Darkness Descending

After they had pounded on doors till they were good and sick of it, the two constables went back to the village square themselves. A couple of hundred Kaunians milled about there, talking in their own old, old language and in Forthwegian, no doubt trying to figure out why they’d been summoned. All at once, Bembo was glad to be carrying the full-sized, highly visible military stick about which he’d groused most of the way from Gromheort. The blonds he and his comrades had assembled badly outnumbered them. They needed to see they’d pay if they started anything.

Sergeant Pesaro was looking around the square, too. “Is that all of them?” he asked.

“All of them that weren’t out chasing mushrooms,” one of the constables said.

“Or hiding under the bed,” another added. He pointed to a Kaunian couple. The woman was tying a rag around the man’s bloodied head. “Those whoresons there tried that, but I caught ‘em at it. They won’t get gay again, I don’t suppose.”

“All right.” Pesaro turned to another constable. “Translate for me, Evodio.”

“Aye, Sergeant.” Unlike his fellows, Evodio hadn’t forgotten almost all the classical Kaunian he’d had rammed down his throat in school.

Pesaro took a deep breath, then spoke in a parade-ground bellow: “Kaunians of Oyngestun, the Kingdom of Algarve requires the services of forty of your number in the west, to aid, with your labor, our victorious campaign against vile Unkerlant. Laborers will be paid, and will be well fed and housed: so declares King Mezentio. Men and women may serve Algarve here; children accompanying them will be well cared for.”

He waited for Evodio to finish translating. The Kaunians talked among themselves in low voices. A man came forward. After a moment, a couple followed him, a man and woman holding hands. Two or three more unaccompanied men came out.

Pesaro’s frown was fearsome. “We require forty from this village. If we do not have forty volunteers, we will choose to make up the number.” As if on-cue, a ley-line caravan pulled into Oyngestun from the east. Pesaro pointed to it. “There is the caravan. See?--there are already Kaunians in some of the cars.”

“A lot of Kaunians in some of those cars,” Bembo murmured to Oraste. “They’re packed as tight as sardines in olive oil.”

“Sardines are cheaper than olive oil,” Oraste answered. “The cursed blonds are cheaper than space in caravan cars, too.” He spat on the cobblestones.

Three or four more Kaunians stepped out of the crowd. “This won’t do,” Pesaro said, shaking his head and setting hands on hips in theatrical dismay. “No, this won’t do at all.” In an aside to his own men, he added, “Hard to get this across when I can’t do it in Algarvian.”

Someone in the crowd of Kaunians asked a question. Evodio translated: “She wants to know if they can bring anything with them when they go west.”

Pesaro shook his head. “Just the clothes on their backs. They won’t need anything else. We’ll take care of them once they’re there.”

Another question, this one from a man: “How long will we be there?”

“Till the war is won, of course,” Pesaro said. Somebody shouted in his direction from the ley-line caravan. He scowled. “We haven’t got all day. Any more volunteers?” Another pair of Kaunians stepped forward. Pesaro sighed. “This isn’t good enough. We’ve got to have the full number.” He pointed to a man. “You!” He jerked his thumb. A woman. “You!” Another man. “You!” He pointed to the pair Bembo and Oraste had summoned. “You--the old hound and his young doxy. Aye, both of you.”

Bembo said, “She’s his granddaughter, Sergeant.”

“Is she?” Pesaro rubbed his chin. “All right, never mind. You two instead.” He pointed at a pair of middle-aged men. “Probably a couple of quiffs.” Before long, the selection was done. Under the sticks of the Algarvian constables and the guards already aboard, the chosen Kaunians squeezed into the ley-line caravan cars. “Go home!” Pesaro shouted to the rest of the blonds. Evodio translated, for the ones who were dense. The Kaunians left the square a few at a time, some of them sobbing for suddenly lost loves. The caravan glided away.

“There’s a good day’s work done,” Oraste said.

“How much work do you think we’ll get out of them, hauled off the street like that?” Bembo asked. Oraste gave him a pitying look, one Sergeant Pesaro might have envied. A lamp went on in Bembo’s head. “Oh! It’s like that, is it?”

“Got to be,” Oraste said, and he was surely right; nothing else made sense.

Bembo was very quiet on the long tramp back to Gromheort. His conscience, normally a quiet beast, barked and snarled and whined at him. By the time he got back to the barracks, he’d fought it down. Somebody far above him had decided this was the right thing to do; who was he to argue? Tired as he was from marching, he slept well that night.