Darkness Descending

“A monument of lies, a monument of curses, a monument of humiliation,” the fat brigadier said. “It does not deserve to stand. Now we are the victors, and it shall not stand. Two days from now, my lads here”--he pointed to the mages--“will set eggs by the base, burst them, and topple it like an old pine.”

“You can’t do that,” Krasta said. The Algarvian brigadier laughed in her face. She started to slap him, but then remembered the unfortunate things that had happened after she was rash enough to slap Lurcanio. This redhead outranked her lover. She spun on her heel and hurried away.

“Do what you can, milady,” the clever-looking Valmieran man called after her. Then he cried out in pain--the Algarvian soldiers had set on him again.

Krasta found her carriage waiting on a side street. Seeing her approach, the driver corked a small flask and stuck it in his pocket. Krasta ignored that. “Take me back to the mansion,” she snapped. “This instant, do you hear me?”

“Aye, milady,” the driver answered, and prudently said no more.

The mansion lay on the outskirts of Priekule; it had been a country estate when it was built almost four centuries before. These days, Algarvian administrators of Valmiera’s conquered capital used and dwelt in the west wing, leaving the rest for Krasta. Her brother would have shared it with her, but Skarnu had never come home from the war. She occasionally missed him.

Now, though, he didn’t enter her mind. She stormed through offices that had been drawing rooms and salons, taking no notice of the Algarvian clerks who filled them. Only when she neared the smaller chamber where Lurcanio worked did she slow. She had to snarl her way past Captain Mosco before she could see him. Snarl she did, and see Lurcanio she did, too.

He looked up from his paperwork--sometimes he reminded Krasta more of a clerk than of a colonel--and smiled. That made his wrinkles shift without removing them; he wasn’t too much younger than the Algarvian brigadier in the park. “Hello, my dear,” he said in his excellent Valmieran. “What is it? It must be something, by your face.”

Bluntly, Krasta answered, “I want you to keep them from wrecking the Column of Victory.”

“I wondered when you would learn of that.” Lurcanio shrugged an extravagant Algarvian shrug. “I can do nothing about it. And”--his voice hardened--”I would not if I could. That column affronts Algarve’s honor.”

“What about Valmiera’s honor?” Krasta demanded.

“Well, what about it?” Lurcanio said. “If Valmiera had honor, you would have held the Algarvian army in check. That we have this conversation here in the heart of a conquered kingdom, that you welcome me to your bed rather than my wife welcoming a Valmieran conqueror to hers, proves whose honor has more weight. Now do please let me work. I have too much to do, and not enough time in which to do it. Close the door when you go out.”

Furious, Krasta slammed the door so hard, the whole mansion shook. Unable to do anything more than that to take out her wrath on Lurcanio, she screamed at her servants instead. That did no good. Two days later, the Kaunian Column of Victory came crashing down. She heard the roar of the bursting eggs and the falling stone and cursed with a fluency a teamster might have envied.

When Lurcanio sought her bed that night, she welcomed him with a barred bedchamber door. She kept the door barred for another week. But then she relented, partly because she craved pleasure and partly because she feared that, if she kept on rejecting Lurcanio, he would simply find someone else. She didn’t care to be without an Algarvian protector, not with Priekule as it was these days. What that had to say about honor never once crossed her mind.

Garivald was well on the way to being drunk when someone pounded on the door to his house. “Who’s that?” he growled irritably. Like most of the peasants in Zossen, he’d managed to hide plenty of spirits from the Algarvians who occupied the village. When winter came, what else was there to do but drink?

The pounding came again, louder than before. “Opening up or we breaking down!” an Algarvian shouted.

“Open it, Annore,” Garivald said. He was sitting on a bench closer to the door than his wife, but he was also drunker than she. He didn’t feel like getting up and moving just then.

Annore sent him a dark look, but rose and unbarred the door. After a few heartbeats, Garivald did get up after all and stand behind her--you never could tell what an Algarvian might be after. The redheads glaring at him looked miserably cold; their capes weren’t up to the weather here. One of them said, “You coming to die village square.”

“Why?” Garivald asked.

Both Algarvians were carrying sticks. With a chill that had nothing to do with winter, Garivald realized they weren’t men who garrisoned Zossen, but real combat soldiers, mean as wild boars. He wished he hadn’t given them any back-talk. The one who’d spoken aimed his stick at Garivald’s face. “Why? Because I saying so.”