Out of the Darkness

It got me back to Tricarico, he thought. Oraste was right--if I’d stayed in Eoforwic, if I’d stayed anywhere in fornicating Forthweg, I’d probably be dead now. None of the news coming out of the west was good, even if the local news sheets did try to make it as palatable as they could.

What Oraste hadn’t thought about was that, even back in his own home town in northeastern Algarve, Bembo still might get killed. Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew over the Bradano Mountains every night--and sometimes during the day--to drop their eggs on Tricarico. Bembo wondered how long it would be before enemy soldiers started coming over the mountains, too.

“However long it is, I can’t do anything about it,” he muttered. His leg remained splinted. It still hurt. It also itched maddeningly under the boards and bandages where he couldn’t scratch.

A nurse came down the neat row of cots in the ward. The sanatorium was crowded, not just with men wounded in combat but with all the civilians hurt by falling eggs. Bembo had hoped to be something of a hero when he got back to Tricarico. Hardly anyone seemed to care, or even to notice.

“How are we today?” the nurse asked when she got to his cot.

“I’m fine.” Bembo whipped his head around, as if to see if he were sharing the bed with other men he didn’t know about. “Don’t see anyone else, though.”

He got a dutiful smile from the nurse. She looked tired. Everyone in Tricarico, or at least in the sanatorium, looked beat these days. She set a hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she said, and scribbled something on the leaf of paper in her clipboard. “That’s a good sign.”

“How are you, sweetheart?” Bembo asked. He felt good enough to notice she was a woman, and not the homeliest one he’d ever seen.

She was pretty, in fact, when she smiled, which she did now--this one had nothing of duty in it. But her brightening had nothing to do with Bembo’s charms, if any. “I got a letter from my husband last night,” she answered. “He’s in the west, but he’s still all right, powers above be praised.”

“Good,” Bembo said, more or less sincerely. “Glad to hear it.”

“Do you need to use the bedpan?” she asked.

“Well. . . aye,” he said, and she tended to it, holding up the blanket on the cot as a minimal shield for his modesty. She handled him with efficiency King Swemmel might have envied, as if his piece of meat were nothing but a piece of meat. He sighed. You heard stories about nurses. ... If he’d learned one thing as a constable, it was that you heard all sorts of stories that weren’t true.

“Anything else?” she asked. Bembo shook his head. She went on to the fellow in the next cot.

One of the stories you heard was how bad sanatorium food was. That one, unfortunately, had turned out to be true. If anything, it had turned out to be an understatement. What Bembo got for supper was barley porridge and olives that had seen better days and wine well on the way to turning into vinegar. He didn’t get much, either: certainly not enough wine to make him happy.

The fellow in the cot next to his was a civilian who’d got his leg broken here in Tricarico at about the same time as Bembo had over in Eoforwic. His name was Tibiano. By the way he talked, Bembo suspected he’d seen the inside of a constabulary station or two in his time. “I’ll lay you three to two the fornicating islanders send dragons over again tonight,” he said now.

“I wouldn’t mind getting laid, but not by you, thanks,” Bembo answered. Tibiano chuckled. Bembo went on, “I won’t touch the bet, either. Those whoresons come over just about every night.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Tibiano agreed. “Who would’ve thunk it? We started this war to kick everybody else’s arse, not to get ours kicked. Those other bastards deserve it. What did we ever do to anybody?”

Having been in Forthweg, Bembo knew just what--or some of just what-- his kingdom had done. He hadn’t talked much about that since returning to Tricarico. For one thing, he hadn’t thought anybody would believe him. For another, he would just as soon have forgotten. But he couldn’t leave that unanswered. “There are some Kaunians who’d say we’ve done a thing or two to them.” And there would be a lot more, if they were still alive.

“Blonds? Futter blonds,” Tibiano said. “They’ve always tried to keep us Algarvians from being everything we ought to be. They’re jealous, that’s what they are. Like I say, they deserve it.”