Into The Darkness

"Aye, there are." She nodded again. She was looking at his dirty knee too. Then, suddenly, she pointed to the sack he carried. "What have y got in there? Maybe we can trade a little, so we each have more different kinds."

Kaunians in Forthweg were no less fond of mushrooms than any other Forthwegians. "All right," Ealstan said. He grinned at her and dug o some of the orange mushrooms he'd found. "What will you give me those Kaunian Imperials here? They ought to suit you."

She studied him before answering, her blue eyes hooded. Kaunians, h knew, got touchy if you said what they thought was the wrong thing, even the right thing in the wrong tone of voice. He must have passed the test, for she nodded and showed him some dull brown mushrooms from her sack. "I found these horns of plenty under dead leaves, if you'd like some of them."

"All right," he said again, and they made the trade. He went on, "You must have had sharp eyes to spot them. Sometimes you can walk through a big patch and never even know it, because they're the same color as the leaves."

"That's true. I've done it." The Kaunian amended her words with th precision of her people: "I've done it a couple of times and then see them, I mean. Who knows how many times I've done it without eve noticing?"

After that, they started talking about mushrooms and, almost coincidentally, about themselves. He found her name was Vanai, and that s lived in Oyngestun; she'd come east to hunt mushrooms, while he' gone west from Gromheort. "How are things there?" he asked. "Are t redheads any better than they are in the city?"

"I doubt it," Vanai answered bleakly. She added a word in Kau word Ealstan knew: "Barbarians." Kaunians sometimes applied that to Forthwegians. Hearing it slapped on the Algarvians made Ealstan chuckle and clap his hands together. Vanai looked sharply at him. "How much Kaunian do you speak?" she asked in that language.

"What I have learned in school," he said, also in Kaunian. It was the first time he'd ever been glad he'd paid attention to his lessons. Only a couple of hours before, he'd laughed at himself for imagining he might meet a pretty girl while out picking mushrooms. Now he'd gone and done it, even if she was a Kaunian.

"You speak well," she said, falling back into Forthwegian. "Not quickly, as you would your birthspeech, but well."

Ealstan appreciated the praise all the more because she measured it so carefully. "Thank you," he said. Then he remembered the Algarvian soldier taking obscene liberties with the Kaunian woman in the rubble clearing gang back in Gromheort. It suddenly occurred to him, almost with the force of getting spellstruck, that being a pretty girl could carry disadvantages. He picked his words with care, too: "I hope they haven't insulted you."

Vanai needed only a moment to understand what he meant. "Nothing too bad," she said. "Shouts, jeers, leers - nothing I haven't known from Forthwegians." She turned red; with her fair skin, the blush was easy to see. "I don't mean you. You've been perfectly polite."

"Kaunians are people, too," Ealstan said, repeating a phrase his father was fond of using. Ealstan sometimes wondered if that was why his father used it. Kaunians had dwelt in Forthweg since the days of their ancient Empire, even if Forthwegians greatly outnumbered them these days. His own distant ancestors had known nothing of stone keeps and theaters and aqueducts when they entered this country. He wondered if one of the reasons they despised Kaunians was that, somewhere down deep, Kaunians made them wonder if they were people themselves.

"Well, of course," Vanai said. But it wasn't of course, and they both knew it. A lot of Forthweglans didn't think of Kaunians as people, and a lot of

Kaunians returned the favor. Vanai changed the subject: "Your brother, you said, is a captive? That must be hard for your family. Is he well?"

"He says he is well," Ealstan replied. "The Algarvians only let their captives write once a month, so we've not heard much. But he is alive, powers above be praised." He didn't know what he would have done had he learned Leofsig was dead.

He was about to add something more when, from not far away, a [.in.] called out in Kaunian: "Where are you, Vanai? Look! I've found a Whatever he'd found, it wasn't a word Ealstan knew. Ealstan wonders if he'd found trouble himself. Was that Vanai's father? Her brother ..]."

Maybe even her husband? He didn't think she was old enough to we, but he might have been wrong, disastrously wrong.