Kaunian had already shown he could speak Forthweg’s majority tongue.

“I don’t think so,” Leofsig answered. “My father always says Kaunians are people, too. That fellow looked like he could use a hand.”

“My father says that if we hadn’t listened to the Kaunians in Forthweg, we wouldn’t have gone to war against Algarve when the blond kingdoms in the east did,” Felgilde said. “He says we’d be better off if we hadn’t, too.”

Even the Kaunians in Forthweg would have been better off if King Penda hadn’t gone to war against Algarve--better off for a little while, anyhow. Leofsig said, “How long do you think it would have been before King Mezentio went to war with us if we didn’t stand by our allies?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Felgilde said with a toss of her head, “and I’m just as sure you don’t know, either.”

Since that was true, Leofsig could hardly argue with it. He didn’t feel like arguing, anyhow. He knew what he felt like, and hoped Felgilde felt like it, too. To try to put her back in the mood, he slipped his arm around her waist again. She let him do that, but brushed his hand away when he tried to bring it up again. He gave her a resentful look. Hers in response might have said, So there.

She did get friendlier when he took out the tickets and gave them to the tough-looking fellow standing in the doorway. The bruiser nodded, smiled a surprisingly warm smile, and stepped aside to let them pass. They both held out their hands to a woman with a stamp and an ink pad. She marked them with the word PAID, then she too stood aside and waved them into the hall.

Ethelhelm’s band occupied a raised platform in the middle. The men on viol and double viol, lute and mandolin, were tuning their instruments. The trumpeter and flute-player made runs up and down the scale. So did the piper, with results that set Leofsig’s teeth on edge. Ethelhelm himself manned the drums. He was taller and slimmer than most Forthwegians, enough to make Leofsig wonder if he had a quarter part of Kaunian blood. If he did, he didn’t advertise it, for which prudent silence Leofsig could hardly blame him.

Felgilde pointed. “Look--there are a couple in the first row that haven’t been taken. Come on! Hurry!”

She and Leofsig got to the seats before anyone else could, and sat down with no small feeling of triumph. Rows of chairs had been placed around the whole inner perimeter of the hall, all facing inward toward the platform on which the band would perform. There was considerable space between the front row and the platform, though: room for people to dance as the mood took them.

The hall filled rapidly. Before the war, Leofsig wouldn’t have seen many blonds at one of Ethelhelm’s appearances; Kaunians’s tastes in music were different from Forthwegians’. Now he saw no Kaunians at all. That didn’t surprise him, but did leave him sad.

People began clapping their hands and stamping their feet on the floorboards, eager for the show to start. Leofsig stamped along with everyone else, but put his arm around Felgilde’s shoulder instead of clapping. She was clapping but, her good humor restored, leaned toward him while she did it.

When all the lights in the hall faded except for those aimed at the band on the platform, she clapped louder than ever. Leofsig whooped. He turned toward Felgilde and gave her a quick kiss. Her eyes sparkled. He grinned as foolishly as if he’d had a glass of wine too many. It looked as if it might be a good night after all.

“It’s grand to be in Gromheort,” Ethelhelm called. The crowd cheered. The band leader went on, “The way things are, it’s grand to be cursed anywhere, and that’s the truth.” Leofsig laughed. He’d had that feeling more than once himself, after some narrow escape or another. Ethelhelm waved to the people who’d come to hear him. “Since we are all here, we may as well enjoy ourselves, isn’t that right?”

“Aye!” the crowd roared, Leofsig and Felgilde loud among them.

“Well, then!” Ethelhelm brought his stick crashing down onto the drums. The band struck up a sprightly tune. Forthwegian songs didn’t rely on thudding rhythms the way the music of the Kaunian kingdoms did, nor was it a collection of tinkling notes going nowhere in particular, which was how Algarvian music struck Leofsig’s ears. This was what he’d heard his whole life, and it felt right to him.

The first few tunes Ethelhelm and the band played were familiar, some of them old favorites Leofsig’s father and grandfather would have known, others songs by which the drummer and his fellow musicians had made their reputation. Some people got up and started to dance from the very first note. Leofsig and Felgilde sat and listened for a while before heading out onto die floor.

Then, after basking in yet another passionate round of applause, the band swung into a number that made Leofsig and Felgilde turn to each other and exclaim, “That’s new!” They both leaned forward to listen closely.

Ethelhelm sang in raspy, angry-sounding bursts:

Felgilde’s brow furrowed. “What’s he talking about?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Leofsig lied without hesitation. As he spoke, he looked around. The band had nerve--maybe more nerve than sense. Somewhere in the audience was bound to be an Algarvian spy. Singing about what life in an occupied kingdom was like struck Leofsig as gloriously foolish: the same sort of foolishness that had led Forthwegians on unicorns to charge Algarvian behemoths. He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s dance.”

“All right.” Felgilde rose with alacrity. “I usually have to start you going.” She swayed forward into his arms.

Dancing helped take his mind off his worries; he half expected Algarvian constables to come pushing through the crowd and haul Ethelhelm and his band off to gaol. After a moment, he realized he was being foolish. Seizing Ethelhelm now would touch off a riot. If the redheads wanted the musicians, they’d wait till after the performance. As long as Ethelhelm kept playing, he was likely safe.

Leofsig didn’t take long to stop worrying about Ethelhelm. Felgilde molded herself to him as closely as if they weren’t wearing tunics. When his hand closed on her backside, she didn’t squawk. She just sighed and pushed tighter against him still. “It’s safe here,” she murmured in a voice he couldn’t have heard if her mouth hadn’t been next to his ear.

She was right. Nobody in the hall paid one couple clutching each other the least attention. Dozens, hundreds of couples clutching one another filled the dance floor. They’d escaped their parents, and they were going to have the best time they could in as many different ways as they could.

Some of them were doing more out there on the floor than he and Felgilde had ever done in private. His eyes widened a few times. Up there on the platform, Ethelhelm saw everything that was going on. “You’ll get in trouble when you go home,” he warned the dancers between songs. Then he laughed raucously. “Good, by the powers above! If you’re going to get in trouble, get in trouble for something worthwhile. They’ll yell at you anyway--give ‘em something to yell about.”

At his waved command, the band swung into another new tune, one so lascivious that a few couples, altogether carried away, hurried outside. Ethelhelm laughed again, harder than ever. Leofsig tried to steer Felgilde toward the door. That didn’t work. She might have kindled, but she wasn’t blazing.

At last, after what seemed not nearly long enough despite repeated encores, the band put down their instruments, called their last good nights, and escaped. Leofsig and Felgilde reclaimed their cloaks and joined the stream of music lovers pouring from the hall.

Outside, the stream divided. Many couples, instead of going straight home, ducked into doorways in dark side streets to continue what they’d started on the dance floor. Hopeful but not expectant, Leofsig started to swing down one of those alleyways himself. He thought Felgilde would steer him back toward their houses. Instead, with a throaty chuckle, she followed.

Heart pounding, Leofsig found a doorway no one else had. He wrapped his cloak around both of them, though nobody could have seen much in the darkness anyhow. Felgilde’s mouth found his as his hands roamed over her. He slid one under her tunic; it closed on the smooth, soft flesh of her breast. She sighed and kissed him harder than ever.

He rubbed at her crotch with his other hand. He’d never tried that before; he’d never thought she would let him try. “Oh, Leofsig,” she whispered, and spread her legs a little to make it easier for him. And then she was groping him, too, through his tunic and his drawers. He grunted in astonishment and delight. It was hard to remember to keep his hand busy.

Felgilde whimpered and quivered. Her hand squeezed him painfully tight. A moment later, groaning, he made a mess in his drawers. Everything down there was wet and sticky, and he didn’t care at all. “I like Ethelhelm’s music,” Felgilde said seriously.

“So do I,” Leofsig panted. Now he really did head home.

If he couldn’t bring Vanai to Gromheort, Ealstan wanted to go to Oyngestun. He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to see her again till the next mushroom season. He was sure he’d go mad long before then.

But if he did go see her, the first thing he’d want to do would be to find someplace where they could be alone. He knew that. He wondered if it would make her angry. He hoped not, but he couldn’t be sure.

Maybe letters are better after all, he thought one morning at breakfast. Vanai had opened her soul, or at least some of it, to him, and he’d tried to do the same with her. He really felt he knew her now, which he couldn’t have said when they lay down together in the oak grove. He marveled that she kept living with her grandfather, who in her letters sounded even more difficult than he’d seemed when Ealstan briefly met him a couple of years before. Ealstan didn’t quite understand why Vanai and Brivibas had fallen out--she never did make that clear--but he was sure he would have fallen out with the stiff-necked old scholar, too.

And maybe letters aren’t better, he thought. He couldn’t stroke a letter’s hair or kiss its lips or caress it. He couldn’t. . . Thinking about all the things he couldn’t do with a letter made him forget his morning porridge altogether, and he’d only been picking at it before.

“Hurry up, Ealstan--you’re going to make both of us late.” Sidroc snorted. “There! For once I get to nag you, not the other way round.”

“I think it’s the first time ever,” Elfryth said. Ealstan’s mother sent him an anxious glance. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Recalled to himself, Ealstan proved it by gulping his wine and inhaling the porridge left in his bowl. He still finished after Sidroc, but not by more than a couple of spoonsful. Elfryth looked happier. Ealstan got to his feet. “All right, cousin, I’m ready. Let’s get going.”

They both exclaimed when they went outside. Sidroc said, “My nose is going to freeze.” He wrapped his cloak around himself in a dramatic gesture, but that did nothing to protect the organ in question.

“Look!” Ealstan pointed to windows. “Frost!” Frost didn’t come to Gromheort very often; he admired its delicate traceries. Then he rubbed his nose. Like Sidroc’s, it was turning frosty, too.

He spent the first couple of blocks on the way to school shivering and complaining. After that, he resigned himself to the weather and went back to thinking about Vanai. That warmed him at least as effectively as his cloak. It also made him oblivious to Sidroc. He’d long wished for something that could do that, but it irked his cousin. Sidroc gave him a shot in the ribs with his elbow and said, “Powers above, you haven’t heard a word I’ve told you.”

“Huh?” Ealstan proved Sidroc right. Feeling foolish, he said, “Try it again. I really am listening now.”

“Well, why weren’t you before?” Sidroc demanded. “Half the time these days, you go stumbling around like a moonstruck calf. What in blazes is wrong with you, anyhow?”

I’m in love, Ealstan thought. But since he’d been rash enough to fall in love with a Kaunian girl, Sidroc was the last person he wanted to know it. If Sidroc knew, he could endanger Ealstan himself, he could endanger Vanai, and he could endanger Leofsig, too. Ealstan set his jaw and said nothing. He did try to pay more attention to what his cousin said, which struck him as more trouble than it was worth.

“I know what it is!” Sidroc said with a guffaw. “Saying moonstruck made me think of it. I bet you’re mooning over that blond floozy in the tight trousers you keep meeting during mushroom season. Aye, that’s what it’s got to be. Powers above, why don’t you find a girl closer to home?”

“Why don’t you soak your head?” Ealstan suggested, which made Sidroc laugh without letting him know how close to right he was. Why don’t I find a girl closer to home? Ealstan thought. Because I’ve lain with Vanai and I’m not interested in anyone else. He clamped his jaw tight on that answer, too.

School loomed ahead, both literally and metaphorically. As he went into the gray stone building, he tried not to think about the long stretch of mostly meaningless, useless time ahead. The Algarvians seemed more determined every day that their Forthwegian subjects should learn as little as possible, which meant classes taught less and less. The one good thing about it was that it gave him more time to daydream about Vanai.

He spent too much time daydreaming during his Forthwegian literature class; the master warmed the back of his jacket after he failed to recite when called on. Sidroc snickered. He was more used to having the switch fall on his own back than to seeing it land on his cousin’s.

“Ha!” he said when they were walking home together. “That’s what you get for sighing over your yellow-haired tart.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ealstan snapped. “I was so busy thinking about all the different ways you’re an idiot, I didn’t even hear the master call my name.” He and Sidroc had a more or less enjoyable time insulting each other till they got to their front door.

When they went inside, Conberge came up to Ealstan with a smile and handed him an envelope. “Here’s another letter from your friend in Oyngestun.”

Ealstan had asked Leofsig not to tell anybody else about Vanai. Evidently, his brother had kept the promise he’d made. He hadn’t told Conberge, anyhow. Now, all at once, Ealstan wished he hadn’t forced the promise out of Leofsig. “Thanks,” he told Conberge with a rather sickly smile.

“Oyngestun,” Sidroc said, as if wondering where he’d heard the name before. Ealstan had never before hoped so hard his cousin would stay stupid. By the way Sidroc’s gaze suddenly sharpened, he knew that was going to be one more blighted hope. Sidroc snapped his fingers. “Oyngestun! That’s where that what’s-her-name, that Vanai”--to Ealstan’s horror, he even came up with her name--”lives. And somebody’s writing you from there? Another letter, your sister said. If you aren’t a lousy Kaunian-lover, I don’t know who is.”

Maybe he meant it as a joke. Ealstan thought of that only afterwards. At the moment, he handed Vanai’s letter back to Conberge and hit Sidroc in the face as hard as he could.

Sidroc’s head snapped back; he didn’t get an arm up to block the blow. He staggered backwards, fetching up against the wall of the entry hall. But he was made of rugged stuff. After a muttered curse, he surged forward, fists churning. A solid right thudded into Ealstan’s ribs.

But, however aggressive Sidroc was, he was also still dazed from that first punch. He moved a little slower than he might have otherwise. Ealstan punched him again, right on the point of the chin. The sudden sharp pain he felt in his own knuckles told how effective the blow was. Sidroc stood swaying a moment, then toppled. His head hit the floor with a dull thud.

“Powers above!” Conberge exclaimed. “The way you went after him, anyone would think he knew what he was talking about.”

“He did,” Ealstan said shordy. Conberge’s eyes widened. Ealstan knelt beside his cousin. “Come on, Sidroc. Wake up, curse it.” Sidroc didn’t wake up. He was breathing steadily--snoring, in fact--but he just lay there, his eyes half open. Ealstan glanced up at Conberge. “Get some water. We’ll flip it in his face and bring him around.”

But the water didn’t bring Sidroc to himself, either. Drawn by shouts and thumps, Elfryth came into the front hall hard on Conberge’s heels. Ealstans mother stared at Sidroc inert on the floor and let out a small shriek. “What happened?” she cried.

“I hit him.” Ealstan’s voice was toneless. “I hit him, and he hit his head.” He’d always thought he might be able to lick Sidroc, but wished he hadn’t been proved quite so thoroughly right.

“Is he dead?” Elfryth asked.

Sidroc’s snores should have told her the answer to that, but Ealstan said, “No, he’s not,” anyhow. Sidroc showed no signs of coming to, either. Rubbing at a bruised knuckle, Ealstan went on, “If he doesn’t wake up, what will Uncle Hengist do? For that matter, if he does wake up, what will Uncle Hengist do?”

“He’ll go to the Algarvians.” Now Elfryth’s voice came out flat.

“And if Sidroc does wake up, he’ll go to the Algarvians,” Conberge added. “Either that, or he’ll wait for you to come round a corner and then bash out your brains with a fire iron.” Ealstan started to say Sidroc wouldn’t do anything like that, but the words clogged in his throat. Sidroc took revenge seriously.

Elfryth stared down at her nephew, loathing on her face. “He’s been nothing but trouble since he had to come here.” Her gaze swung toward Ealstan. When she spoke again, she was as grimly practical as Hestan had ever dreamt of being: “You had better go. Leave the front door open after yourself. Conberge and I don’t know a thing about whatever happened here. Maybe it was a footpad. That’s what we’ll say if he doesn’t come to himself--the footpad killed Sidroc and knocked the wits out of you so you went wandering off. You’ll be able to come back then, eventually. But if Sidroc does wake up--”

“Take all those letters with you before you go,” Conberge broke in. “He may not remember where this one came from. People who get hit in the head can have trouble remembering things.”

“Letters?” Ealstan’s mother asked.

“Never mind,” Ealstan and Conberge said together. Ealstan turned to his sister. “Aye, you’re right--I’ll do that. Thanks.” He paused a little while in thought. “I’d better not stay in Gromheort. I’ll need whatever money we have in the house to keep me eating till I find work.”

“I’ll get it,” Conberge said, and left.

“But where will you go?” Elfryth asked.

“Conberge will know. So will Leofsig,” Ealstan answered. “At first, anyhow. After that”--he shrugged a man’s slow, sour shrug--”I’ll just have to see how things work out.”

“What will you do?” his mother said.

He shrugged again. “I can dig ditches. I can cast accounts. I’m not as good at it as Father, but I’m not bad. I’m better than most of the bookkeepers they’ll have in little towns, the ones who can’t count past ten without taking off their shoes.”

Conberge came back and handed him a heavy, clinking leather purse. “Here,” she said, and he fastened it to his belt. She went on, “You have to get those letters. I don’t know where you keep them.”

“Aye.” Ealstan retrieved them from the bedchamber, then went out to the front hall again. Sidroc still lay unconscious. Ealstan hugged his mother and his sister. Elfryth was fighting back tears as she withdrew.

Conberge kissed Ealstan. “Be careful,” she said.

“I will.” He went to the door, leaving it ajar as his mother had suggested. As he headed from Gromheort’s west gate--the gate on the road to Oyngestun--he opened Vanai’s letter, the one that had led him to flee, and began to read.