Darkness Descending

Bembo paced through the streets of Gromheort. He was glad to be walking a regular constables beat today, not going after Kaunians to ship them west--or even east, though he still didn’t understand why that one caravanload of blonds had headed off in the wrong direction.

When he remarked on that, Oraste grunted and gave him three words’ worth of what was undoubtedly good advice: “Don’t ask questions.”

Not asking was easier--Bembo had no trouble seeing that. He had nothing against doing things the easy way; he’d always preferred it. And so, instead of asking another question, the plump constable said, “Don’t hardly see any Kaunians on the streets these days.”

“I don’t miss ‘em, either,” Oraste answered. Like a lot of what he said, that not only didn’t need a reply but practically precluded one.

“Here we go.” Bembo strode into an eatery. The Forthwegian proprietor greeted Oraste and him with a broad smile that was bound to be false but was welcome anyhow. Then he handed them lengths of spicy sausage and cups of wine. They tossed back the wine and left the eatery tearing bites off the sausage.

“Not too bad.” Oraste finished the last of the meat, licked his fingers, and wiped them on his kilt.

“No,” Bembo agreed. “They know they have to keep their constables happy, or else the constables will keep them unhappy.” That was how things worked back in Tricarico. And the Forthwegians were a conquered people. If they didn’t keep Bembo and his comrades happy, the Algarvians could be a lot tougher on them than ever they could back in their own kingdom.

Oraste jerked a thumb at a broadsheet as he and Bembo marched past it. “What do you think of that?” he asked.

The broadsheet showed bearded Forthwegians in long tunics marching side by side with uniformed Algarvians sporting imperials or waxed mustaches or side whiskers or no facial hair at all. Bembo couldn’t read Forthwegian to save his life, but he knew about Plegmund’s Brigade. With a shrug, he answered, “If these buggers want to blaze Unkerlanters, that’s fine by me. And if the Unkerlanters blaze them instead of hurting our boys, that’s fine by me, too.”

“Suppose the Forthwegians decide to up and blaze us instead?” Oraste said: practically a speech, from him.

“Then we smash ‘em,” Bembo answered; he liked problems with simple answers. After a moment, he added, “Not too much risk of that, I don’t think. The Forthwegians don’t love us, but they don’t love Swemmel, either. Of course, I can’t think of anybody who does love Swemmel--can you?”

“Nobody in his right mind, anyhow,” Oraste said, and laughed, more likely at his own joke than at Bembo’s. They marched on for another couple of strides. Then Oraste grunted. “Besides, we’re cleaning out the Kaunians here. Aye, that’ll keep these whoresons happy.”

A troop of unicorn cavalry trotted west past the two constables, heading toward the distant front. Some, though not all, of the Algarvians on the unicorns wore white smocks over their tan tunics. Back when the fight against Unkerlant began, no one in Algarve had dreamt it would last into the winter, let alone almost through it. The unicorns’ white coats--whiter by far than the concealing smocks--were splotched with gray and brown paint, to make the animals stand out less against a background of melting snow.

One of the cavalry troopers jeered at Bembo and Oraste: “You boys have the soft jobs. Want to trade with me?”

Bembo shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I may be a horse’s arse, but I know better than to be a unicorn’s, by the powers above.” That won a snort from Oraste and another from the Algarvian cavalryman, who went on riding, his unicorn’s harness jingling at every stride.

Oraste said, “I wouldn’t mind getting rid of the Unkerlanters.” Bembo shrugged again. The trouble with going off to fight in the west was that the Unkerlanters were altogether too likely to get rid of him. He didn’t point that out; if Oraste couldn’t see it for himself, the burly constable was a lot dumber than Bembo thought he was.

Besides which .. . “Be careful what you wish for because you may get it,” Bembo said. “They’re sending a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west.” That most likely meant a whole great whacking lot of men off to the west were getting killed or maimed, something on which Bembo would have preferred not to dwell.

And he didn’t have to dwell on it, either, for a plump, middle-aged Forthwegian woman burst out the front door of a block of flats and ran toward him and Oraste, shouting, “Constables! Constables!” The Forthwegian word was similar to its Algarvian equivalent; the Forthwegians had never heard of constables till the Algarvians introduced them to the western part of Forthweg, which had been ruled from Trapani for a century and a half before the Six Years’ War.