Darkness Descending

“Aye,” Garivald said hastily, ducking his head in submission as he would have to an Unkerlanter inspector. He took out his fear by shouting at Annore: “Come on, curse it! Don’t just stand there. Grab our cloaks.”

Annore did as he asked without arguing. They threw on the thick wool garments; Garivald hoped the Algarvians wouldn’t steal them. “Syrivald, watch the baby,” Annore said. Syrivald nodded, eyes wide. Leuba, playing happily on the floor, was the only one who didn’t know anything was wrong.

When Garivald and Annore got to the square, it had already started filling. Under the sticks of more Algarvian combat soldiers, several villagers were putting up an odd-looking wooden frame. After a moment, Garivald realized what it was: a gibbet. Another icy pang of fright ran through him.

A couple of Unkerlanter men he’d never seen before stood near the gibbet, their hands tied behind them. They were scrawny and ill-shaven and looked to have seen hard use--blood covered the face of one of them, while the other had an eye swollen shut. More redheads kept watch on them.

Waddo, the firstman, limped into the village square. Close behind him came the Algarvians stationed in Zossen. They looked almost as alarmed at what was going on as the villagers did.

One of the newly come Algarvians proved to speak pretty good Unkerlanter. Pointing to the captives, he growled, “Are these miserable whoresons from this stinking hole of a village? We caught them in the woods. Anybody know them? Anybody know their names?”

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then all the men and women in Zossen started talking at once. With a single voice, they denied ever setting eyes on the men before. They know what happened to a village that harbored men who kept fighting against the Algarvians.

So did the redhead who’d asked the questions. With a sneer, he demanded, “Why should I believe you? You’d lie and say your mothers weren’t whores. We ought to wreck this place just for the sport of it.” By his tone, he wasn’t more than a finger’s breadth away from ordering his troopers to do just that.

Everyone’s eyes swung toward Waddo. The firstman looked about ready to burst into tears. But he did what he had to do--in the most abject tones Garivald had heard even from his lips, he cried, “Have mercy, sir!”

“Mercy?” The Algarvian threw back his head and laughed. He spoke one word in his own language--probably translating for his men. They laughed, too, and their laughter was like the baying of wolves. “Mercy?” the redhead repeated. “What have any Unkerlanters ever done to deserve mercy?”

“These are not men of our village.” Waddo pointed at the captives as the Algarvian had. “By the powers above, they aren’t! If you don’t believe me, ask your own men who have been here for months. They will know.”

“He’s selling those two poor buggers to the Algarvians,” Garivald whispered to his wife.

“If he didn’t, he’d be selling all of us,” Annore whispered back. Reluctantly, Garivald nodded. He wouldn’t have wanted to stand in Waddo’s felt boots, not for all the money in the world.

And he wondered if Waddo’s betrayal of the Unkerlanter irregulars caught in the forest would go for naught. The Algarvian still seemed poised to order his men to start blazing. But the soldiers stationed in Zossen spoke up. They spoke up, naturally, in Algarvian, which Garivald didn’t understand. But his hopes rose when he saw how unhappy the leader of the combat troops looked. Algarvians always seemed to show just what was in their minds--one more reason they struck Garivald as strange, hardly human.

At last, the bad-tempered redhead who spoke Unkerlanter threw his hands in the air. He shouted something in his own language at the garrison troops. They all grinned. Garivald knew they’d helped save Zossen, not least because they wanted to go on living here, but why didn’t matter. What they’d done did.

“We’ll still hang these lousy bandits,” the combat leader said. He jerked a thumb toward Waddo. “You! Aye, you, fat and ugly--you with the big mouth. Fetch me a coil of rope and be quick about it.”

Waddo gulped. He had no choice, not if he wanted Zossen to stay standing. “Aye,” he whispered, and limped away as fast as he could go. If he’d said he had no rope, the Algarvian would have blazed him on the spot--him and who could say how many others? He came back in a hurry, clutching a coil.

The hangings were worse than Garivald had imagined they could be. The Algarvians simply fastened nooses around their captives’ necks and tossed the ropes up over the top beam of the gibbet. Then they hauled the captives up off the ground to kick their lives away.

“This is what comes to anyone who tries to fight against Algarve,” the combat leader shouted while the Unkerlanters were still thrashing. “These swine deserved it. You’d better not deserve it. Now get out of here!”