Out of the Darkness

Bembo turned. There gesturing at him stood a skinny old Kuusaman with a few little wisps of white hair sprouting from his chin. He wore greenish-gray Kuusaman uniform, with a prominent badge that had to be a mage’s emblem. “What do you want, uh, sir?” Bembo asked cautiously.

“I already told you what I wanted,” the Kuusaman said in his almost unaccented Algarvian. “I want you to come here. I have some questions for you, and I expect to get answers.” I’ll turn you into a leech if I don’t, lay behind his words.

“I’m coming,” Bembo said, and made his slow way over to the mage. Refusing didn’t cross his mind, not because of the implied threat but simply because one did as this man said first and then wondered why afterwards, if at all. Still, Bembo was not easily overawed, and had his own full measure of Algarvian cheekiness. He asked a question of his own: “Who are you, old-timer?”

“Ilmarinen,” the mage answered. “Now you know as much as you did before.” He eyed Bembo. Bembo didn’t like the way he did it; it seemed as if Ilmarinen were looking right into his soul. And maybe the mage was, for the next thing he said, in tones of genuine curiosity, was, “How could you?”

“Uh, how could I what, sir?” Bembo asked.

“Round up Kaunians and send them off to what you knew was death and then go back to your bed and sleep at night,” the Kuusaman mage answered.

“How did you know that? I mean, I never--” But Bembo’s denial faltered. Ilmarinen would know if he lied. He was grimly certain of that. And so, instead of denying, he evaded: “I saved some, too, by the powers above. Plenty of my pals didn’t.”

Ilmarinen looked into him again. Grudgingly, the mage nodded. “So you did--a handful, and usually for favors. But you did, and I cannot deny it. A tiny weight in the other pan of the scales. Now answer what I asked before--what of all those you did not save?”

Bembo had spent years not thinking about that. He didn’t want to think about it now. Under Ilmarinen’s eye, though, he had no choice. At last, he mumbled, “The people set over me told me what to do, and I went and did it. They were the ones who were supposed to know what was going on, not me. And what else could I have done?”

Ilmarinen started to spit into his face. Bembo was sure of it. At the last instant, the mage checked himself. “A tiny weight of truth there, too,” he said, and spat at Bembo’s feet instead, then turned and walked away.

“Hey! You can’t--” Bembo broke off as a sense of just how narrow his escape had been flowed through him. The last thing in all the world he wanted was for that terrible old Kuusaman wizard to come back and look into his eyes again.

As soon as Istvan walked into the barracks, he knew he was in trouble. All eyes swung his way. Somebody got up and closed the barracks door behind him. “Well, well,” somebody else said, “if it isn’t the Kuusamans’ little pet goat.”

“Maaa! Maaa!” somebody else said shrilly. Several of his countrymen got off their cots and came toward him, hands bunching into fists.

Fear chilled him. Men occasionally got stomped or beaten to death here in the captives’ camp on Obuda. Once in a while, the Kuusaman guards found out who did it and punished them. More often than not, though, they didn’t. That sort of fate looked to be about to befall him.

He didn’t turn and run. That wasn’t so much because he came from a warrior race as because he felt sure more Gyongyosians were closing in behind him. Instead, he drew himself up very straight. “I have kept my honor,” he said. “The stars shine on my spirit, and they know I have kept my honor.”

“Liar,” three men said together.

“Maaa! Maaa!” That hateful, mocking goat-bleat rang out again.

“I am no liar,” Istvan declared. “Come on, all of you. I will fight you one at a time till I can fight no more. I will say nothing to the guards about what happened. By the stars, I swear it. Or show yourselves goat-eating cowards and mob me all at once.”

They hesitated. He hadn’t been sure he would get even that much. Then a burly man stepped out of the group and advanced on him, saying, “My fists and feet are better than you deserve.”

Istvan didn’t answer. He just waited. The other captive was bigger than he, and looked to know what he was doing. The fellow surged forward, head down, fists churning. Istvan blocked a blow with his arm, struck a stomach hard as oak, took a boot in the hip instead of in the crotch, and also lashed out with his foot. A buffet to the side of the head made him see stars that had nothing to do with the ones he reverenced. He grabbed his foe and threw him to the floor. The other captive tripped him on the way down.

But Istvan was the one who got up. He spat red on the floor. “Who’s next?” he said, squinting a little because his left eye was half swollen shut.