Through the Darkness

The blond woman, after letting out a shriek of despair when she fell, lay still on the cobbles, her shoulders shuddering with sobs. After a few deep, panting breaths of his own, Bembo said, “See? Running away didn’t do you any cursed good.” To drive the point home--and to look good to Oraste--he whacked her with his bludgeon. “Stupid bitch.”

“Futter you,” she said in clear Algarvian. Hate blazed from her blue eyes as she glared up at him. “If I hadn’t been big with child, you never would have caught me, you turd-faced tun of suet.”

Bembo stared down at her belly. Sure enough, it bulged. All his pride at running down anyone, even a woman, evaporated. He raised his club, then lowered it again. He couldn’t enjoy the notion of hitting a pregnant woman, either, even if she cursed and reviled him.

“Get up,” he told her. “You’re caught now. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“No, there isn’t, is there?” she answered dully as she climbed to her feet. Her trousers were out at both knees; one of them bled. “They’ll take me away, and sooner or later they’ll cut my throat. And if I stay alive long enough to have the baby, they’ll cut its throat, too, or blaze it, or whatever they do. And they won’t care at all, will they?”

“Get moving,” Bembo told her. It wasn’t much of an answer, but he didn’t have to give her much of an answer. He was an Algarvian, after all. His folk had won the war here. Winners didn’t need to give losers an accounting of themselves. All they had to do was enforce obedience. Bembo brandished the bludgeon. “Get moving,” he said again, and she did. She had no choice--none except dying on the spot, anyhow. Bembo wasn’t sure he could blaze her in cold blood, but he hadn’t the slightest doubt Oraste could.

Oraste was interested in other things. “How many of them do you suppose we’ve caught?” he asked Bembo as the pregnant Kaunian woman limped away.

“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “They’re stuffed in here pretty tight, I’ll tell you that. Hundreds, anyway.”

“Aye, I think you’re right,” Oraste said. “Well, good riddance to the lot of ‘em, and I hope they end up smashing a lot of Unkerlanters when they go.”

“Aye.” Bembo did his best to keep his voice from sounding too hollow. If the Algarvians were going to sacrifice the Kaunians--and his countrymen plainly were--he couldn’t do anything about it. Didn’t it make sense, then, to get as much benefit from their life energy as possible?

That seemed logical. And he wasn’t like foolish Almonio, to get in an uproar about something he couldn’t change. But he couldn’t take it for granted the way Oraste did, either.

Well, what should I do, then?

he wondered. The only thing that did any good was not thinking about it at all. That wasn’t easy, not when he was in the middle of rounding up Kaunians to send them west.

And Sergeant Pesaro didn’t make it any easier, bellowing, “Come on, we’ve got our quota. Let’s get these whoresons over to the caravan depot. The sooner we’re rid of them, the sooner we don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

On the way to the depot, Forthwegians stared at the column of unhappy Kaunians. Some showed no expression whatever. Maybe they, like Bembo, were trying not to think about what would happen to the blonds. A good many, though, knew perfectly well what they thought. Some jeered in their own language. Others, cruder or just more erudite, chose classical Kaunian.

Bembo understood bits of that. It was about what Algarvians would have said in the same circumstances.

Most of the Kaunians just shambled along. A few shouted defiant curses at the folk who had been their neighbors. Bembo supposed he ought to admire their spirit. Admire it or not, though, he didn’t think it would do them a bit of good.

Now that Sidroc had seen a little soldiering, the whole business appealed to him much less than it had when he joined Plegmund’s Brigade. Along with two squads of his comrades, he tramped along a dusty road that led from one miserable excuse for a village to the next. He yawned, wishing he could fall asleep as he marched.

Sergeant Werferth saw the yawn. As far as Sidroc could tell, Sergeant Werferth saw everything. He didn’t look as if he had eyes in the back of his head, but that was the only explanation that made sense to Sidroc. Werferth said, “Keep your eyes open, kid. Never can tell what’s liable to be waiting for you.”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Sidroc said dutifully. There were times when a common soldier could sass a sergeant, but this didn’t feel like one of them.

And, however reluctant he was to admit it even to himself, he knew Werferth was right. The brigands in these parts were sneaky demons. They liked skulking through the woods best, but they’d come out and waylay soldiers in open country, too. Most marches were nothing but long, tedious bores. Terror punctuated the ones that weren’t, with no telling when it might break out.