Into The Darkness

There lay the naked and unlovely Count Dzirnavu, half on the bed, half off, his throat cut from ear to ear. Blood soaked the sheets and the groun4 below. There was no sign of the Algarvian woman, no sign she'd ever been there but for the length of rope tied to each bedpost.

"An assassin!" Vartu gasped. "She was an assassin!"

No one argued with him, not out loud, but expressions were eloquent. Talsu's guess was that Dzirnavu had fallen asleep because of h exertions, the woman had managed to work a hand free, and then had found a tool to take her revenge. He did wonder how she'd managed t escape afterwards. Maybe she'd been able to sneak past the sentries. C maybe, in exchange for silence, she'd given out some of what Dzirnav had taken by force. Any which way, she was gone.

Smilsu had the last word. He saved it till he and Talsu were heading up to the front: "Powers above, the Algarvians wouldn't want to murder Dzirnavu. They must have hoped he'd live forever. Now we're liable I get a regimental commander who knows what he's doing." Talsu considered that, then solemnly nodded.

Garivald's worn leather boots squelched through mud. The fall rain in southern Unkerlant turned everything into a swamp. Spring, when winter's worth of snow melted, was even worse - though the peasant d not think of it that way. The weather did what it did every year. For Garivald, it was simply part of life.

As a matter of fact, he was on the whole pleased with the way they had gone. King Swemmel's inspectors had gone away and not come back, and no impressers had arrived in their wake. The villagers of Zos amp; had got in the harvest before the rains came. Waddo the obnoxious fir, man had fallen off the roof while he was rethatching it, and had brok his ankle. He was still hobbling around on two sticks. No, not such a b year after all.

The pigs approved of the year, too, or at least of the rain. The whole village might have been a wallow for them now. They approved Garivald, too, when he threw them turnip tops from a wicker basket [..ns or..].

The only trouble was, each seemed to think its neighbors had got a better selection of greens, which made for snortings and snappings and loud grunts and squeals.

Garivald had grain for the chickens, too. The chickens did not like rain, as their draggled feathers attested. A lot of them had taken shelter inside one peasant's house or another. Some of them were making a racket and a mess inside his house. If they annoyed his wife enough, Annore would avenge herself with hatchet and chopping block.

When the blizzards came, all the animals would crowd into the houses.

If they didn't, they'd freeze to death. The warmth they gave off helped keep the villagers alive, too. After a while, the nose stopped noticing the stink. Garivald chuckled. Had those hoity-toity inspectors come in winter, they would have stuck their noses into any old house, taken one whiff, and fled back to Cottbus with their tails between their legs.

Syrivald was playing in the mud when Garivald got back to his family's house. "Does your mother know you're out here?" he demanded.

Syrivald nodded. "She sent me out. She said she was sick of the way I was driving the chickens crazy."

"Did she?" Garivald let out a grunt of laughter. "Well, I believe it.

You drive your mother and me crazy sometimes, too." Syrivald grinned, mistaking that for a compliment.

Rolling his eyes, Garivald ducked inside. Even with Syrivald out getting filthy, the chickens remained in an uproar. Leuba was crawling around on the floor, doing her best to catch them and pull out their tall feathers. Gaiivald's little daughter thought that great sport; the chickens had a different opinion.

"You're going to get pecked," Annore warned Leuba.

Two years from now, Leuba might, on a good day, pay some attention to a warning. Now she didn't even understand it. Her mother's toile might have meant something, but not when she was intent on her game. "Ma-ma!" she said happily, and went right on after the closest chicken.

The chickens were a lot faster than she was, but she had a singlemincled determination they lacked. Garivald was heading toward her to pick her up when she did manage to grab a hen by the tail. The hen let out a furious squawk. An instant later, Leuba started crying: Sure enough, it had pecked her.

"There, see what you get?" Garivald scooped her off the ground.

Leuba, of course, saw nothing of the sort. As far as she was concerned she'd been having a high old time, and then one of her toys unaccountably went and hurt her. Garivald examined the injury, which was [..min..].

"I expect you'll live," he said. "You can stop making noises like branded calf"

Eventually, she did settle down, not so much because he'd told her as because he was holding her. When he set her down again, she starts after the nearest chicken. This time, luckily for her and the fowl, it spit her and escaped.

"She's a stubborn thing," Garivald said.