Rulers of the Darkness

"I don't know what you're talking about," Krasta said with such dignity as she could muster. Lurcanio laughed harder than ever. She stuck out her tongue at him. She hated being transparent, and disliked the Algarvian for showing her she was. When he wouldn't stop laughing, she flounced out of his office, slamming the door behind her. But she knew that, when he came to her bedchamber that evening, she wouldn't slam the door in his face.

Ten

Sergeant Pesaro glared at the Algarvian constables drawn up at attention in front of the barracks in Gromheort. "Listen up, you lugs," he growled. "You'd better listen up, on account of this is important."

As imperceptibly as he could, Bembo shifted from foot to foot. "How many times have we heard speeches like this?" he whispered to Oraste, who stood next to him.

Oraste might have been carved from stone. Even his lips hardly stirred as he answered, "Too cursed many."

"Shut up, the lot of you!" Pesaro roared. His jowls wobbled when he opened his mouth very wide. "You'd better shut up, or you'll bloody well be sorry. Have you got that?" He looked so fierce, even Bembo, who'd known him since dirt, decided he had to take him seriously. After one more glare, Pesaro went on, "All right. That's better. Our kingdom needs us, by the powers above, and we're going to come through."

Alarm blazed up Bembo's back. One of the things he'd always feared was that the meat grinder of war might decide to take constables and turn them into soldiers. By the horrified expressions some of his comrades were wearing, the same thing had occurred to them, too.

Pesaro's chuckle was anything but pleasant. "There. Have I got your attention? I cursed well better have. What we're going to do is, we're going to go into the Kaunian quarter here, we're going to grab as many blonds as we can, and we're going to ship 'em west. The men in the trenches there'll need all the sorcerous help they can get. We're the boys who can give 'em what they need."

"As long as we're not going into the trenches ourselves," somebody behind Bembo muttered. Bembo had all he could do to keep from nodding like a fool, because that was exactly how he felt himself.

A constable in front of him stuck up a hand. When Pesaro nodded, the fellow asked, "What do we do if we run into people who look like Forthwegians?"

"Grab 'em anyhow," Pesaro answered promptly. "We'll throw the buggers into holding cells. If they still look like Forthwegians a day later, we'll turn 'em loose. And if they don't- which, you ask me, is a lot more likely- then off they go. If they're in the Kaunian quarter, we figure they're blonds till they show us different."

Another constable, a young fellow named Almonio, raised his hand. "Permission to fall out, Sergeant?" He never had had the stomach for seizing Kaunians who would be doomed to massacre.

But Pesaro shook his head, which made his jowls wobble again, this time from side to side. "No." His voice was flat and hard. "You can come along, or you can go to the guardhouse. Those are your choices."

"I'll come," Almonio said miserably. "It's not right, but I'll come." Bembo knew the youngster would drink himself into a stupor the first chance he got.

"You bet your arse you'll come." Pesaro wasn't just going to have his way; he was going to rub the other constable's nose in it, so that Almonio wouldn't pester him again with second thoughts. "This war we're fighting with Unkerlant touches everybody now. We're all fighting it, irregardless of whether we're in the front line or not." A smile spread over his broad, fleshy face- he plainly thought that rather fine.

Elsewhere on the parade ground in front of the barracks, other sergeants were haranguing other squads of constables. That fit in with what Bembo knew, or thought he knew, of how soldiers and their leaders behaved before a battle. All the sergeants finished at about the same time. That, Bembo suspected, was no accident.

The captain who'd led the raid on the block of flats where the Kaunian robber Gippias' pals had been hiding out was in charge of this assault on the Kaunian quarter. Bembo still didn't know his name. He did know the fellow was from Trapani, and had a vast contempt not only for Kaunians but also for Forthwegians and for his own countrymen who had the misfortune to come from provincial towns.

"We'll get them," the captain declared as the constables marched toward the little district into which the blonds had been shoehorned. "We'll get them, and we'll teach them what it means to be Algarve's enemies."

"He sees what needs doing, anyhow," Oraste said. But then the captain repeated himself, and then he said the same thing over again for a third and soon for a fourth time. Oraste rolled his eyes. "All right. We've got the fornicating idea."