Into The Darkness

Vanai bowed her head. "I am sorry you think so, my grandfather, but he was giving me advice he thought good. I would have been rude to scorn him."

"Advice he thought good?" Brivibas snorted. "I daresay he was: advice on which haystack to meet him behind, I shouldn't wonder."

"No, nothing like that, my grandfather," Vanai said. "His view is that we might be wise to abandon Oyngestun."

"Why?" Her grandfather snorted again. "Because staying would mean we had Algarvians lording it over us instead of Forthwegians?"

Brivibas set hands on hips, threw back his head, and laughed scornfully.

"Why this should make a difference surpasses my poor understanding."

"But if the fighting goes through here, my grandfather, whoever holds Oyngestun will be lording it over the dead," Vanai answered.

"And if we flee, the Algarvian dragons will drop eggs on us from above. A house, at least, offers shelter," Brivibas said. "Besides, I have not yet finished my article refuting Frithstan, and could scarcely carry my research materials and references in a soldierly pack on my back."

Vanai was sure that was the biggest reason he refused even to think of leaving the village. She also knew argument was useless. If she fled Oyngestun, she would flee without Brivibas. She could not bear that.

"Very well, my grandfather," she said, and bowed her head once more.

Another soldier came up. "Here, sweetheart, you have anything for a hungry man to eat?" he asked, adding, "My belly's rubbing my back bone." Wordlessly, Vanai cut him a length of sausage and a chunk of bread. He took them, blew her a kiss, and went on his way munching.

"Disgraceful," Brivibas said. "Nothing short of disgraceful."

"Oh, I don't know," Vanai said judiciously. "I've heard ten times worse from the Forthwegian boys in Oyngestun. Twenty times worse he was just… friendly."

"Again, undulyfamiliar is the term you seek," Brivibas said with pedantic precision. "That the local louts are more disgusting does not make this trooper anything but disgusting himself He is bad; they are worse.

Then a soldier of unmistakable Kaunian blood came by and asked for food and drink. He poured down a mug of water, tore off a big bite of sausage with strong white teeth, and nodded to Vanai. "I thank you, sweetheart," he said, and walked off toward the west. Vanai glanced over to Brivibas. Her grandfather seemed to be studying the stitching in his shoes.

Two soldiers came running into Oyngestun within a few seconds of each other, one from the north, the other from the south. They both shouted the same phrase: "Behemoths! Algarvian behemoths!" Each of them pointed back the way he had come and added, "They're over there!"

Shouts of alarm rose from the Forthwegian soldiers. Some dashed off to the north, others to the south, to force open the ring the Algarvians were closing around Gromheort and, incidentally, around Oyngestun.

Others, despairing, fled westward, to escape before the ring closed.

Some of the folk of Oyngestun fled with them, bundling belongings and small children into wheelbarrows and handcarts and carriages and clogging the highway so soldiers had trouble moving. Rather more Forthwegians than folk of Kauman blood ran off in the direction of Eoforwic. As Brivibas had said, Kaunians were under alien rule regardless of whether Forthwegian blue and white or Algarvian green, white, and red flew above Oyngestun.

"Should we not leave, my grandfather?" Vanai asked again. She trot ted out the strongest argument she could think of. "How will you be able to go on with your studies in a village full of Algarvian soldiers?"

Brivibas hesitated, then firmly shook his head. "How will I be able to go on with my studies sleeping in the mud by the side of the road?" He stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. "No. It cannot be. Here I stay, come what may." He looked eastward in defiance.

But then, with a thunder of wings, Algarvian dragons flew by low overhead. A few Forthwegian soldiers blazed at them, but did not seem to bring any down. Flames spurted from the dragons' jaws as they swooped down on the roadway packed with soldiers and villagers.

Screams rose, faint in the distance but hardly less horrifying for that. The breeze from out of the west wafted the stench of burning back into Oyngestun. Some of what burned smelled like wood. Some smelled like roasting meat. It might have made Vanai hungry, had she not known what it was. As things were, it almost made her sick.

More Algarvian dragons fell from the heavens like stones, dropping eggs on the road out of Oyngestun. The bursts smote Vanai's ears. She brought up her hands to cover them, but that did little good. Even though she could not see most of it, even if she muffled her hearing, she knew what was happening off to the west.