Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Skarnu set a hand on her arm. “Easy, darling,” he murmured. “The idea isn’t to show how much we hate the redheads and the traitors who do their bidding. The idea is to hurt them without letting them know who did it.”

  Merkela looked at him as if he were one of the enemy, too. “The idea is also to make more people want to hurt them,” she said in a voice like ice.

  “But you’re not doing that. You’re just frightening folk and putting yourself in danger,” Skarnu said. Merkela’s glare grew harder and colder still. The next thing she said would be something they’d all regret for a long time. Seeing that coming, Skarnu quickly spoke first: “Simanu and the Algarvians do more in a day to make people want to hurt them than we could do in a year.”

  He watched Merkela weigh the words. To his great relief, she nodded. To his even greater relief, she kept quiet or talked of unimportant things as they made their way into Pavilosta’s central square. Raunu muttered, “The Algarvians don’t want anybody starting trouble today, do they?”

  “Not even a drop,” Skarnu muttered back. Redheads with sticks prowled the rooftops looking down into the square. More Algarvians guarded the double chair in which Simanu would be installed. “They aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t be so cursed dangerous if they were stupid.”

  A small band--bagpipe, tuba, trumpet, and thumping kettledrum--began to play: one sprightly Valmieran tune after another. Skarnu watched some of the Algarvian troopers make sour faces at the music. Their own tastes ran more toward plinkings and tinklings that were, to Valmieran ears, effete. And then he watched one of their officers growl something at them in their own language. The sour faces disappeared. The smiles that replaced them often looked like bad acting, but were unquestionably smiles. The redheads didn’t offend except on purpose. No, they weren’t stupid, not even slightly.

  After a little while, the band struck up a particularly bouncy tune, the drummer pounding away with might and main. “That is the count’s air,” Merkela murmured to Skarnu and Raunu. Had they grown up around Pavilosta, as she had, they would have heard it on ceremonial occasions all their lives. As things were, it was new to both of them. Skarnu assumed an expression that suggested it wasn’t.

  “Here he comes,” someone behind him said. People’s heads turned toward the left: They knew from which direction Simanu would come. Skarnu didn’t, but again couldn’t have been more than half a heartbeat behind everyone else--not far enough (he hoped) for even the most alert Algarvian to notice.

  Dressed in a tunic stiff with gold thread and trousers of silk with fur at the cuffs, the late Count Enkuru’s son advanced toward the double chair in which he would formally succeed his father. Simanu was somewhere in his mid-twenties, with a face handsome and nasty at the same time: the face of a man who’d never had anyone tell him no in his whole life.

  “I’ve served under officers who looked like that,” Raunu muttered. “Everybody loved ‘em--oh, aye.” He rolled his eyes to make sure no one took him seriously.

  Simanu bestowed his sneer impartially on the Valmierans over whom he was being set and the Algarvians who were allowing him to be set over those townsmen and villagers. Just for a moment, the cast of his features reminded Skarnu of his sister Krasta’s. He shook his head. That wasn’t fair. . . was it? Had Krasta ever really worn such a snide smile? He hoped not.

  After Simanu came more Algarvian bodyguards and a peasant obviously cleaned up for the occasion. The fellow led two cows, one fine and plump, the other a sad, scrawny, shambling beast. Raunu muttered again: “Have to find out who that bugger is and make sure something bad happens to him.”

  “Aye, we will,” Skarnu agreed. “He’s as much in bed with the redheads as Simanu is.” He turned to Merkela. “Why the beasts?” He held his voice down--one more thing a proper peasant from around Pavilosta would have known from childhood.

  “Only watch, and you’ll see,” Merkela answered. She might not have seen this ceremony before--Enkuru had been the local lord for a long time--but it was second nature to her. It probably figured in tales the peasants in this part of the kingdom told their children. For all Skarnu could tell, diligent folklorists back in Priekule had composed learned dissertations about it.

  Simanu strode up to the double chair, one side of which faced east, the other west. “People of Pavilosta, people of my county,” he called out in a voice as poisonously sweet as his face, “I now come into my inheritance.” He sat down facing west, toward Algarve. That was, no doubt, intended to symbolize his defense of the region against the kilted barbarians who had so often troubled the Kaunian Empire and the later Kaunian kingdoms. His facing west now, with Algarvians surrounding and upholding him, felt cruelly ironic.

  The scrubbed peasant, still holding the lead ropes for the two cows, took his seat back-to-back with Simanu. Then he rose again, and led the beasts around the double chair to the new count. He held out both ropes, one in each hand.

  “Now you’ll see how it goes,” Merkela murmured to Skarnu. “Simanu has to choose the skinny cow, and he has to let the peasant give him a box on the ear--just a little one, mind--to show he governs here not for his own sake but for the sake of his people.”

  But when Count Simanu got to his feet to face the peasant, his smile had grown nastier still. “People of Pavilosta, people of my county, the world has changed,” he said. “Vile brigands slew my father, and still have not got their just deserts because their wicked fellows conceal them and keep them safe from harm. Very well, then: if you will not give, you will not get.”

  Speaking thus, he seized the fat cow’s rope in his left hand and with his right dealt the peasant a buffet to the side of the head that sent the fellow sprawling with a cry of pain and surprise. Simanu threw back his own head and laughed loud and long.

  For a moment, his laughter was almost was almost the only sound in Pavilosta’s central square. The peasants and townsfolk simply stared, having trouble believing anyone would pervert their ancient ceremony. Maybe the Algarvians had trouble believing it too. Their officers gaped like the Valmieran peasants around them--gaped and then started to curse. In their shoes, Skarnu would also have cursed. Their chosen puppet had just chosen to outrage the people they wanted him to control.

  Someone threw an apple at Simanu. It missed, and smashed against the double chair. The fat cow took a couple of steps forward and crunched it up. Then someone else threw a cobblestone. That one didn’t miss: it caught Simanu in the ribs. He let out a yell louder than the cleaned-up peasant had.

  More stones and fruits and vegetables whizzed past Simanu. Some of them didn’t whiz past, but thumped against him. He yelled again. So did the Algarvian officer in charge of the Valmieran noble’s kilted bodyguards: “You cursed idiot! Why did you not do the ceremony as it should be done?”

  “They did not deserve it,” Simanu said, wiping blood from his face. “By the powers above, they still do not deserve it, not with how they treat me.”

  “Fool!” the Algarvian started. “Make them happy in the small things and you can rule them in the large ones. This way--” He raised his voice to a shout that filled the square: “You Valmierans! Stop this riotous nonsense at once and peacefully go back to your ho--oof!” That last came when a cleverly aimed stone hit him in the belly and he folded up like a concertina.

  “Nicely thrown,” Skarnu remarked.

  “I thank you, sir,” Raunu answered. “Nice to know the arm still works.”

  “Aye.” Skarnu looked around. He stood near the front of the crowd, but not so near that any Algarvian could easily see who he was. Drawing in a deep breath, he let it out in a shout of his own: “Down with the vicious count and the Algarvian tyrants!”

  No redhead could have identified him in the moments following that cry, for Merkela grabbed him, pulled his face down to hers, and gave him the most savage kiss he’d ever had, a kiss that left the taste of blood in his mouth. Because of that kiss, he hardly noticed the Valmierans surging past him toward the scapegrace Cou
nt Simanu and his Algarvian protectors.

  “Back!” the Algarvian officer shouted in Valmieran. “Back, or you will be sorry for it!” He had mettle; no man without it would have found his voice so fast after making the acquaintance of Raunu’s stone. But the townsfolk and peasants, roused by tradition flouted as perhaps by nothing else, did not go back. More stones flew--Skarnu flung one himself. It missed, which made him curse.

  “Down with Simanu!” the Valmierans roared, a cry that echoed through the square. “Down with Simanu! Down with--”

  “Blaze!” the Algarvian officer shouted, not about to let the outraged Valmierans overrun his men. “Blaze them down!”

  Blaze them down the redheads did. A few men got in among the kilted soldiers, but they did not last long. Both the Algarvians around Simanu and those on the rooftops turned their sticks on the furious Valmierans. As men--and women--began to fall, the rest broke and fled.

  Skarnu had to drag Merkela away by main force. “Let me go!” she kept shouting. “I want my crack at them!”

  But he would not let her go. “Come on,” he said. “I don’t want you dead, curse it.” As if to underscore his words, a man beside them fell with a groan. Skarnu went on, “The Algarvians and Simanu have just done us a favor. Before, people would put up with them. No more--now they’ve found out what they get when they do. We’ll have five people willing to fight them for every one who would before. Do you see?”

  Merkela must have, for she let him lead her out of Pavilosta. But she never admitted he was right, not out loud.

  Five

  Krasta rounded on her maidservant. “Curse you, Bauska, I ought to box your X i ears,” she said furiously. “It’s only the middle of the afternoon. If you think you can fall asleep on me, you had better think again.”

  “I am sorry, milady,” Bauska said around a yawn. “I’m sure I don’t know what’s come over me the past few days.” Wise in the ways of servants, Krasta had no doubt she was lying, but couldn’t tell why. Bauska yawned again, yawned and then gulped. Her complexion, always pale, went distinctly green. After another gulp, she made a strangled choking noise, turned, and dashed out of Krasta’s bedchamber.

  When she returned, she still looked wan but somewhat better, as if she’d got rid of what ailed her. “Are you ill?” Krasta demanded. “If you are, you had better not give it to me. Colonel Lurcanio and I are supposed to go to a banquet tomorrow night.”

  “Milady...” Bauska stopped. A faint--a very faint--flush darkened her white, white cheeks. She resumed, picking her words with obvious care: “What I have, it is not catching, not between me and you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Krasta asked. “If you’re ill, have you seen a physician?”

  “I am sick now and then, milady, but I am not ill,” her servant said. “And I have no need to go to a physician. The moon has told me everything I need to know.”

  “The moon?” For a moment, the words meant nothing to Krasta. Then her eyes widened. That explained it. “You are with child!”

  “Aye,” Bauska said, and again blushed faintly. “I have been sure now for the past ten days or so.”

  “Who’s the father?” Krasta asked. If Bauska presumed to tell her it was none of her business, she promised herself the maidservant would regret it for the rest of her life.

  But Bauska did nothing of the sort. Looking down at the carpet, she whispered, “Captain Mosco, milady.”

  “You are carrying an Algarvians bastard? A cuckoo’s egg?” Krasta said. Not raising her eyes, Bauska nodded. Anger shot through Krasta, anger oddly mixed with envy: she’d thought from the beginning that Mosco, who was years younger than Lurcanio, was also better looking. “How did it happen?”

  “How?” Now Bauska did look up. “In the usual way, of course.”

  Krasta hissed in exasperation. “That is not what I meant, and you know it perfectly well. Now, then--have you told this fellow what he’s done to you?”

  Bauska shook her head. “No, milady. I have not dared, not yet.”

  “Well, you are about to.” Krasta seized her maidservant by the arm. Had she been just a little more provoked, she would have seized Bauska by the ear. As things were, she gripped Bauska tightly enough to make the servant whimper. Krasta ignored that; she was used to ignoring protests from her servants. Bauska whimpered again when Krasta marched her down the stairs and into the wing of the mansion the Algarvians occupied. Krasta ignored that, too.

  A couple of the clerks who helped administer Priekule for King Mezentio looked up from their desks as the two Valmieran women went by. They eyed Krasta (and Bauska, too, though Krasta paid no attention to that) far more brazenly than Valmieran commoners would have dared to do. Their leers had infuriated Krasta at first. Now she accepted them, as she accepted so much of Algarvian rule.

  “But there are limits,” she muttered. “By the powers above, there are limits.” Bauska made a questioning noise. Krasta went right on ignoring her.

  She knew where Captain Mosco worked: in an antechamber outside the larger room that served these days as Colonel Lurcanio’s office. Mosco was speaking into a crystal mounted on a desk undoubtedly plundered from a Valmieran cabinetmaker’s shop. He murmured something in Algarvian. As the image in the crystal faded away, he rose and bowed and shifted into his accented Valmieran: “How lovely to see you, ladies--and twice as lovely to see you both together.”

  Oh, he was smooth. Bauska smiled and curtsied and started to say something sweet--exactly what the situation didn’t call for, as far as Krasta was concerned. What the situation did call for seemed plain enough. “Seducer!” Krasta shouted at the top of her lungs. “Betrayer of innocence! Defiler of purity!”

  That made all the officious Algarvian clerks--or at least the ones who understood Valmieran--stare through the doorway at her with something other than lust on their minds. It also brought Colonel Lurcanio out into the antechamber. It did not, however, much abash Captain Mosco. Like so many of his countrymen, he had crust. With another bow, he said, “I assure you, milady, you are mistaken. I am no defiler, no betrayer, no seducer. I assure you also”--he looked insufferably male, insufferably smug--”no seduction was necessary, not with the lady your maidservant being at least as eager as I.”

  Krasta glared at Bauska. She was perfectly willing to believe the commoner wench a slut. With some effort, though, she remembered that was neither here nor there. She had considerable practice sneering, and put that practice to good use. “Lie however you please,” she said, “but all your lies will not explain away the child this poor woman is carrying.”

  “What is this?” Lurcanio said sharply. Mosco stared, then kicked at the carpet. He still looked very male, but now like a sulky small boy caught after he’d broken a fancy vase he should have handled carefully.

  “Speak up!” Krasta told Bauska, and squeezed the maidservant’s upper arm--which she’d never let go of--harder than ever.

  Bauska whimpered yet again, then did speak, in a very small voice: “Milady tells the truth. I will have a baby, and Captain Mosco is the father.”

  Mosco had wasted no time recovering his aplomb. With an extravagant Algarvian shrug, he said, “Well, what if I am? That’s what comes of poking, every now and then anyhow.” He turned to Lurcanio. “It’s not as if I’m the only one, my lord Count. These Valmieran women spread their legs at a wink and a wave.”

  “I know that,” Lurcanio answered. He was looking at Krasta. Blood rushed to her face--the blood of outrage, not that of embarrassment. She squared her shoulders and drew in a deep breath, preparatory to scorching Lurcanio. But, a moment later, she exhaled, the scorching undelivered. She did not care to admit it even to herself, but Lurcanio intimidated her as no one else ever had.

  He spoke to Mosco now in Algarvian. Mosco kicked at the carpet again as he answered in the same language. Krasta had no idea what they were saying. Though she had an Algarvian for a lover, she had not bothered learning above half a dozen words of his language.r />
  To her surprise, Bauska leaned over to her and whispered, “They say half-breeds are the last thing they want. What are they going to do to me?” She looked as if she wanted to sink through the floor.

  “You understand the funny noises they make?” Krasta said in some surprise. To her way of thinking, servants barely had the wit to speak Valmieran, let alone any other language. But Bauska nodded.

  Lurcanio and Mosco went right on talking, taking no notice of the two women. Krasta squeezed Bauska’s arm again to make the maidservant tell her what they were jabbering about. In due course, Bauska did: “Mosco says they’ll have to make sure the baby weds an Algarvian, come the day. In a few generations, he says, the Kaunian taint will be gone.”

  “He says that, does he?” Krasta whispered back, outraged all over again. Everyone knew--everyone in her circles knew--Kaunian blood was infinitely superior to that of the swaggering barbarians from Algarve. But she did not have the nerve to throw that obvious truth in Lurcanio’s face. Instead, she tried a different ploy: “How happy will Captain Mosco’s wife be to learn of his little bastard?”

  She wasn’t sure Mosco had a wife. By the way he flinched, though, he did. Lurcanio spoke in a flat voice, the one he used to give orders: “You will not say a word to Captain Mosco’s wife, milady.”

  After gathering herself, Krasta looked defiance at him. In trying to keep her from playing the game of scandal, he had, for once, overreached himself. “I will bargain with you,” she said. “If Mosco acknowledges the bastard as his, if he supports the brat and Bauska as they deserve, his wife need not hear anything unfortunate. If he acts as so many men are in the habit of acting ...”

  Lurcanio and Mosco spoke back and forth in Algarvian. Again, Krasta had no idea what they were saying. Bauska did, and let out an angry squawk. Pointing at Mosco, she said, “You certainly are the father! I don’t tomcat around, and you’ve proved you do.” Krasta didn’t know whether to believe her or not; she operated on the assumption that servants lied whenever they got the chance. But Bauska sounded convincing, and Mosco wouldn’t have an easy time proving she lied--not for some months, anyhow.