Through the Darkness

Ley lines hardly seemed real to Garivald. Zossen had been a long way away from any of them; for all practical purposes, his home village lived as it had two centuries before, when all traffic moved on wheels or on the backs of beasts or men in summer and what traffic there was in winter went by sled. Even so, he nodded and said, “Aye, makes sense to me.”

Munderic’s face was rarely cheerful. Now it went savage indeed. “And I’ll find out who sold us to the Forthwegians. When I do, he’ll die, but he’ll spend a long time wishing he was dead first.”

Garivald nodded again. “Have to get rid of traitors,” he said. He wasn’t surprised there were some, though. He knew the irregulars had spies among the Grelzers who followed King Raniero: only natural the backers of the puppet king should try to return the favor.

“Maybe Sadoc’ll be able to sniff out the son of a whore,” Munderic said.

“Sadoc couldn’t sniff out a week-dead horse if you put him ten feet downwind of it,” Garivald said. “He’s a good fighter, Munderic. I’ll never say anything about his nerve. But he’s no mage, and you’ll get hurt if you count on him to be one.”

The leader of the irregulars glared at him. “He knew the Forthwegians were coming down out of the north, not just along the path through the woods.”

“All right. Have it your way. You will anyhow.” Back in Zossen, Garivald wouldn’t have got into an argument with Waddo the firstman. He didn’t argue with Munderic here. Arguing with a man who had more power than you did you no good. Even when you were right, you were wrong. Sometimes you were especially wrong when you turned out to be especially right.

There was a song in that somewhere. Garivald felt it. He wondered if he ought to go looking for it. Ordinary peasants would laugh themselves silly. Firstmen and nobles and inspectors and impressers wouldn’t think it was so funny. He had no trouble figuring out what they’d do to someone who sang a song mocking them: about the same as the Algarvians would have done to him for singing songs about them.

Munderic and the irregulars had rescued him when he wrote songs about the redheads. They wanted him to go right on doing it. Suppose by some miracle the war were won tomorrow. Suppose he went right on singing songs about firstmen and inspectors, songs as biting as the ones he sang about the Algarvians. When King Swemmel’s men came after him then, who would rescue him? Nobody he could think of.

That made him wonder for the first time whether he’d chosen the right side. It also made him understand for the first time the men and women who followed Raniero of Grelz and not Swemmel of Unkerlant. He shook his head. Raniero was an Algarvian, propped up by the might of the Algarvians. And the redheads were even harder on the peasants of Unkerlant than Swemmel’s men.

He looked up through the branches overhead. A dragon was circling in the sky, so high that it looked like nothing so much as a worm gliding on little batwings. But Garivald knew what sort of worm it was. He also knew--though he couldn’t see--whose great worm it was: it would surely be painted in the green and red and white of Algarve.

What could the man on it see down here? Not much, Garivald hoped. He glanced around. No campfires burning, no cookfires burning: nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. He hoped nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. Maybe, after a while, the redhead up there would get sick of staring at trees and fly off.

If Garivald hadn’t been looking up at the sky, maybe Sadoc wouldn’t have looked up, either. But nothing makes one man want to crane his neck like seeing another man already doing it. Sadoc spied the dragon in short order. He shook his fist at it. “Cursed thing!” he growled.

“It’s a nuisance, all right,” Garivald agreed. “I don’t think the fellow on it knows we’re down here, though.”

Sadoc shook his fist again. “I ought to knock it right out of the sky, that’s what I ought to do.”

Garivald eyed him. “Can you?”

Almost as if he were an Algarvian, Sadoc struck a pose redolent of affronted dignity. “Do you doubt me, songster? Do you doubt my magecraft?”

Aye. Garivald knew he should have said it, but he didn’t. He’d already been too frank with Munderic. All he did say was, “It wouldn’t be easy, I don’t think.”

“In a pig’s arse, it wouldn’t,” Sadoc snarled, drawing himself up with even more offended pride. “I can do it. I will do it, by the powers above.” He stomped off.

Garivald thought of running after him to stop him. But Sadoc was bigger than he was, meaner than he was, and already angry at him. He didn’t think he could either talk the other irregular out of trying his magecraft or beat him in a fight. Instead, he hurried back to Munderic and told him what Sadoc had in mind.

To his dismay, Munderic said, “Good for him. The Algarvians have been putting us in fear with their wizardry. High time we paid ‘em back in their own coin.