Darkness Descending

“Good.” Vanai nodded, too. “My grandfather will wonder when I start getting letters from Gromheort, but I don’t much care what my grandfather wonders, not any more.” Something had indeed happened between her and Brivibas. Maybe she would tell him what in a letter.

“I had better go,” he said, though he didn’t want to leave her.

But she nodded once more. “And I,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, “I will address my letters to you in Forthwegian. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger by letting anyone know you’re friendly to Kaunians.”

He was grateful, and ashamed of himself for being grateful. “If I can do anything for you--or for your grandfather,” he remembered to add, “let me know. My father is not a man without influence.”

“I thank you,” Vanai said, “but would he use that influence for the cursed blonds?” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness.

“Aye,” Ealstan said, and nothing more.

He saw he’d startled her. “Well,” she said, “if he’s your father, perhaps he would.”

“He will,” Ealstan said, though he didn’t know if Hestan’s influence reached tOiOyngestun. “And so will I.” He had no influence at all and did know that. But he would have promised Vanai anything just then. By the way her eyes shone, she believed him, too, or at least was glad he’d said what he had.

Ealstan kissed her one last time, then started back to Gromheort. He kept looking over his shoulder at Vanai, and almost walked into a good-sized oak. Feeling silly, he waved to her. She was looking over her shoulder, too, and waved to him. Only when they couldn’t see each other any more did Ealstan turn forward and walk straight.

As he walked, he wondered what to say to Sidroc. He laughed. The easiest thing might be to tell his cousin the truth; Sidroc would surely call him a liar. But what Sidroc would call Vanai didn’t bear thinking of. He’d been making lewd jokes about her since the day Ealstan met her. Now .. .

She’d given herself to Ealstan without hesitation. By everything people in Forthweg--Forthwegians and Kaunians alike--said, that made her a slut, almost as much a slut as the Kaunian girl who’d tried to get Leofsig to go to bed with her for money.

“But it wasn’t like that,” Ealstan said, as if someone had declared it was. Whatever had brought Vanai into his arms, he got the idea that raw lust was only a small part of it. Loneliness and a desire to escape, if only for a little while, had probably played bigger parts. That didn’t flatter him, but flattery wasn’t so important to him. Seeing clearly counted for more.

And calling Daukantis’ daughter a slut wasn’t easy, either, not when the Algarvians had left her with the choice between whoring and starving. From the height of his seventeen years, Ealstan saw that the older he got, the less the world looked like the things everybody said.

He hoped the redheads hadn’t swept up the oil merchant’s daughter (he couldn’t remember her name, though Leofsig had mentioned it) when they gathered laborers in Gromheort. Something was strange there, though he couldn’t see what. But had the Algarvians only been after laborers, they would have chosen differently and let the Kaunians they did choose bring along more than they had.

He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about that. His features softened as his thoughts returned to what he and Vanai had done. He spent most of the walk back to Gromheort trying to fix in his memory every kiss, every murmured endearment, every caress, every caress, every incredible sensation. Remembering wasn’t as good as lying down with her again, but it was all he could do now.

Gromheort’s gray stone wall loomed higher and higher as he neared the city. Behind the wall, the sky was gray, too, gray as lead. It looked as if it would rain again soon. Autumn was shaping up as wet and nasty, which meant winter probably would be, too. He wondered if it would snow. That didn’t happen every year, not this far north.

Someone standing by the wall waved. Ealstan squinted. Aye, that was Sidroc. Ealstan waved, too, and tried to bring his mind back from Vanai to mushrooms. Sidroc came toward him. He pointed to the basket Ealstan was carrying. “Ha!” he said. “That’s the one you brought home last year, not yours. Didn’t run into the little Kaunian bitch this time, eh? Too bad for you. You might have had a good time.”

The only thing that let Ealstan get through was having been sure Sidroc would make some such crack. “No, I didn’t see her,” he answered, hoping he sounded casual. “Even if I had, we’d have just traded some mushrooms.” That would have been true the year before. It wasn’t any more.

Sidroc gestured derisively. “She’s got to be sweet for you, Ealstan,” he said. “Powers above, if I’d found her out there in the woods, I’d have got her trousers down faster than you could say King Offa.”

“In your dreams,” Ealstan said.