Darkness Descending (50 page)

He stabbed the Unkerlanter in the back. The fellow let out a scream that held almost as much surprise as pain. He threw out his arms. His stick flew from his hand. Red stained the snow as he fell. Istvan sprang onto him and slashed his throat, spilling more scarlet onto white.

“Arpad! Arpad! Arpad!” Those were Gyongyosians, coming to the rescue of their beleaguered comrades. Istvan feared the Unkerlanter egg-tossers would take a heavy toll on them, but King Swemmel’s men back at the tossers had trouble spying them because of the blizzard, and they made short work of the Unkerlanter footsoldiers.

“Forward!” a Gyongyosian officer shouted.

“Stay spread out,” Istvan added. “Don’t bunch up and let one egg take out a lot of you.” That proved good advice: the Unkerlanters finally realized their attacking party had failed and started lobbing more eggs toward the mouth of the pass. By then, it was too late. Istvan’s countrymen began the business of taking another valley away from Unkerlant. The only thing that could have made Istvan happier was thinking anybody would want the valley once Gyongyos had it.

Eleven

R
ain splashed down outside the tailors shop in Skrunda where Talsu helped his father. The bad weather pleased Traku, who said, “We’ll have some wet people coming to buy cloaks today.”

“Aye, but half of them will be Algarvians,” Talsu answered.

His father made a sour face. “They’re the ones with the money,” he said. “If it weren’t for them, we’d have had a lean time of it.” He let out a long, slow exhalation. “I keep telling myself it’s worth it—and telling myself, and telling myself.”

“You keep telling yourself what?” Talsu’s mother asked, coming down the stairs from the living quarters above the shop.

“That you’re nosy, Laitsina,” Traku replied.

Laitsina snorted. “Why do you keep saying that? If you have so much trouble remembering it, it can’t be true.” Before Traku could answer, his wife went on, “Out with it, now.”

Talsu smiled. His mother
was
nosy. She knew it, too, but that didn’t make her stop. After a couple of wordless grumbles, his father said, “Oh, all right, all right.” He usually did. That was safer than really annoying Laitsina by not telling her what was going on.

When Traku was done, Laitsina said, “Well, we’ll sit around getting lean tonight if you or Talsu don’t go over to the grocer’s and buy some dried chickpeas and some olives and some beans.”

“I’ll do it,” Talsu replied at once.

His mother and father both laughed. “Are you sure you want to head out in the rain?” Traku said. “I can go a little later, if it lets up.”

“That’s all right,” Talsu answered. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind a bit.”

Traku and Laitsina laughed again, louder this time. Shaking a finger at Talsu, his mother asked, “Would you be so keen about getting wet if the grocer didn’t have a pretty daughter?”

That made Talsu’s parents laugh harder than ever. His ears heated. “Just let me have the money and I’ll go,” he muttered.

Traku pulled coins from his pocket. “Here you are,” he said. “I remember how much soap I used to buy because the soapmaker had a pretty daughter.” He grinned at Laitsina, who waved her hand as if to say she’d never imagined such a thing. Traku added, “I must’ve been the cleanest fellow in Skrunda in those days.”

“Oh, there were some others buying plenty of soap, too,” Laitsina said. “But I do think you got the most. Probably the reason I chose you—I can’t think of any other, not after all these years.”

Leaving his parents to their good-natured bickering, Talsu grabbed his own cloak from a peg near the door and headed down the street toward the grocery, which wasn’t far from the market square. His fellow Jelgavans hurried wherever they were going, with hats pressed low on their foreheads or hoods drawn up from their cloaks. Rain didn’t come to Skrunda all that often even in wintertime; save that it made the crops grow, they looked on it as a nuisance.

Four or five Algarvian soldiers came up the street toward Talsu. A couple of them looked as miserable to be out in the wet as any man of Skrunda. The rest, though, seemed perfectly content even though water dripped from the broad brims of their felt hats and ruined the jaunty feathers in their hatbands. Talsu had heard it rained all the time in the forest country of southern Algarve. Maybe those redheads had got used to bad weather there. On the other hand, since they were Algarvians, maybe they just didn’t know any better.

He had to press himself against a stone wall to give them room to pass. That got him wetter. They took no notice—though they would have if he hadn’t gotten out of the way. He glared at them over his shoulder. Fortunately for him, none of them looked back.

With a sigh of relief at escaping the rain, he flipped back his hood as he ducked into the grocer’s shop. With even more relief, he saw that the fat old fellow who ran the place wasn’t behind the counter, and his daughter was. “Hello, Gailisa,” Talsu said, swiping at his hair with his hand in case the cloak had left it in disarray.

“Hello,” Gailisa answered. She was a year or two younger than Talsu; they’d known each other since they were both small. But Gailisa hadn’t been so nicely rounded then, and her hair hadn’t shone so golden—or if it had, Talsu hadn’t noticed. He did now: he made a point of noticing. She went on, “I’m glad you’re not an Algarvian.”

“Powers above, so am I!” Talsu exclaimed.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “You don’t always keep trying to handle the merchandise.”

For a moment, he didn’t understand exactly what she meant. When he did, he wanted to kill every lecherous Algarvian soldier in Skrunda. He couldn’t, but he wanted to. “Those miserable . . .” he began, and then had to stop again. He couldn’t say what he thought of the redheads, either. A soldier’s ripe vocabulary was the only one that fit, and Gailisa wouldn’t have cared to listen to it.

She shrugged. “They’re Algarvians. What can you do?”

Talsu had already thought of one of the things he’d like to do. He would also have liked to handle the merchandise himself. If he tried, though, he was gloomily certain Gailisa would do her best to knock his head off. He wasn’t a conquering soldier, just a fellow she’d known forever.

“What can I get you?” she asked. He told her what his mother wanted. She frowned. “How much of each? It makes a difference, you know.”

“I know that, aye,” he said, flustered. “I don’t know how much, though.”

“You chowderhead,” she said. She’d called him worse than that when he got orders mixed up. “Well, how much money did you get to buy this stuff?”

He had to fish the coins his father had given him out of his pocket and look at them before he could tell her, which only made him feel more foolish. “As far as I’m concerned, you can give me mostly olives,” he said. “I like ‘em.”

“And then tomorrow I can explain to your mother why she couldn’t make the stew she wanted.” Gailisa rolled her eyes. “No, thank you.” She dipped up some salted olives from a jar: enough to fill a waxed-paper carton. Then she beckoned to him and gave him a couple of olives to eat. “Nobody has to know about these.”

“Thanks.” He popped them into his mouth, worked the soft, tasty pulp off the pits with his teeth, and spat the pits into the palm of his hand. Gailisa pointed to a basket next to the counter. He tossed the pits into it. “More?” he asked hopefully.

Gailisa gave him another one. “When my father asks why we’re not making any money, I’ll tell him it’s your fault,” she said. She dipped beans and chickpeas out of barrels and into larger cartons. “There you are, Talsu. Now you’ve spent all your silver; I’ll give you three coppers’ change.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “Let me have three coppers’ worth of dried apricots instead.”

“I love those, but right after olives?” Gailisa made a face. She gave him the little handful of dried fruit, though.

He ate one apricot, just to see her make another face. Then he pushed the rest of them back across the counter. “Here, you take them. You enjoy them more than I do, anyhow.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I can reach into the crate any time I please, and I know times are tight for everybody.” Talsu looked out through the doorway at the rainy street, as if he hadn’t heard a word she said. “You’re impossible!” she told him, and he thought she’d got angry. But when he turned around, she was eating an apricot.

He took the groceries and hurried home through the rain. When he got back, he found his father arguing with an Algarvian military mage. He took the beans and olives and chickpeas up to his mother, then went back down to see if his father needed any help. The mage was gesturing violently. “No, no, no!” he exclaimed in excellent, excitable Jelgavan. “That is not what I said!”

“That’s what it sounded like to me,” Traku said stubbornly.

“What’s going on?” Talsu asked. His father seldom got that worked up when talking with an Algarvian. For one thing, Traku didn’t think it was worth the effort most of the time. For another, arguing with redheads was dangerous.

Bowing, the Algarvian military mage turned to Talsu. “Perhaps you, sir, can explain to your . . . father, is it? ... that I am not saying he ought to do anything that would in any way violate his conscience. I only suggested—”

“Suggested?” Traku broke in. “Powers above, this fellow says I don’t know how to run my own business, when I’ve been at it as long as he’s been alive.” That was an exaggeration, but not by much; the mage was somewhere in his thirties, about halfway between Traku and Talsu.

“I was seeking to buy a new tunic,” the Algarvian told Talsu with dignity, “and I discovered the handwork your father proposed to put into it, and I was appalled—appalled!” He made as if to tear his hair to show how appalled he was.

Stiffly, Traku said, “That’s what makes fine tailoring, by the powers above: handwork. You want ready-to-wear, you can get that, too, and it’s just as ready to fall apart before very long. No, thank you. Not for me.”

“Handwork, aye,” the mage said. “But needless handwork? No, no, and no! I know you are a Kaunian, but must you work as folk did in the days of the Kaunian Empire? I will show you this is
not
needful.”

Traku stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. “How?”

“Have you got a tunic—of any style—cut out and ready to be sewn and spelled together?” the Algarvian asked. “If I ruin it, two gold pieces to you.” He took them out of his belt pouch and dropped them on the counter. They rang sweetly.

Talsu’s eyes widened. He’d seen Algarvian arrogance before, but this went further than most. “Take him up on it, Father,” he said. “You’ve got a couple of tunics under the counter.”

“So I do,” Traku said grimly. He took out the pieces for one and glared at the mage. “Now what?”

“Sew me a thumb’s width of your finest seam, anywhere on the garment,” the redhead told him. “Then lay out thread along all the seams, as you would before you use your own spells.”

“That’s not near enough handwork,” Traku warned, but he did it.

The Algarvian praised his work, which made him no happier. Then the mage murmured his own spell. It had rhythms not far removed from those Jelgavan tailoring sorcery used, but quicker and more urgent. The thread writhed as if alive—and the tunic was done. “Examine it,” the mage said. “Test it. Do as you will with it. Is it not as fine as any other?”

Traku did examine it. Talsu crowded up beside him to do the same. He held the seams close to his face to look at the work. He tugged at them. The mage was scribbling something on a scrap of paper. Reluctantly, Talsu turned to his father. “I don’t quite know how it’ll wear, but that’s awfully good-looking work.”

“Aye.” The word came out of Traku’s mouth with even greater reluctance. His eyes were on those gold pieces, the ones he couldn’t claim.

Even as he eyed them, the mage scooped them up again. He set down the paper instead. “Here is the spell, sir. It is in common use in Algarve. If that is not so here, you will have more profit from it than these two coins, far more. A pleasant day to you—and to you, young sir.” He bowed to Talsu, then swept out of the shop.

Traku snatched up the spell and stared at it. Then he stared out the door, though the Algarvian was long gone. “No wonder they won the war,” he muttered.

“Oh, they’re always coming up with something new,” Talsu said. “But they’re still Algarvians, so a lot of the new is nasty, too. It’ll bite ‘em in the end, you wait and see.”

“I hope so,” his father said. “It’s already bitten us.”

After so long away, after so long at the leading edge of the war, where its teeth bit down on land previously peaceful, Sabrino found Trapani curiously unreal, almost as if it were a mage’s illusion. Seeing people going about their business without a care in the world felt strange, unnatural. His eyes kept going to the cloudy sky, watching out for Unkerlanter dragons that would not come.

Oh, the war hadn’t disappeared. It remained the biggest story in the news sheets. Commentators spoke learnedly on the crystal. Soldiers and occasional sailors showed off far more uniforms than would have been on the streets in peacetime. But you could ignore all that. Over in Unkerlant, the war was not to be ignored.