Into The Darkness

If they wanted latrines to keep the camp from being swamped by filth and disease, they had to dig them. The place stank anyway, putting Leofsig in mind of a barnyard once more.

If they wanted food, they had to depend on the Algarvians. Their captives doled out flour as if it were silver, salt pork as if it were gold. Like most Forthwegians, Leofsig was on the blocky side. The block that w as he had been narrowing ever since he'd surrendered.

"They don't care," he said to his neighbor after yet another meager meal. "They don't care in the least."

"Why should they?" the fellow with the cot next to his replied. He was a blond Kaunian named Gutauskas, and already lean. "If we starve to death, they don't have to worry about feeding us anymore."

That was so breathtakingly cynical, Leofsig could only stare. The fellow with the cot on the other side of his, though, a burly chap called Merwit, spat in disgust. "Why don't you shut up and die now, yellow hair?" he said. "Weren't for you cursed Kaunians, we wouldn't have gotten sucked into this war in the first place."

Gutauskas raised a pale eyebrow. "Oh, indeed: no doubt," he said, speaking Forthwegian without perceptible accent but with the elegant precision more characteristic of his own language. "Both his name and his looks prove King Pencla to be of pure Kaunian blood."

Leofsig snickered. Penda was stocky and swarthy like most Forthwegians, and bore a perfectly ordinary Forthwegian name. Merwit glared; he was the sort who fought with a verbal meat-axe, and wasn't used to getting pierced with a rapier of sarcasm. "He's got a bunch of Kaunian lickspittles around him," he said at last. "They clouded his mind, that's what they did, till he didn't know up from yesterday.

Why should he care a fart what happens to Valmiera and Jelgava, Algarve can blaze'em down, for all I care. I'll watch'em burn and wave bye-bye."

"Aye, King Penda's lickspittles have done wonders for the Kaunians il Forthweg," Gutauskas said, sardonic still. "They've made us all rich. They've made all our neighbors love us. If there were ten of us for both of you, Merwit, you'd understand better." He paused. "No. You wouldn't. Some people never understand anything."

"I understand this." Merwit made a large, hard fist. "I understand I c: beat the stuffing out of you." He started toward Gutauskas.

"No, curse it!" Leofsig grabbed him. "The redheads'll come down all of us if we brawl."

Merwit surged in his grasp. "They won't care if we stomp these [..sne ing..] blond scuts. They can't stand'em, either."

"In the case of Mezentio's men, it is, I assure you, quite mute," Gutauskas said.

When Leofsig didn't let go, Merwit slowly eased. "You just be watch your smart mouth, Kauman," he told Gutauskas, "or one fine all of you stinking bastards in this camp'll have your pretty yellow he broken. You better pass the word, too, if you know what's good for you." He twisted free of Leofsig and stomped off.

Gutauskas watched him go, then turned back to Leofsig. "You find your head broken for having taken our part." He studied him natural philosopher examining some new species of insect. "Wb you? Forthwegians seldom do." The Kaunian's mouth twisted. "Fo of our blood seldom do."

Leofsig started to answer, then stopped with his mouth h. foolishly open. He had no special love for Kaunians. His admirable Kaunians was principally limited to their women in clinging trousers needed to think for a bit before he could figure out why he hadn't Merwit against Gutauskas. At last, he said, "The Algarvians have, d ot in the palm of their hand. If we start squabbling in here, they'll laugh themselves sick."

"That is sensible," Gutauskas said after his own pause for thought.

"You would be astonished at how seldom people are sensible."

"My father says the same thing," Leofsig answered.

"Does he?" Gutauskas's eyebrow rose again. "And what, pray, does your father do, that he has acquired such wisdom?"

Is he laughing at me? Leofsig wondered. He decided Gutauskas wasn't; it was merely the Kauman's manner. "He keeps books in Gromheort."

"Ali." Gutauskas nodded. "Aye. I can see reckoning up that on which men spend their silver and gold would give a man vivid insight into the [..in* Id f anifo ollies..] of his fellow men."

"I suppose so," said Leofsig, who hadn't thought about it much.

He waited for Gutauskas to thank him for stopping the fight. The Kaunian did nothing of the sort. He acted as if Leofsig could hardly have acted differently. Kaunians never made it easy for their neighbors to get alone with them. Had they made it easy for their neighbors to get along with them, they wouldn't have been the Kaunians he knew. He wondered what they would have been.

Before he could take that thought any further, a squad of Algarvian guards tramped into the barracks. In bad Forthwegian, one of them said.

"We search. Maybe you try escape, eh? You go out." The others supplemented the order with peremptory gestures with their sticks.