Darkness Descending

Men wore fur-trimmed cloaks; jewels glittered on women. Some of those people gave him and Vanai curious looks, as if wondering how they’d managed to get the seats they had. Vanai kept tugging at her hood, to show as little of her features as she could.

And then, to Ealstan’s relief, the house lamps faded, leaving only the stage awash in light. The roar of the crowd packing the hall behind him washed forward. When Ethelhelm and his band stepped into the light, the noise redoubled again.

One by one, the men on trumpet and flute, on viol and double viol, began tuning up. When the piper added his instrument’s whining drone, Vanai nodded; bagpipes were part of the classical Kaunian tradition, too. Crouched behind his drums, Ethelhelm seemed shorter and more solid than he had striding out onto the stage.

But then he stood up again, and used to good advantage the height his Kaunian ancestry gave him. Stretching out his hands to the crowd, he asked, “Are you ready?”

“Aye!” The shout--in which Ealstan joined--was deafening. But Ealstan noticed that Vanai sat quiet beside him.

Ethelhelm nodded to the rest of the band, once, twice, three times. He brought his drumsticks down hard as they went into their first song. Forthwegian music didn’t have the thumping beat that characterized Kaunian tunes. Neither was it one aimless tootling and tinkling noise after another, which was how Algarvian music struck Ealstan’s ears. Strong and sinuous, it had a power all its own--at least, as far as he was concerned.

He couldn’t see much of Vanai’s face: she still kept the hood pulled forward.

But the way she sat told him she was anything but entranced with the music. He sighed. He wanted her to enjoy what he enjoyed.

The first several songs the band played were old favorites. One of them, King Plegmund’s Quickstep, went back four hundred years, back to the days when Forthweg was mightier than either Unkerlant or Algarve. Hearing it made Ealstan proud and worried at the same time: this was the Plegmund after whom the Algarvians had named their puppet brigade. Now Ealstan didn’t want to know what Vanai was thinking.

But after the Quickstep was done, Ethelhelm grinned and called, “Enough of the stuff they put your granddad to sleep with. Do you want to hear something new now?”

“Aye!” This time, the crowd roared even louder than it had when asking the band to begin. Again, though, Vanai sat on her hands.

She stayed indifferent through the first couple of new tunes, even though they were the ones that had put the band on the map. But then, as Ethelhelm flailed away at his drums, his voice went low and raspy as he broke into a brand-new song, one so new Ealstan had never heard it before:

“Doesn’t matter, the color of your hair.

Doesn’t matter, the kind of clothes you wear.

Doesn’t matter--believe me, they don’t care.

They’re gonna grab you, and they’ll send you over there.”

The beat was strong and insistent, about as close to a Kaunian style as Forthwegian music came. People who wanted to could lose themselves in that beat and pay no attention to the words Ethelhelm was singing. Ealstan almost did, but only almost. And Vanai... Vanai leaned forward as if drawn by a lodestone.

She turned to Ealstan. “He can’t say that!” she exclaimed. “What’s going to happen to him if he says things like that? Doesn’t he think the Algarvians are listening? Doesn’t he think some of the people in here will tell them every word he sings? He’s mad!” But she was smiling. For the first time in the performance, she was smiling. “He’s mad, aye, but, oh, he’s brave.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Ealstan said. But then, he wasn’t a Kaunian or even part Kaunian. To Vanai, a song that said whether you were blond or dark didn’t matter had to hit with the force of a bursting egg. And such a song had to hit hard in Eoforwic, too: Forthwegians and Kaunians had both rioted against the redheads here.

When the song ended, Vanai cheered louder than anyone though she stayed careful of her hood. She turned and gave Ealstan a quick kiss, saying, “You were right after all. I’m very glad I came.”

Setubal felt different from the way it had during Cornelu’s last time of exile there. Then Lagoas had been at war with Algarve, aye, but hadn’t seemed to take the fight seriously. Her navy and the Strait of Valmiera protected her from invasion, and she’d been looking east as well as toward Sibiu and the mainland of Derlavai, fearful lest Kuusamo spring on her back if she committed herself to the fight against Mezentio. It had been enough to drive Cornelu and his fellow Sibian refugees wild.