Rulers of the Darkness

"Aye." Garivald was carrying his stick, but his head went up and down anyway. A few paces later, he added, "Some of the wolves in these woods go on two legs, not four." Obilot laughed, not that he'd been joking. She had her stick, too.

They were both yawning when they emerged from the forest a couple of hours later. But they kept going till they struck the road. Even in the middle of the night, it had plenty of traffic: wagons and unicorns and behemoths and columns of marching men, all heading east. Garivald had to spring off to the side of the road again and again to keep from being trampled.

At sunrise, they came to a tent city that hadn't been there a few days before and probably wouldn't be there in another few days. "Can you spare us any bread?" Obilot called to the soldiers.

Had Garivald asked, the troopers likely would have cursed him or worse. But a woman's voice worked wonders. They got black bread and ham and butter and pickled onions. "Go on back to your farm, if there's anything left of it," one of the soldiers said in a northern accent. "Here's hoping you find some pieces worth picking up."

"Thanks," Garivald said. "Powers above keep you safe."

"Same to you," the soldier answered. "I may see you again one of these days. Wherever your farm's at, the inspectors and impressers'll be paying you a call sooner or later. They want everybody to join the fun- that's how things work."

"That's how things work," Garivald repeated bitterly as he and Obilot walked west against the flow of military traffic. "The worst of it is, he's right. Some locusts have two legs, too. Don't they know they have to leave some people on the land to keep everybody from starving?"

"Nobody from Cottbus knows anything." Now that Obilot was back under King Swemmel's rule, she mocked his officials, too.

They slept for a few hours in a wrecked peasant hut, lying in each other's arms under both their cloaks. When they woke and went back to the road, they couldn't go down it for quite a while: a great column of Algarvian captives filled it. Some of the redheads looked glum. Some seemed relieved just to be alive. And a few, with the lighthearted Algarvian arrogance Garivald had seen before, were doing their best to make a lark of it, singing and grinning and acting the fool.

"What'll happen to these bastards?" he called to one of the Unkerlanters herding the captives along.

"Oh, they're for the mines, every stinking one of 'em," the soldier answered. "Let 'em grub out brimstone and quicksilver and coal, so we get some use out of 'em. A short life and a not so merry one."

"Even that's too good for them," Obilot said. "I wish they had just one neck, so we could take off all their heads at once." The guard laughed and nodded. Any of the redheads who understood were probably less amused.

Garivald and Obilot fell in behind the column. They walked at whatever pace they chose. The Algarvians walked at the faster pace the guards set. Every so often, one wouldn't be able to keep up anymore. Garivald and Obilot walked past redheaded corpses in the roadway. Obilot kicked the first couple they passed. After that, she didn't bother.

A strange cracking noise made Garivald turn around to see what it was. Another, smaller, column of captives was gaining on him. These weren't Algarvians. They were men who looked a lot like him. They looked a lot like their captors, too. But their uniform tunics weren't rock-gray. They were dark green. Some of the Grelzers who'd been fighting for Raniero still lived, then.

Their guards hustled them forward, driving them even faster than the Unkerlanters in charge of the Algarvian captives. Garivald and Obilot scrambled out of the roadway to let them pass. And Garivald discovered what that cracking noise was: one of the guards carried not a stick but a whip, which he brought down again and again on the back of a Grelzer captive.

"Mercy!" the captive cried, in accents much like Garivald's.

"Mercy? For you?" His tormentor laughed. "By the time we're finished with you and your pals, filth, you'll end up envying Raniero, you will." The whip came down.

The Grelzer dashed forward, not in a run for freedom but straight toward an oncoming behemoth. As the beast raised a great foot, he dove under it. Red smeared the road when the behemoth took another step. The Unkerlanter guardsman cursed. Someone had escaped him.

Toward evening, Obilot again begged food from soldiers. "Here," one of the men said. "We can spare you and your man a tent for the night, too." To their own, they could be kindly. To their own who'd turned against them… Garivald fought to forget the sound the behemoth's foot had made as it crushed the life from the Grelzer captive.

Only a few peasants were left in the villages by the side of the road. Garivald asked an old man, "How far to Zossen?"

"Never heard of it," the fellow answered.

A couple of hours later, another old man said, "Zossen? A day, I think- maybe not even."