Into The Darkness

Occupied. Ealstan had heard the word before the war, of course. He'd heard it, and thought he'd known what it meant. Now he was learning the bitter difference between knowledge and experience.

Occupation meant Algarvian troops swaggering along the streets of Gromheort. They all had sticks at the ready, and they all expected everybody to understand Algarvian. People who didn't understand the ugly, trilling speech - in Ealstan's ears, it sounded like magpies' chatter - fast enough to suit them were liable to get blazed for no better reason than that. No one could punish the Algarvians for doing such things. Their commanders probably praised them.

Occupation meant that Ealstan's mother and sister stayed inside their house and sent him or his father out when they needed errands run. The Algarvians hadn't perpetuated that many outrages, but they'd done enough to make decent Forthwegian women uninterested in taking chances.

Occupation meant that Sidroc and his family crowded the house to overflowing. An egg had turned their home to rubble. Ealstan knew it could have been his as easily as not. Sidroc and his father - Ealstan's father's brother - still shambled around as if stunned, for his mother and sister had been in the house when the egg burst.

Occupation meant broadsheets written in awkward Forthwegian going up on almost every wall that hadn't been knocked flat. THE KAUNIAN KINGDOMS YOU LED INTO THAT WAR, some of them said. Others asked, WHY DO FORTHWEGIANS FOR KAUNIANS DIE? Ealstan had never had any particular use for the

Kaunians who lived within Forthweg's borders - except watching the blond women in their tight trousers. If the Algarvians wanted him to hate them, though, there had to be more to them than he'd thought.

Occupation meant having no idea what had happened to his brother, Leofsig. That was worst of all.

And yet, even with Count Brorda fled and an Algarvian officer ensconced in his castle, life had to go on. Ealstan's sister stuffed a chunk of garlicky sausage, some salted olives, a lump of hard white cheese, and some raisins into a cloth sack and thrust it at him. "Here," she said.

"Don't dawdle. You'll be late for school."

"Thanks, Conberge," Ealstan said.

"Remember to stop at a baker's on the way home and bring us more bread," Conberge told him. "Or if the bakers are all out, get ten pounds of flour from a miner. Mother and I can do the baking perfectly well."

"All right." Ealstan paused. "What if the millers are out of flour, too?"

His sister looked a bit harried. "In that case, we all start going hungry.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit." She raised her voice to a shout: "Sidroc!

Aren't you ready yet? Your masters will beat you black and blue, and you'll deserve it."

Sidroc was still running a tortoiseshell comb through his dark, curly hair when he hum*ed into the kitchen to receive a lunch similar to Ealstan's. "Come on," Ealstan said. "Conberge's right - they'll break switches on our backs if we're late again."

"I suppose so," Sidroc said indifferently. Maybe he needed a thrashing to bring him out of his funk. Ealstan didn't, and didn't want to get one bccause his cousin remained in a daze. He grabbed Sidroc by the arm and hauled him out on to the street.

No Algarvians were strutting past his house, for which he was duly grateful. The mere sight of kilts set his teeth on edge. Being unable to taunt the Algarvians hurt, too, but he didn't care to take his life in his hands. Women were not the only ones the occupiers outraged.

Ealstan was sure Leofsig and his comrades had done no such things while on Algarvian soil. No: that Leofsig and his comrades could have done such things never entered his mind. And even if they had, the Algarvians. would have deserved it.

When he turned the comer on to the main thoroughfare that led to his school, Ealstan could no longer pretend Gromheort remained a free Forthwegian city. For one thing, the Algarvians had checkpoints every few blocks. For another, signboards written in their script - so sinuous as to be hard to read, especially for someone like Ealstan, who was used to angular Forthwegian characters - sprouted everywhere. And, for a third, heading up the thoroughfare toward the school showed him what a battering Gromheort had taken before it finally fell.

The Algarvians had set gangs to work clearing the wreckage of ruined buildings. "Work, cursing you!" a kilted soldier shouted in bad Forthwegian. The Forthwegians and Kaunians the oc~opiers had rounded up were already working, throwing tiles and chunks of bricks and shattered timbers into wagons. A Kaunian woman bent to pick up a couple of bricks. An Algarvian soldier reached out and ran his hand along the curve of her buttocks.

She straightened with a squeak of outrage. The soldier and his com panions laughed. "Work!" he said, and gestured with his stick. Her face a frozen mask, she bent once more. He foridled her again. This time, she went on working as if he did not exist.