Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Seeing strange faces up close felt wrong, unnatural. And people stared at her, too. A Forthwegian with a face like a big-nosed ferret grabbed her by the arm. Even as she twisted away, he demanded, “Lady, are you out of your skull? You want the redheads to nab you?”

  She needed a moment to notice that the question had come in Kaunian, a slangy dialect far removed from what she’d heard and used back in Oyngestun-- the kind of Kaunian pickpockets and thieves would speak. This fellow had probably learned it from blond pickpockets and thieves.

  “I need an apothecary,” she said in Forthwegian--no use drawing attention to herself by ear as well as eye. “My . . . brother’s sick.”

  “Uh-huh.” The ferret-faced Forthwegian didn’t believe that. After a moment, she understood why: a brother would have been as conspicuous as she was. That meant this fellow knew she had a Forthwegian lover. But he was saying, “Two blocks over, a block and a half up, and he won’t ask no questions. Just stay invisible between here and there.”

  “My thanks,” Vanai said. But the Forthwegian had gone on his way as if she really were invisible.

  Few of the other dark, blocky men and women on the streets seemed to notice she was there, either. In Eoforwic, she remembered, Forthwegians and Kaunians had rioted together against the Algarvian occupiers when they learned what happened to the Kaunians the redheads sent west. It hadn’t been like that in Oyngestun. It hadn’t been like that most places in Forthweg. Had it been, the Algarvians would have had a harder time doing what they did.

  “What do you need?” a gray-bearded Forthwegian asked her. He was grinding some powder or another with a brass mortar and pestle. As the fellow who’d recommended his place had said, he didn’t seem to care that she was a Kaunian.

  “A fever-fighter,” she answered, and described Ealstan’s symptoms without saying who or what he might be in relation to her.

  “Ah.” The apothecary nodded. “There’s a deal of that going around, so there is. I’ll mix you up some willow bark and poppy juice, aye, and a bit of hairy marshwort, too. It’s got an ugly name, but it’s full of virtue.” He reached for bottles full of bark and a dark liquid and dried leaves, then mixed them together after grinding all the solids to powder. After that, he poured in something clear and sparkling. “Just a bit of grain spirits--for flavor, you might say.”

  “Whatever you think best.” Vanai trusted him at sight. He knew what he knew, and was good at what he did. Had an Algarvian or a naked black Zuwayzi told him of the same symptoms, he would have made the identical medicine. She was sure of that.

  “Here you are,” he said when he was done. “That’ll be three in silver.” Vanai nodded and paid; she thought Tamulis, back in Oyngestun where things were cheaper, would have charged her more. As she turned to go, the apothecary showed the first sign of knowing what she was: he called after her, “Get home safe, girl. Get home and stay there.”

  She looked back over her shoulder. “That’s what I intend to do. Thank you.” He didn’t answer. He just went back to the medicine he’d been compounding when she came into the shop.

  She clung close to the walls of shops as she scurried back toward her block of flats, as if she were a mouse scurrying along a baseboard to its hole. Again, most Forthwegians she saw pretended not to see her. She did hear one shout of, “Dirty Kaunian!” but even the woman who yelled made no move to do anything about it.

  Powers above be praised, she thought as she reached the last corner she had to turn before reaching her building. I got away with it. She turned the corner . . . and almost walked into a pair of Algarvian constables who were about to turn onto the street she was leaving.

  Had Vanai seen them half a block away, she could easily have escaped; they were both pudgy and middle-aged. But one of them reached out and grabbed her even as she was letting out a startled squeak. “Well, well, what are we having here?” he said in fairly fluent Forthwegian.

  “Let me go!” Vanai exclaimed. She kicked at him, but he was nimble enough despite his bulk; her shoe didn’t strike his stockinged shin. Then she thought to use guile instead of force. “I’ll pay you if you let me go.” She reached down and made the silver in her pocket jingle.

  The constable who didn’t have hold of her leered. “How you paying us, eh?” His Forthwegian was worse than his partner’s, but Vanai had no trouble understanding what he wanted from her.

  Most of the horror that gripped her was horror at not feeling more horror. If that was what it took to get rid of the Algarvians, why not? Major Spinello had inflicted himself on her for months. After that, what were a few minutes with a couple of strangers? She should have been appalled at thinking that way. Part of her was, but only a small part. Spinello had burned away the rest of her sense of. . . shame?

  In quick, almost musical trills, the Algarvians talked back and forth. One of them pointed to the dark mouth of an alleyway across the street from where they stood. If they took her back there, they could do what they wanted with her and no one would be the wiser unless she screamed. “Let’s be going,” said the one who had hold of her, and he gave her a shove in that direction.

  She would have seized a chance to escape, but they offered her none. Now I have to hope they’ll let me go after. . . this, she thought, grinding her teeth. Relying on the honor of men all too liable not to have any made her legs light and shaky with fear.

  And then a Forthwegian loomed in front of the constables. “Turn her loose,” he rumbled. “She ain’t done nothing.”

  “Aye, that’s right,” a woman said from behind her.

  “She is being a Kaunian,” the constable answered, as if that explained everything. Most places in Forthweg, it would have.

  Not here. “Aye, she’s a Kaunian, and you’re a son of a whore,” said the burly man blocking the constables’ path. A crowd started to gather. The Forthwegian repeated, “Turn her loose, curse you.”

  Had he shouted for Vanai’s blood, he might well have got that. As things were, everybody in the growing crowd shouted for the constables to let her go. The two Algarvians looked at each other. They were time-servers, not heroes. The bold, the young, the brave, were off doing real fighting. These fellows couldn’t hope to blaze everybody who was yelling at them. They would get mobbed, and a riot would start.

  The one who had hold of Vanai’s arm held out his other hand. “Ten silvers’ fine, for being on street without permitting,” he declared.

  Vanai gave him the coins without hesitation. The other constable stuck out his hand, whereupon the first one split the money with him. They both beamed. Why not? They’d made a profit, even if she hadn’t gone into the alley and done lewd things for them.

  With a pat on the head as if she’d been a dog, the first constable let her go. “Run along home,” he told her.

  She didn’t wait to let him change his mind--or for the crowd to disperse, which might have tempted him to do just that. And the crowd helped in another way, for it kept the Algarvians from seeing which building she entered. “Safe,” she breathed as she got inside. She hurried up the stairs to give Ealstan the medicine. She clutched the jar tightly. It had ended up being expensive, but oh!--how much more it might have cost.

  Waddo came limping up to Garivald as the peasant tramped in from the fields with a hoe on his shoulder as if it were a stick. The firstman grabbed Garivald by the elbow and pulled him aside. “It’s gone,” he said hoarsely, his eyes wide with fear.

  “What’s gone?” Garivald asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

  “Why, the crystal, of course,” Waddo answered, proving him right. “It’s gone, and powers above only know who’s got it or what he’s going to do with it.” He stared at Garivald. “ You haven’t got it, have you? We were going to take it out of the ground together, the two of us.”

  “No, I haven’t got it,” Garivald said. Waddo hadn’t asked him if he’d dug it up. Had the firstman asked him that, he would have denied it, too, not caring at all whether he lied. The less Wad
do knew, the less anyone--particularly anyone Algarvian--could wring out of him.

  At the moment, Waddo seemed not far from panic. “Someone has it!” he said. “Aye, someone has it. Someone who’ll use it against me. He’ll tell the redheads, and they’ll hang me. They’re bound to hang me.”

  He wasn’t a brave man. Garivald had known that since before he’d started to shave. The firstman had enjoyed his petty authority in Zossen while he had it. Now that he had it no more, he lived in constant fear lest the Algarvians make him pay for everything he’d done while the village was under King Swemmel’s rule.

  “Try not to worry,” Garivald said, though he might as well have told the sun not to rise tomorrow. He thought about letting Waddo know the Unkerlanter irregulars who roamed the woods had the crystal--thought about it and put it out of his mind. The less Waddo knew, the better, sure enough.

  “Don’t tell me that! How can you tell me that?” the firstman said. Garivald only shrugged; no answer he gave the firstman would satisfy him. Wide-eyed, Waddo stumped away, digging the end of his stick into the ground at every stride.

  “What’s chewing on him?” Garivald’s friend Dagulf asked.

  “Powers above only know,” Garivald answered. “You know how Waddo gets sometimes. It never means anything.”

  “I haven’t seen him that heated up since the Algarvians came into Zossen,” Dagulf said, rubbing the scar on his cheek. “And he thought they were going to boil him for soup then.”

  “They’d have to skim a lot of fat off before they could eat it if they did,” Garivald said, which made Dagulf laugh. It also made the other peasant stop asking questions, which was what Garivald had had in mind.

  As the peasants and their wives were going out to work the next morning, the Algarvian sergeant in charge of the little occupying force started beating on the lid of a pot with a hammer to summon them to the village square. He read a proclamation from a sheet of paper, which meant his Unkerlanter was grammatically accurate even if badly pronounced: “His Majesty, King Raniero of Grelz, announces that, with the help of his brave allies from Algarve, the wicked invasion of his domain by the forces of Swemmel the usurper has been beaten back, crushed, and utterly quashed. Now let us all give three hearty cheers to thank the powers above for this grand and glorious victory, the harbinger of many more.”

  Along with the rest of the villagers, Garivald dutifully cheered. He’d learned from experience that, if the cheers weren’t hearty enough to suit the redheads, they’d keep the peasants there till the shouts suited them. He had work to do. Cheering loudly from the start let him go do it. He didn’t have time to waste standing around.

  He wondered how much truth the proclamation held. The Algarvians had been in the habit of announcing victories even in the middle of winter, when the irregulars made it clear Mezentio’s men were getting pounded. But Algarvian soldiers had come forward through Zossen in the past few days, which likely meant things weren’t going so well for Unkerlant.

  Another squad of Algarvians, these men mounted on unicorns, rode into the village while he was out weeding. Garivald paid them no particular attention, even when they didn’t go west right away. He’d grown too used to the redheads to worry about any one lot of them very much. A year before, he’d never so much as seen an Algarvian. He heartily wished he’d never see any more of them, either, but that wasn’t the sort of wish likely to be granted right away.

  When sunset came, he shouldered his hoe and trudged back toward Zossen, as he did every evening. Again, he noticed the Algarvians standing at the edge of the village without paying them any special heed. It was Dagulf who remarked, “Looks like that cursed long-winded bugger of a sergeant is pointing at you.”

  “Huh?” Garivald looked up in surprise. Sure enough the redhead who’d delivered the proclamation did have his index finger aimed his way. When he saw Garivald had noticed him, he beckoned.

  “What’s he want with you?” Dagulf asked.

  “Curse me if I know.” Garivald shrugged and sighed. “Guess I’d better go find out, though.” He turned away from the shortest path toward his home and walked over to the sergeant, who stood with some of the newcomers to the village.

  “You being Garivald, is not being so?” the sergeant said. His Unkerlanter was much worse when he had to try to speak it without a script.

  “Aye, I’m Garivald,” Garivald answered. The question, plainly, was for the record; the sergeant knew who he was.

  All the Algarvians who’d come into Zossen that day aimed their sticks at him. “By order of King Raniero and King Mezentio, you are under arrest,” one of them said. His Unkerlanter was much better than the sergeant’s. Even so, Garivald had trouble following what the fellow said through the roaring in his ears: “You are to be taken to Herborn for trial, the charge being treason through subversive songs. After the trial, you are to be executed in accordance to the law. Any resistance and you shall be blazed without trial. Now come along.”

  Numbly, Garivald came. Later, he thought he should have laid about him with the hoe and with luck have slain a couple of the redheads before they did blaze him down. At the moment, stunned by the catastrophe that had overfallen him, he let them take away the hoe, let them tie his hands behind his back, and let them lead him to their unicorns.

  With his hands tied, he couldn’t mount one of the beasts by himself. A couple of Algarvians helped him get aboard. He’d never ridden a unicorn before. He would just as soon not have started riding one in this particular way. But he had no choice; he’d lost any possibility of choice once the hoe was gone. The Algarvians tied his feet together under the unicorn’s barrel.

  “What happens if I fall out of the saddle?” he asked.

  “You get dragged to death or trampled to death,” answered the Algarvian who’d announced his arrest. “We don’t care. We can deliver your body. If you want to keep breathing a little longer, don’t fall.”

  They wasted no time. Unkerlanters, at King Swemmel’s urging, talked about efficiency. The redheads personified it. They--and Garivald--rode out of Zossen before Annore could burst shrieking from the house she’d shared so long with her husband.

  Even after darkness fell, they kept on heading east, back toward the capital of Grelz. Garivald had heard the irregulars boasting of what they did to small bands of Algarvians they caught away from help. He’d believed those boasts. Tonight, he discovered that, like so many, they were nothing but wind.

  The Algarvians treated him like a domestic animal, without either kindness or cruelty beyond what they needed to make sure he didn’t escape. When he asked them to stop so he could ease himself, they did. Toward midnight, they rode into another village. They fed him then, from their own rations--spicier than what he was used to eating, but no worse--and gave him wine to drink. They let him sleep in a hut, but posted guards around it. He was too worn even to think about escape for more than a moment.

  Not long after sunset, they--and, perforce, he--started off again. Had he been less weary and saddlesore and frightened, he might have marveled at the endurance of the unicorn he rode. That, though, wasn’t what struck him. By midafternoon, he was farther from his home than he’d ever been in his life.

  “Will you sing us one of your songs to pass the time?” asked the Algarvian who spoke Unkerlanter.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garivald said stolidly. “I don’t know anything about making songs.”

  To his surprise, the Algarvian nodded. “Aye, I’d say the same in your boots,” he agreed. “But it won’t do you any good, not once we get you to Herborn. They’ll blaze you or hang you or boil you no matter what you tell them.”

  “Boil me . . .” Garivald didn’t want to say that aloud, but couldn’t help it. Everybody knew what had happened to Kyot at the end of the Twinkings War. To think of that happening to him . . .

  On they rode, past meadows and woods and fields under cultivation and fields going to weeds, past villages that looked achingly
like Zossen and past villages that were nothing but charred ruins. Garivald had heard about what the war had done, but he’d never really seen it, not till now. Words started to shape themselves inside his mind. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Whatever songs he made now, he’d never have the chance to sing them.

  No village was near when evening came. Confident as if in the middle of their own kingdom, the Algarvians encamped at the top of a low hill. They had three men up and watching all through the night: watching Garivald, watching their unicorns, watching for any trouble that might come their way. Garivald had kept hoping irregulars might use the cover of darkness to attack them, but none did.

  “Herborn in a couple of days,” the redhead who spoke Unkerlanter said to him the next morning. “Then your trial, then the end.” He wasn’t gloating. He was as matter-of-fact as if talking about the weather. That made him more frightening to the peasant, not less.

  On went the unicorns, taking Garivald on toward the big city he’d never seen and would not see for long. Late that afternoon, the road went through a wood of mixed beeches and birches and pines. The Algarvians chattered back and forth in their own language and kept looking this way and that--they didn’t like riding along so close to the trees that they could reach out and touch them.

  And they had reason to mislike it. When the ambush hit, it hit hard and fast. A barricade of logs and brush blocked the road. Mezentio’s men had barely reined in before Unkerlanters started blazing at them from behind trees and bushes. Algarvians tumbled out of the saddle one after another. One of the redheads lifted his stick to blaze Garivald but crumpled, clutching at himself, before he could loose his beam.

  Some of the unicorns fell, too, shrieking shrilly from the pain they couldn’t understand. Garivald could only stay where he was. If anyone blazed his unicorn, it would crush him when it went down.