Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “Aye,” Skarnu said. Unlike most of Valmiera, Merkela and he were still fighting.

  “Vengeance,” Merkela murmured softly. It was, these days, the most important thing she lived for. One reason she favored Skarnu these days was that he lived for it, too.

  They walked past a broadsheet pasted on a wall. FOR THE KILLER OF COUNT SIMANU, 1,000 GOLD PIECES, it proclaimed. Merkela reached out and squeezed Skarnu’s hand. He’d slain Simanu, after all. And if he hadn’t, Merkela might have.

  A greengrocer’s was quiet, while the rest of the shops on the street bustled. Painted across the window were half a dozen words: REVENGE FOR SIMANU--NIGHT AND FOG. Skarnu’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. Whoever met night and fog vanished off the face of the earth. He’d found that out when he visited a comrade’s farm. Dauktu was gone, and all his family with him.

  Skarnu didn’t want to think about that. As he and Merkela neared the square, he remarked, “Do you know what I miss from Priekule?” She shook her head. Her straight blond hair, even fairer than his, flew back and forth. Skarnu said, “I miss news sheets.”

  Merkela shrugged. “Pavilosta never had one of its own. It isn’t big enough for that, I suppose. Sometimes they bring them in from other towns. These days, a news sheet would be full of Algarvian lies, anyhow.”

  “Aye, so it would,” Skarnu agreed. “The biggest news is, the redheads have to keep on fighting in Unkerlant. If they’d taken Cottbus, we’d all be singing a sorry tune right now.”

  “Good they didn’t,” Merkela said fiercely. “The only thing wrong is, the Unkerlanters won’t give Mezentio’s men everything I would.” Skarnu wasn’t so sure of that; the soldiers who followed King Swemmel were anything but gentle. Then Skarnu glanced over to Merkela. On second thought, she was probably right. Whatever Swemmel’s men did to the Algarvians, it wouldn’t match what she’d do if only she could.

  He didn’t remark on that. Whatever he said, Merkela would come back with something like, Well, of course. One of the reasons she’d been drawn to him, even before the Algarvians killed her husband, was that he’d refused to quit fighting them. He didn’t think it was the only reason--he hoped not--but he was a long way from sure it was the smallest one.

  Instead of a daily or a weekly news sheet, Pavilosta had the market square. People gathered to gossip as much as they did to buy and sell. Algarvian soldiers walked through the square, but not so many as had walked it before fall turned into winter. That wasn’t the cold keeping them indoors so much as it was the war in the distant west pulling them out of Valmiera. Skarnu wished it would pull them all out of his kingdom.

  Merkela went off to buy pins and needles, which she couldn’t make for herself on the farm. Skarnu cared nothing about pins and needles. He wandered over to the table from which an enterprising Pavilosta taverner sold ale. The taverner nodded to him as he came up. He would never be a proper local, not if he stayed on the farm near town till his hair went from gold to silver. But he’d been here long enough--and kept his mouth shut well enough--to win a little respect. He laid coins on the table. The taverner poured him ale from a big stoneware jug.

  He sipped, then nodded. “Good,” he said. His accent still announced that he came from the capital, not the provinces. Imitating the local dialect only made him sound like a bad actor. Imitating peasant taciturnity worked better.

  “Aye, it is, though the weather’s too cold for the proper tang to come through,” the taverner answered. He was no peasant, and the hinges of his jaws worked fine. He looked around for the closest Algarvians. Not seeing any kilted soldiers within earshot, he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Have you heard the latest?”

  “Don’t think so.” Skarnu leaned forward, too, till their heads almost touched. “Tell me, why don’t you?”

  “I’ll do that. I will indeed.” Had the taverner brought his mouth any closer, he could have given Skarnu a kiss. “They say--I can’t prove it’s true, but they do say it, and nobody says anything different, not that I’ve heard--they say the redheads are going to knock over the Column of Victory down in Priekule.”

  “What?” Skarnu jerked as if stung by a wasp. “They can’t do that!” His memories of the column went back to earliest childhood, back to the days before his parents had died in a ley-line caravan collision, orphaning him and Krasta.

  “They can,” the taverner said. “Pretty rotten piece of business, anybody wants to know what I think . . . which isn’t too likely, especially if you listen to my wife go on.”

  Skarnu was only half listening. He picked up the mug of ale, gulped it down, and shoved it and coins across the table for a refill. He took a long pull at that, too, trying to imagine the capital’s skyline without that pale stone needle thrusting up from the middle of the park. He couldn’t do it; he had an easier time visualizing the royal palace gone. “Powers above,” he said at last. “They wouldn’t just knock down a monument. They’re trying to make us forget who we are.”

  Now the taverner gave him a blank look. The fellow might be shrewd in business, but how much education did he have? Not much, probably. That wasn’t so for Skarnu, who’d always been a better student than his sister. Valmiera’s roots, like those of Jelgava to the north, were anchored in the soil of the long-ago Kaunian Empire. Monuments survived all over both kingdoms; the Column of Victory was just one of the more spectacular. If the Algarvians were trying to destroy them . . .

  “They’re trying to kill our Kaunianity,” Skarnu said.

  Intelligence kindled in the taverner’s eyes. He understood what that meant, all right. “Hadn’t thought of it so,” he said, “but curse me if I’ll tell you you’re wrong. No, curse the redheads.”

  “Aye, curse the redheads,” Skarnu agreed.

  “Aye, curse the redheads,” Merkela said, coming up beside him. “Buy me some ale and tell me why we’re cursing them this time.” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. Both Skarnu and the taverner looked around the square in alarm. Fortunately, none of the Algarvians seemed to have heard. Skarnu explained--in a voice hardly above a whisper--what Mezentio’s men spoke of doing. Merkela nodded. “Powers below eat them,” she snarled.

  “May it be so,” Skarnu said, and did his best to change the subject: “Have you got what you need?”

  Such ploys failed more often than they worked. This time, he got lucky. “I do,” Merkela answered, “and for a better price than I thought I would, too. Every copper counts these days.” That set her cursing the Algarvians again, but in a more restrained way. “What about you?”

  “Oh, I just came along to keep you company and get out of a morning’s work,” Skamu answered. And to keep you out of trouble, he added to himself. As for the work, only in winter could a farmer--or even someone turning into a farmer--say such a thing and get away with it.

  Even at this season of the year, Merkela reproachfully clicked her tongue between her teeth. “Work shouldn’t wait,” she said, which might have been a peasant’s creed all over Derlavai. She drank the mug of ale Skarnu had got her, then slipped her arm into his. For a moment, he thought that was fond possessiveness. Then she declared, “Come on, let’s go. You can finish most of the chores this afternoon and not leave so much for tomorrow.”

  She was in deadly earnest. She usually was. Skarnu wanted to laugh it off, but didn’t quite dare. Meek as any henpecked husband, he let her lead him out of the square, out of Pavilosta, and back toward the farm. He was chuckling inside, but made sure it didn’t show.

  Like most towns, Pavilosta had gone up at a power point, which let mages work there without fueling their sorcery with sacrifices. Pavilosta’s power point was small and feeble, one reason the place remained no more than a village.

  Another reason was that it did not lie on the ley line connecting two stronger local power points. That line lay between Pavilosta and Merkela’s farm. Most times going to and from the village, Skarnu hardly noticed it. The Algarvians kept the brush down along it, as had the Valm
ierans before them; but in winter there was no brush to keep down.

  Today, though, he and Merkela had to pause at the ley line because a long caravan was passing by; it was heading southeast, in the direction of Priekule and, beyond the capital, the Strait of Valmiera. Merkela stared at the cars as they silently slid past. “Why are all the windows covered with those wooden grates?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Skarnu answered. “I’ve never seen anything like that, either.” But, after the caravan had passed, a stench lingered in the cold, crisp air. It put him in mind of the smell of the trenches--unwashed men and undisposed-of waste--but it was stronger and even more sour. “Maybe it’s a prison caravan,” he suggested.

  “Maybe.” Merkela looked along the ley line. “If those are prisoners of the Algarvians, I hope they get away.” Skarnu peered after the caravan, too. Slowly, he nodded.

  When Ealstan fled Gromheort, he’d though everything would turn out fine after he got to Oyngestun. Vanai lived there, after all. If he hadn’t fallen for her, he wouldn’t have fought with his cousin and had to flee the city. Falling for a Kaunian girl would have been hard enough for a Forthwegian even in peacetime. With the redheads occupying the kingdom ...

  I wonder if I killed Sidroc? Ealstan thought for the hundredth, or maybe the thousandth, time. Sooner or later, he would hear from his family. Leofsig would know where he’d gone. Leofsig or their father would find a way to get in touch with him. Ealstan didn’t dare write back to Gromheort; that would tell the local constables, and maybe the Algarvians, too, where he was staying.

  Of course, if Sidroc wasn’t dead and didn’t have his wits scrambled when he hit his head after Ealstan punched him, he would likely know where Ealstan was, too. But if Sidroc wasn’t dead and didn’t have his wits scrambled, he and Uncle Hengist would have gone to the Algarvians because of the fight. That constable coming up the Street of Tinkers might have Ealstan’s name and description. He might take out his stick and threaten Ealstan with death if he didn’t come along quietly.

  He did nothing of the sort. He walked past Ealstan without even noticing him. For all he knew, Ealstan’s ancestors might have lived in Oyngestun for generations uncounted. The Forthwegians whose ancestors had lived in the village for generations uncounted knew better, of course. But a stranger here wasn’t such a prodigy as he would have been before war stirred the countryside like a woman stirring soup in a pot above a kitchen hearthfire.

  Ealstan walked the Street of Tinkers from one end to the other, as he had every day since coming to Oyngestun. Vanai lived in one of the houses along the street. Ealstan knew that from the letters they’d sent back and forth. But he didn’t know which one. They all looked much alike, presenting only walls--some whitewashed, some painted--and doorways and tiny windows to the street. Most Forthwegian houses were like that: built around a central courtyard, and not showing the outside world whatever ostentation lay within.

  He kicked at the cobblestones in frustration. He hadn’t dared ask after Vanai. That might have involved her in his trouble--and it might have got back to the constables or the redheads. Even had he known which house was hers, she shared it with her grandfather. Ealstan had no doubt Brivibas was as appalled at the notion of his daughter’s falling in love with a Forthwegian as most Forthwegians would have been at the idea of one of their kind’s loving a Kaunian.

  “Powers above,” Ealstan muttered to himself. “Doesn’t she ever come outside? Doesn’t she even look outside?”

  As best he could tell, Vanai didn’t. He couldn’t spend every waking moment pacing up and down the Street of Tinkers, however much he wanted to. That would get him noticed, the last thing he wanted.

  “I ought to go away,” he murmured. “I ought to go far away, go someplace where nobody’s ever heard of me, and wait for things to blow over.”

  He’d said that before. Logically, intellectually, it made good sense. No matter how much sense it made, he couldn’t do it. Vanai was here . . . somewhere. Of course she drew him now, as a lodestone drew bits of iron.

  Shaking his head, he went back to the tavern where he was renting a nasty little chamber above the taproom. The drunken racket below made his nights hideous, but he couldn’t very well complain. The taverner made more from the noisy drunks than he did from Ealstan.

  A few doors up the street from the tavern was an apothecary’s shop run by a plump Kaunian named Tamulis. Ealstan had been in there a couple of times, in search of a nostrum to knock down the headaches he got from not sleeping enough. He hadn’t had much luck.

  He was just coming up to the apothecary’s door when it opened and someone came out of the shop. He had to step smartly to keep from running into her. “I’m sorry,” he said in Forthwegian. Then he stopped in his tracks, his mouth falling open. “Vanai!”

  She hadn’t recognized him, either, not for a moment. Her jaw dropped, too; her blue-gray eyes opened enormously wide. “Ealstan!” she exclaimed, and flung herself into his arms.

  They separated almost at once, as if each found the other burning hot. To be seen embracing was to court danger from Algarvians, Forthwegians, and likely Kaunians as well. But the memory of Vanai pressed against him warmed Ealstan better--deeper--than his long, heavy tunic and the wool cloak he wore over it.

  “What are you doing here?” Vanai demanded. She spoke Forthwegian as readily as Kaunian; Ealstan could use Kaunian, but only more slowly. She held a green glass bottle in her hand. Ealstan had an identical bottle of willow-bark decoction up in his room. It might have helped fight fever from the grippe; he couldn’t tell that it did any good against a headache.

  In a few terse sentences, he explained what he was doing in Oyngestun, finishing, “After Sidroc wouldn’t wake up, I knew I had to get out of Gromheort. There was only one place I wanted to come, and here I am.”

  Vanai flushed; with her fair skin, far paler than Ealstan’s, the progress of the blush was easy--and fascinating--to watch. She knew why he wanted to come to Oyngestun. “But what will you do now?” she asked. “You can’t have a lot of money.”

  “More than you think,” he answered. “But I’ve been doing odd jobs, too: anything I can to get my hands on some extra cash so I don’t go through what I’ve got so fast.” As a bookkeeper’s son, he understood he needed income to balance his expenses.

  “All right. Good.” Vanai nodded; she had a briskly practical streak. Then she repeated the question she’d asked before: “What will you do now?”

  Ealstan knew what he wanted to do. Holding Vanai would have put the thought in his mind had it not been there already. But that wasn’t what she meant. And he’d had time to think, pacing along the Street of Tinkers. He said, “If you want, we could go to Eoforwic together. From all I’ve heard, there are more mixed couples there than in the rest of Forthweg put together.”

  Vanai flushed again. “Maybe there were, back before the war--in fact, I know there were, back before the war,” she said. “But now, under the Algarvians... Do you want to put yourself through that?”

  “Why else would I have come to Oyngestun?” Ealstan asked. Vanai murmured something too low to hear and looked down at her shoes. Ealstan said, “You aren’t talking about your grandfather, the way you always did before.”

  “No, I’m not talking about my grandfather,” Vanai agreed wearily. “I think I may have said everything there is to say about him, and done everything there was to do for him. And he’s certainly said everything there was to say about me.” Her jaw set. Ealstan thought she was a year or so older than he. Suddenly, she looked a good deal older than that and harder than he’d dreamt she could.

  He started to ask what her grandfather had said about her. A second glance at her face convinced him that wouldn’t be a good idea. Instead, he said, “Will you come with me?”

  Her laugh had a raw edge to it. “This is only the fourth time we’ve ever set eyes on each other. We haven’t spent more than a few hours together, and we’ve sent a few letters back and forth. A
nd because of that, you want me to leave behind everything and everybody I’ve ever known and go off with you to a place neither one of us has ever seen?”

  Dull embarrassment filled Ealstan. He’d let his hopes run away with him. Life as you lived it wasn’t really much like what it was once the writers of romances got through with it. Kicking at the cobbles once more, he began, “Well, I--”

  “Of course I’ll come with you,” Vanai broke in. “By the powers above--the powers above who are deaf and blind to everything we Kaunians have suffered--how could whatever happens to me there be worse than what’s happened to me here?”

  He knew he didn’t know everything that had happened to her here in Oyngestun. Once more, he realized asking wouldn’t be smart. In any case, joy and astonishment left him little room to worry about such things. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” he said. “Not ever.”

  To his astonishment, her face worked. She bit her lip, plainly fighting back tears. “Nobody but you has ever said anything like that to me,” she whispered.

  “No?” Ealstan shook his head in bewilderment. “A lot of people have wasted a lot of chances, then.” He saw he’d flustered her again. Since he didn’t want that, he asked, “Will your grandfather be all right if you leave him alone?”

  “I hope so. In spite of everything, I hope so,” Vanai answered. “But the redheads are as likely to scoop me up on the way to Eoforwic as they are to grab him here. I can’t do anything about that. I managed to keep him from going out and having to work himself to death on the road, but those days are gone now.”

  “How did you stop the Algarvians from sending him out to do road work?” Ealstan asked.

  “I managed,” Vanai repeated, and said no more. Her face went hard and closed again. None of the pictures that flooded into Ealstan’s mind was any he wanted to see. He asked no more questions, which seemed to relieve Vanai.

  Now she tried to break the tension: “How can we go to Eoforwic? I don’t think they’ll let us ride together in a caravan car, and I wouldn’t feel safe in one, anyhow. Too easy for the Algarvians to stop the caravan and haul away everybody with yellow hair.”