Darkness Descending

Now Garivald stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. “Whose throat will you slit to power it?” he demanded. “Not mine, by the powers above.”

“No, of course not yours,” the firstman said, twisting his fingers into the gesture people used to turn aside words of evil omen.

“Whose, then?” Garivald persisted with peasant common sense. “It’d have to be someone’s. We’re not close to a ley line. We’re not close to a power point, either. They’re few and far between in these parts.”

“I know. I know.” Waddo sighed. “Maybe we could draw enough life energy from sacrificing animals. They used to do that in the old days, if you believe the stories the grannies tell.”

“We might, I suppose.” But Garivald remained unconvinced. “If Cottbus thought we could power a crystal with animal sacrifices, why did they send us captives to kill and guards to kill ‘em to keep the thing going?”

The firstman sighed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “All right, maybe we can’t make it work. But we can get it out of here and bury it in the woods somewhere so the Algarvians don’t stumble over it.”

“That would be good,” Garivald said. “I already told you that would be good. I don’t want the cursed thing around here anymore than you do.” Unlike Waddo, he’d never wanted the crystal in Zossen. He’d liked living in the middle of nowhere. That let him pass his life with only minimal interference from the grasping hands of everyone who served his king.

But the Algarvians had grasping hands, too. And they weren’t just trying to seize his crops. They wanted his land and his village and everything he and everybody else had. They wanted Unkerlant, all of it. He could see that. Anyone who couldn’t. . . Anyone who couldn’t had to believe Raniero was the rightful King of Grelz.

Once the crystal got out to the woods, if it did, he might be able to let some of the men the Algarvians called brigands know it was there. They could likely find a way to use it. Maybe they would cut a few redheads’ throats. Or maybe they would cut the throats of a few Unkerlanter traitors instead.

He nodded. One way or another, he judged, they could do the job. “Aye,” he said to Waddo. “When the ground turns soft, we’ll dig it up and get it into the woods. Then we won’t have to worry about it anymore.” But the Algarvians will, he thought.

Raunu swung the hoe, lopped the stalk off a weed in Merkela’s herb garden, and chuckled. “I’m getting good at this business,” the veteran sergeant said. “Never thought I would. I was a town boy. My mother made sausages, and my father hawked ‘em through the streets. So did I, before I got sucked into the army in the middle of the Six Years’ War.”

Skarnu was also weeding. “And you stayed in.”

“That’s right.” Raunu nodded. He was more than twenty years older than Skarnu, but probably stronger and certainly tougher. “Once the fighting got done, it was easier work for better pay than I’d had before.”

“Easier than farm work?” Skarnu asked, beheading a weed himself.

“In between wars, sure,” Raunu answered. “And I was good at it, too, by the powers above. It took me awhile, but I got as high up as a fellow like me was ever going to get in the army.”

As a commoner was ever going to get, he meant. He’d spent thirty years serving Valmiera, and had risen to sergeant and no higher. Skarnu had joined the army with no experience and immediately became a captain. But then, he was a marquis. As he wouldn’t have before the war, he wondered if the rank and file of the Valmieran army would have fought harder against Algarve had a few very able men--his mind reached no further than that--had the chance to become officers.

Merkela came out of the slate-roofed farmhouse. She surveyed the weeding efforts of the two soldiers-turned-farmers with something less than full approval. Taking the hoe from Skarnu, she slaughtered a couple of weeds he and Raunu had both missed. Then she returned it with a flourish, like a drill sergeant showing a couple of raw recruits how a stick ought to be handled.

Raunu snickered. Skarnu felt faintly embarrassed. “I’ll never get the hang of farm work,” he muttered.

“You’re better than you were when you first came here,” Merkela said: an endorsement of sorts, but not a ringing one. Then her whole manner changed. Leaning forward, she asked, “Are we going to do it tonight?”

Raunu snickered again, in a different way. Skarnu knew Merkela didn’t mean taking her up to her bedchamber and making love to her. He might do that, too, but only afterwards. “Aye,” he said. “We are. People have to know that collaborating with the Algarvians has a price.”

“Anyone who has anything to do with the Algarvians ought to pay the price,” Merkela declared.