Darkness Descending

“If it’s half as good as a couple you’ve come up with, it’ll be twice as good as a lot of the ones we’ve known for years,” Waddo said. “A minstrel in our own village--a songsmith, no less. Who would have thought it?”

“I thank you,” Garivald said shyly. The idea that he could make songs still astonished him.

“No, we thank you. You do us credit.” Waddo was very effusive. Is he laying it on too thick? Garivald wondered. Is he trying to lull me to sleep so he can sell me to Mezentio’s men? He wondered if he ought to dig up the crystal and hide it somewhere only he knew or throw it in a creek. If he could do it without being noticed, that might prove wise.

Of course, if the Algarvians caught him digging up the crystal, they’d blaze him, or maybe just hang him with a placard round his neck warning others not to do as he had done. Did Waddo want him to try something foolish? That way, he’d be punished, leaving the firstman in the clear. Garivald shook his head, as if to knock such notions out of it. He hated having to think that way.

“Aye, a new song would be fine,” Waddo said. “Anything that takes our minds off our empty bellies would be fine.”

“It would have been a good harvest,” Dagulf said mournfully. “If we’d got to keep more of it, it would have.”

“The redheads--” Waddo’s head went back and forth in the automatic cautious gesture the rest of the villagers had always used to make sure he wasn’t around before they spoke some of their minds. He didn’t see anything untoward--Garivald knew because he looked around, too--but he didn’t say much, either, contenting himself with a sigh and the remark, “That can’t be helped.”

“Neither can grasshoppers,” Dagulf said. Garivald contrived to step on his foot; the other peasant wasn’t thinking enough before he spoke today.

Waddo nodded. Garivald didn’t trust him even so. The firstman might find favor with the Algarvians by betraying other villagers, too.

After as little small talk as he could get away with and still stay polite, Garivald went back to his house and told Annore, “I’m going out to the woods again. This time, if I’m lucky, I’ll be able to cut some firewood for us, too, not just for the redheads.”

“That would be good,” his wife said. “If you could knock a squirrel out of a tree with a rock or club a rabbit or two, that would be even better.”

“If I’m lucky, I will,” Garivald answered. “Of course, if I were lucky, there wouldn’t be an Algarvian within a hundred miles of Zossen.”

“And isn’t that the truth?” Annore said bitterly. “Well, go on, then. Maybe some small luck will help make up for the big.”

“Here’s hoping. Hand me the whetstone, will you?” He took the hatchet off his belt and got the edge as sharp as he could. While he was working for the Algarvians, he didn’t care what state his tools were in; dull ones gave him an excuse for going slower and doing less. Working for himself, he wanted to do the job right.

He hurried out among the trees. Firewood and the chance to hunt weren’t all that drew him. There in the quiet, words shaped themselves in his head more readily than back in the village. He’d had a whole verse vanish from his mind when Syrivald asked him a question at just the wrong time.

Waddo expected a song to make winter nights pass more pleasantly. Garivald knew that was the piece he should have been working on. Naturally, the other one he had in mind, the one that urged Unkerlanter women not to give their bodies to King Mezentio’s soldiers, kept forcing its way forward.

He threw a stone at a gray squirrel on die gray bark of a birch. The stone slammed into the trunk a few inches to one side of the little animal. The squirrel scurried around to the far side of the tree, chattering reproachfully.

“Whore,” Garivald muttered. He chopped at a sapling. Unlike the squirrel, it couldn’t run away. He stuffed lengths of the trunk and the bigger branches into a leather sack he carried over his shoulder. As his body did the work, his mind roamed free. Two verses centered on the word whore shaped themselves before he quite knew what had happened.

He quietly sang them to himself, weighing the sounds, seeing if the rhythm was right, looking for ways to make the verses better. By the time he went back to Zossen, he’d have them just the way he wanted them.

After singing them, he changed a couple of words, then sang them again. He was about to change one of the words back when someone behind him clapped his hands. Garivald whirled in alarm, his hand tightening on the hatchet’s handle. Some of the villagers thought the best way to get along with the Algarvians was to suck up to them. Anyone who tried taking this tale back to them would be sorry.