"Stout fellows. I expected nothing less," Frigyes said. "Hold those hands high while I write down your names. I knew I could rely on you. I knew Gyongyos could rely on you. All through our army, officers are asking this question today. All through our army, I'm sure they're finding heroes."
Muttering under his breath, Kun raised his hand, too. "There you are!" Istvan said. "I knew you had a warrior's spirit in you."
"Warrior's spirit, my arse," Kun said. "If all you fools say aye, you'll hate me for saying no. That's the long and short of it."
He probably wasn't the only one to think like that; either, and he probably wasn't wrong. More and more hands went up, till only a few stubborn or fearful soldiers refused to volunteer. Frigyes had been no fool to ask all the men at the same time. They shamed one another forward.
When at last no more hands rose, the company commander nodded approval. "I knew you were warriors," he said. "If the stars be kind, as I hope they will, your names on this list will be only names and nothing more. But should the need arise to give of ourselves for Ekrekek Arpad, I know we will go bravely, and of our own free will. And I want you men to know one thing." He held up the list of names he'd taken. "My own name is here among yours. I am willing to give my life for Gyongyos, too. Dismissed!"
"That's a brave man, by the stars," Szonyi said as he and Kun and Istvan walked off together. "He put his name right down with ours."
Kun gave him a pitying look. Then the city man glanced over to Istvan. "You see it, don't you, Sergeant?"
"See what?" Istvan asked. "Szonyi's right-Captain Frigyes is brave."
"He's brave in battle. Nobody could say anything about that," Kun admitted. "But volunteering to be sacrificed doesn't prove anything about him one way or the other."
"No?" Szonyi asked. "You want your throat cut if Gyongyos gets in trouble? I don't, and I don't suppose the captain does, either."
Kun sighed, as if wondering why he met all the stupidity in the world. Szonyi started to get angry. Istvan sympathized with Szonyi. "What are you going on about?" he asked Kun. "Do you think the captain didn't put his name down on the list when he said he did? You'd better not think that." He started to get angry,
too: angry at Kun, because he didn't want to be angry at the man who led them into battle.
"I don't think that, not for a minute," Kun said. "Don't you see, though? It doesn't matter."
"You keep saying it doesn't matter. I see that," Istvan answered. "The more you say it, the more I want to give you a clout in the eye. I see that, too. So either start talking sense or else shut up."
"All right, by the stars, I'll make sense." Now Kun sounded angry, too, and spoke with savage irony: "There's one captain for every hundred common soldiers, more or less. It's harder to be a captain than a common soldier. You have to do and know everything a common soldier does and knows, and a lot more besides. So when the time comes for the mages to start cutting throats, if it ever does, are they going to start cutting common soldiers' throats, or captains'? Which can they replace easier if they have to use them up?"
"Oh." Istvan walked on for a few paces. He felt foolish. He felt worse than foolish-he felt stupid. He glanced over at Szonyi. Szonyi wasn't saying anything, just tramping along with his head down and a half glum, half furious expression on his face. With a sigh, Istvan nodded to Kun. "Well, you're right."
That made Szonyi speak up: "I still want to give you a set of lumps. Maybe now more than ever."
"Why? For being right?" Kun asked. "Where's the justice there?"
"For being right in the wrong tone of voice," Istvan said. "You do that a lot."
"No, that's not it, not this time." Szonyi shook his big head. Water flew from the brim of his cap. "For making me see Captain Frigyes was talking sly himself. I don't want anybody saying one thing when he means something else, or when he doesn't mean anything at all."
"Clouds hide the truth," Kun said. "The stars shine down on it. They send out their light for us to see by."
Like everything Kun said, that sounded wise. Szonyi grunted and finally, reluctantly, nodded. Istvan wasn't so sure. Even as a sergeant, he'd seen that the tricks by which men led other men weren't so simple. Casting light on those tricks made leading harder. Considering the way the war was going, maybe Kun should have kept his mouth shut.
***
Garivald had never seen so many Unkerlanter soldiers in all his born days. They swarmed through the forest west of Herborn and clogged the roads north and south of the woods. With every passing day, the band of irregulars he led looked less and less important. In fact, it hardly seemed his band at all any more. Tantris gave more orders than he did, and seemed happier doing it.
No matter how happy Tantris seemed, people started slipping away from the band under cover of night. A couple of years before, they'd slipped into the woods the same way to join the irregulars. The first couple of inspectors-or were they impressers? -joined Tantris not long after Herborn fell to King Swemmel's soldiers. Garivald didn't like the way they huddled with the regular. He didn't like the way they looked at him, either.
After darkness fell that night, he spoke to Obilot in a low whisper: "I'm going to get away while I still have the chance."
She nodded. "You think they mean to shove a uniform tunic on you." It wasn't a question.
"I think they mean to shove a uniform tunic on me and send me wherever it's hottest and get me killed," Garivald answered. "After all, I've led fighters who weren't taking orders straight from King Swemmel's men."
"You're going to slide off?" Obilot said.
"I already said so," he answered. "I'm not going to waste a minute, either-I don't intend to be here when the sun comes up tomorrow." He took her hand. "This isn't the way I wanted to say goodbye, but..."
"I'll come with you, if you want," she said.
Garivald stared. "But-" he said again.
"But I'm a woman?" Obilot asked. "But they won't shove a uniform tunic on me? So what? I wish they would. It'd let me go on killing Algarvians. But you're right; they won't. And so I'll come with you. If you want."
"You know where I'll be going," Garivald said slowly.
"Back to Zossen," Obilot answered. "Back to your wife and your children. Aye, I know. That's why I said what I said the way I said it."
"What will you do once I get there?" he asked.
Obilot shrugged. "I don't know. That'll be partly up to you, anyhow. But maybe you could use somebody to watch your back on the way-and we'll have another few days together, anyhow. Past that..." She shrugged again. "I never have worried much about what happens next. When it happens, I'll worry about it."
"All right." Garivald kissed her. Part of him was ashamed of himself: he might lie with her a couple of more times on the way back to Annore, his wife. But another part of him eagerly looked forward to that. And yet another part warned he might well need a companion, and maybe a fellow fighter, before he got to Zossen. "Let's wait till midnight or so, and then we'll see if we can sneak off."
Getting out of camp, going from leader of the band of irregulars to fugitive, proved easier than he'd expected. No one challenged him as he slipped away. Tantris and the inspectors snored drunkenly by a fire. So much for efficiency, Garivald thought. Obilot joined him a few minutes after he left his hut. "If they really want to, they'll be able to follow our tracks in the snow," she said.
"I know." Garivald grimaced. "The Algarvians and the Grelzers could do the same thing in wintertime." Now he was worried about pursuit from his own side, from the side he still preferred to the expelled enemy and their puppets. He started away from the encampment. "Let's get to a road. Th en our tracks won't be the only ones."
"How far is Zossen?" Obilot asked as they slipped through the trees.
"I don't know. Forty, fifty, sixty miles-something like that," Garivald answered with a shrug. "I was never more than a day's walk away from it till the redheads grabbed and and took me off to Herborn. They were going to boil me the way Kin
g Swemmel boiled Raniero, but Munderic waylaid 'em when they cut through the woods instead of going around. So I've seen Zossen and I've seen the forest
and what's around it, but I haven't hardly seen whatever's in between, if you know what I mean."
Obilot nodded. "I hadn't been far from my village before the Algarvians came, either. Just to the market town. I don't think anything's left of either one of them. Our army fought there, but we didn't win."
"They were going to make a stand in Zossen, too," Garivald said. "But before they could, they heard the redheads had outflanked them, and so they fell back."
An icy breeze blew out of the west. Garivald steered by it. It was all he had, with clouds covering the stars. Somewhere not far away, an owl hooted. "I'd rather hear that than wolves," Obilot remarked.
"Aye." Garivald was carrying his stick, but his head went up and down anyway. A few paces later, he added, "Some of the wolves in these woods go on two legs, not four." Obilot laughed, not that he'd been joking. She had her stick, too.
They were both yawning when they emerged from the forest a couple of hours later. But they kept going till they struck the road. Even in the middle of the night, it had plenty of traffic: wagons and unicorns and behemoths and columns of marching men, all heading east. Garivald had to spring off to the side of the road again and again to keep from being trampled.
At sunrise, they came to a tent city that hadn't been there a few days before and probably wouldn't be there in another few days. "Can you spare us any bread?" Obilot called to the soldiers.
Had Garivald asked, the troopers likely would have cursed him or worse. But a woman's voice worked wonders. They got black bread and ham and butter and pickled onions. "Go on back to your farm, if there's anything left of it," one of the soldiers said in a northern accent. "Here's hoping you find some pieces worth picking up."
"Thanks," Garivald said. "Powers above keep you safe."
"Same to you," the soldier answered. "I may see you again one of these days. Wherever your farm's at, the inspectors and impressers'll be paying you a call sooner or later. They want everybody to join the fun-that's how things work."
"That's how things work," Garivald repeated bitterly as he and Obilot walked west against the flow of military traffic. "The worst of it is, he's right. Some locusts have two legs, too. Don't they know they have to leave some people on the land to keep everybody from starving?"
"Nobody from Cottbus knows anything." Now that Obilot was back under King Swemmel's rule, she mocked his officials, too.
They slept for a few hours in a wrecked peasant hut, lying in each other's arms under both their cloaks. When they woke and went back to the road, they couldn't go down it for quite a while: a great column of Algarvian captives filled it. Some of the redheads looked glum. Some seemed relieved just to be alive. And a few, with the lighthearted Algarvian arrogance Garivald had seen before, were doing their best to make a lark of it, singing and grinning and acting the fool.
"What'll happen to these bastards?" he called to one of the Unkerlanters herding the captives along.
"Oh, they're for the mines, every stinking one of 'em," the soldier answered. "Let 'em grub out brimstone and quicksilver and coal, so we get some use out of 'em. A short life and a not so merry one."
"Even that's too good for them," Obilot said. "I wish they had just one neck, so we could take off all their heads at once." The guard laughed and nodded. Any of the redheads who understood were probably less amused.
Garivald and Obilot fell in behind the column. They walked at whatever pace they chose. The Algarvians walked at the faster pace the guards set. Every so often, one wouldn't be able to keep up anymore. Garivald and Obilot walked past redheaded corpses in the roadway. Obilot kicked the first couple they passed. After that, she didn't bother.
A strange cracking noise made Garivald turn around to see what it was. Another, smaller, column of captives was gaining on him. These weren't Algarvians. They were men who looked a lot like him. They looked a lot like their captors, too. But their uniform tunics weren't rock-gray. They were dark green. Some of the Grelzers who'd been fighting for Raniero still lived, then.
Their guards hustled them forward, driving them even faster than the Unkerlanters in charge of the Algarvian captives. Garivald and Obilot scrambled out of the roadway to let them pass. And Garivald discovered what that cracking noise was: one of the guards carried not a stick but a whip, which he brought down again and again on the back of a Grelzer captive.
"Mercy!" the captive cried, in accents much like Garivald's.
"Mercy? For you?" His tormentor laughed. "By the time we're finished with you and your pals, filth, you'll end up envying Raniero, you will." The whip came down.
The Grelzer dashed forward, not in a run for freedom but straight toward an oncoming behemoth. As the beast raised a great foot, he dove under it. Red smeared the road when the behemoth took another step. The Unkerlanter guardsman cursed. Someone had escaped him.
Toward evening, Obilot again begged food from soldiers. "Here," one of the men said. "We can spare you and your man a tent for the night, too." To their own, they could be kindly. To their own who'd turned against them... Garivald fought to forget the sound the behemoth's foot had made as it crushed the life from the Grelzer captive.
Only a few peasants were left in the villages by the side of the road. Garivald asked an old man, "How far to Zossen?"
"Never heard of it," the fellow answered.
A couple of hours later, another old man said, "Zossen? A day, I think-maybe not even."
"No, a day and a half, easy," a woman insisted. They started to argue.
She turned out to be closer to right. Early the following morning, Garivald began recognizing the countryside. He might have done it sooner, but the fighting looked to have been heavy in these parts. He and Obilot walked on. Some time in the middle of the afternoon, he said, "Around that next bend, there'll be Zossen."
Obilot stopped. She looked at him. "You'll want to go on by yourself," she said. Rather miserably, Garivald nodded. He'd fought for his life with Obilot as well as lain beside her, but all his life before the Algarvians snatched him lay ahead. He wouldn't have come back if he hadn't wanted that. "Go on, then," Obilot told him. "I'll come along in a little while. We'll see how things are
when I get there." When he still hesitated, she pushed him. "Go on, I told you. I knew how things were when we left the woods."
"All right." Garivald trudged on along the path. When he looked back over his shoulder, Obilot stood in the middle of the road, cradling her stick in a way that said she'd used it many times before and was ready to use it again if anyone bothered her.
But Garivald was looking ahead, eagerly looking ahead, when he rounded that last bend. Obilot was behind him now, in the path and in the past. Ahead of him lay the field he and his fellow peasants worked and...
Nothing.
When he looked to where the village had stood, nothing was what he saw. The Algarvians must have made a stand here. Not a house still stood: not his hut, not Waddo the firstman's two-story home, not his friend Dagulf's. None. The buildings of Zossen-the houses, the smithy, the tavern-were erased as if they had never been.
The people? His wife? His son and daughter? Maybe they'd fled. He shook his head. He knew what the odds were. Far more likely-likely almost to the point of certainty-they'd died with their village.
He was still standing, still staring, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned. Obilot came up and put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry," she said. "Now you have nothing, too, just like me."
"Aye." Garivald's voice was still dull with shock. He and Obilot stood side by side surveying the devastation, both their lives in ruin.
***
Vanai was cooking rabbit stew with prunes and dried mushrooms when Ealstan gave the coded knock at their door. She hurried over to unbar it and let him in. When she did, his face glowed with excitement. That made her smile, too. She kissed him
and then asked, "What's happened? Something has. I can see it."
"You'll never guess," he said.
She looked at him in amused annoyance. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to."
"You know how Herborn's fallen to the Unkerlanters," he said.
"Oh, aye." Vanai nodded. "The news sheets finally admitted that a couple of days ago, when they couldn't not admit it anymore, if you know what I mean."
"That's right-and the Algarvians and Plegmund's stinking Brigade were going to chase the Unkerlanters out again any minute now. I lose track of the lies sometimes," Ealstan said. "Well, Pybba knows more than the news sheets do. For instance, had you heard the Unkerlanters caught King Mezentio's cousin Raniero, the fellow he'd named King of Grelz?"
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 76