Darkness Descending

Would anyone follow orders from a king who’d fled to a provincial town one jump ahead of the Algarvians? Rathar had no idea. He didn’t want to have to learn by experiment either. He looked toward the map himself. The bites Gyongyos was taking in the far west were annoyances. In the north, Zuwayza hadn’t gone far beyond the borders she’d had before her first clash with Unkerlant. But the Algarvians aimed to tear the heart from the kingdom and keep it for themselves.

“We also have to hold Cottbus because of all the ley lines that converge here,” Rathar said. “If the capital falls, we’ll have a cursed hard time moving caravans from north to south.”

“Aye,” Swemmel said. “Aye.” His nod was impatient, absent-minded; ley-line caravans weren’t the topmost thing in his thoughts, or anywhere close to it. He walked over to the map. “We still have a corridor open to Glogau. The Lagoans have sent us some prime bull behemoths to improve our herds, and they came through.”

“So they did.” Rathar had heard that. It still left him faintly bemused. “The Zuwayzin could have pressed their attack on the port’s defenses harder than they have.”

“They love Mezentio little better than they love us,” Swemmel said, which evidently seemed clear to him but did not to his marshal. The king went on, “Were the black men but a little wiser, they would love Mezentio less than they love us.

“Had we treated them a little better, that might also be true,” Rathar remarked.

“We did not give them a tenth part of what they deserve,” Swemmel said. “Nor have we yet given the Algarvians a tenth, nor even a hundredth, part of what they deserve. But we shall. Aye, we shall.” Whatever else one said of Swemmel, he had no yielding in him. Maybe Unkerlant, or what remained of Unkerlant, would go right on obeying him even if the Algarvians ran him out of Cottbus. Marshal Rathar still hoped with all his heart he wouldn’t have to find out.

Dressed in holiday finery--ordinary trousers worn under embroidered tunics--Skarnu, Merkela, and Raunu came into the village of Pavilosta to witness the installation of Simanu, the late Enkuru’s son, as count over the local countryside. Neither Skarnu nor Raunu had a tunic that fit as well as it might; both theirs had formerly belonged to Gedominu. Merkela had altered them, but they remained tight.

“Waste of our time to come here,” Raunu grumbled, as a true farmer might have. “Too much work to do to care who’s over us. Whoever it is, he’ll take too cursed much of what we make.”

“Aye, that’s so,” Merkela agreed. “And Simanu’s been squeezing as hard as Enkuru ever did. He sucks up to the Algarvians as hard as his father did, too. That’s the only reason they finally decided to let him take over as count instead of putting in one of their own men.”

She didn’t bother keeping her voice down. People who heard her shied away. One of them hissed, “Powers above, you fool of a woman, put a shoe in it before Simanu’s men or the redheads drag you up into the count’s keep. Going in is easy. Coming out’s a different story--aye, it is.”

She lifted her chin. “It wouldn’t be, if the men around here deserved the name.”

Skarnu set a hand on her arm. “Easy, darling,” he murmured. “The idea isn’t to show how much we hate the redheads and the traitors who do their bidding. The idea is to hurt them without letting them know who did it.”

Merkela looked at him as if he were one of the enemy, too. “The idea is also to make more people want to hurt them,” she said in a voice like ice.

“But you’re not doing that. You’re just frightening folk and putting yourself in danger,” Skarnu said. Merkela’s glare grew harder and colder still. The next thing she said would be something they’d all regret for a long time. Seeing that coming, Skarnu quickly spoke first: “Simanu and the Algarvians do more in a day to make people want to hurt them than we could do in a year.”

He watched Merkela weigh the words. To his great relief, she nodded. To his even greater relief, she kept quiet or talked of unimportant things as they made their way into Pavilosta’s central square. Raunu muttered, “The Algarvians don’t want anybody starting trouble today, do they?”

“Not even a drop,” Skarnu muttered back. Redheads with sticks prowled the rooftops looking down into the square. More Algarvians guarded the double chair in which Simanu would be installed. “They aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t be so cursed dangerous if they were stupid.”