Rulers of the Darkness

Everyone who heard him exclaimed in horror. But Hevesi didn't know his comrades were expressing two different kinds of horror. Istvan hoped he never found out, either. Eating goat's flesh was the worst abomination Gyongyos recognized. Istvan and several of his comrades knew the sin from the inside out. If anyone but Captain Tivadar ever discovered that they knew, they were doomed. Some of their horror was disgust at themselves, some a fear others might learn what they'd done.

"How did they come to do that?" asked Lajos, who'd already shown more interest in goats and goat's flesh than Istvan was comfortable with.

"They overran one of those little forest villages you stumble across every once in a while," Hevesi answered. Istvan nodded. He and his squad had overrun such a village himself, and doubted if any mountain valley in all of Gyongyos were so isolated. Hevesi went on, "The accursed Unkerlanters keep goats, of course. And these three just slaughtered one and roasted it and ate of the flesh." He shuddered.

"Of their own free will?" Kun asked. "Knowingly?"

"By the stars, they did," Hevesi said.

Kun bared his teeth in what was anything but a smile. In the tones of a man passing sentence, he said, "I expect they deserved it, then."

"Aye." Istvan could speak with conviction, too. "If they did it and they knew what they were doing, that sets them beyond the pale. There might be some excuse for letting them live if they didn't." He wouldn't look at the scar on his hand, but he could feel the blood pulsing through it.

"I don't know that it really much matters, Sergeant. If they ate goat…" Hevesi drew his thumb across his throat.

"By the stars, that's right," Lajos said. "No excuse for that sort of filthy business. None." He spoke with great certainty.

"Well, there are those who would tell you you're right, and plenty of 'em," Istvan said, wishing with all his heart that Hevesi had come back to his squad with any other gossip but that. The way things looked, he would never be able to escape from goat-eating and stories about goat-eating as long as he lived.

"What was that?" Szonyi suddenly pointed east. "Did you hear something from the Unkerlanters?"

The question made soldiers separate as fast as Hevesi's gossip had brought them together. Men snatched up their sticks and scrambled off to loopholes and good blazing positions. Istvan wouldn't have thought that standing on the defensive came naturally to the warrior race the Gyongyosians prided themselves on being. But they'd seemed willing enough to give the Unkerlanters the initiative; by all the signs, they'd never quite known what to do with it themselves.

After an anxious pause here, they relaxed. "Looks like you were wrong," Istvan told Szonyi.

"Aye. Looks like I was. Doesn't break my heart." Szonyi's broad shoulders went up and down in a shrug.

Kun said, "Better to be alert about something that isn't there than to miss something that is."

"That's right," Istvan said gravely. The three veterans, and a couple of other men in the squad, nodded with more solemnity than the remark might have deserved. Istvan suspected Szonyi hadn't heard anything whatsoever out of the ordinary. He had managed to get Hevesi and the rest of the squad to stop talking about- more important, to stop thinking about- the abomination of goat-eating, though, and that, as far as Istvan was concerned, was all to the good.

Kun might have been thinking along with him. Behind the lenses of his spectacles, his eyes slid toward Szonyi. "Sometimes you're not as foolish as you look," he remarked, and then spoiled it by adding, "Sometimes, of course, you bloody well are."

"Thanks," Szonyi said. "Thanks ever so much. I'll remember you in my nightmares."

"Enough," Istvan said. "I've had enough of saying, 'Enough,' to the two of you."

And then he made a sharp chopping motion with his right hand, urging Szonyi and Kun and the rest of the squad to silence. Somewhere in the woods out in front of them, a twig had snapped- not an imaginary one like Szonyi's, but unquestionably real. There was plenty of snow and ice out there; its weight sometimes broke great boughs. Those sharp reports could panic a regiment. This one might have been something like that, but smaller. Or it might have been an Unkerlanter making a mistake.

"What do you think, Sergeant?" Kun's voice was a thin thread of whisper.

Istvan's shrug barely moved one shoulder. "I think we'd better find out." He made a little gesture that could be seen from the side but not from ahead. "Szonyi, with me."

"Aye, Sergeant," Szonyi said. Istvan could hear the answer. He didn't think any of Swemmel's men would be able to, even if they were just on the other side of the redoubt.

Kun looked offended. Istvan didn't care. Kun was a good soldier. Szonyi was a better one, especially moving forward. But then, instead of getting angry, Kun said something sensible: "Let me use my little sorcery. That will tell you if anyone's out there before you go."