Darkness Descending (96 page)

“Try not to worry,” Garivald said, though he might as well have told the sun not to rise tomorrow. He thought about letting Waddo know the Unkerlanter irregulars who roamed the woods had the crystal—thought about it and put it out of his mind. The less Waddo knew, the better, sure enough.

“Don’t tell me that! How can you tell me that?” the firstman said. Garivald only shrugged; no answer he gave the firstman would satisfy him. Wide-eyed, Waddo stumped away, digging the end of his stick into the ground at every stride.

“What’s chewing on him?” Garivald’s friend Dagulf asked.

“Powers above only know,” Garivald answered. “You know how Waddo gets sometimes. It never means anything.”

“I haven’t seen him
that
heated up since the Algarvians came into Zossen,” Dagulf said, rubbing the scar on his cheek. “And he thought they were going to boil him for soup then.”

“They’d have to skim a lot of fat off before they could eat it if they did,” Garivald said, which made Dagulf laugh. It also made the other peasant stop asking questions, which was what Garivald had had in mind.

As the peasants and their wives were going out to work the next morning, the Algarvian sergeant in charge of the little occupying force started beating on the lid of a pot with a hammer to summon them to the village square. He read a proclamation from a sheet of paper, which meant his Unkerlanter was grammatically accurate even if badly pronounced: “His Majesty, King Raniero of Grelz, announces that, with the help of his brave allies from Algarve, the wicked invasion of his domain by the forces of Swemmel the usurper has been beaten back, crushed, and utterly quashed. Now let us all give three hearty cheers to thank the powers above for this grand and glorious victory, the harbinger of many more.”

Along with the rest of the villagers, Garivald dutifully cheered. He’d learned from experience that, if the cheers weren’t hearty enough to suit the redheads, they’d keep the peasants there till the shouts suited them. He had work to do. Cheering loudly from the start let him go do it. He didn’t have time to waste standing around.

He wondered how much truth the proclamation held. The Algarvians had been in the habit of announcing victories even in the middle of winter, when the irregulars made it clear Mezentio’s men were getting pounded. But Algarvian soldiers had come forward through Zossen in the past few days, which likely meant things weren’t going so well for Unkerlant.

Another squad of Algarvians, these men mounted on unicorns, rode into the village while he was out weeding. Garivald paid them no particular attention, even when they didn’t go west right away. He’d grown too used to the redheads to worry about any one lot of them very much. A year before, he’d never so much as seen an Algarvian. He heartily wished he’d never see any more of them, either, but that wasn’t the sort of wish likely to be granted right away.

When sunset came, he shouldered his hoe and trudged back toward Zossen, as he did every evening. Again, he noticed the Algarvians standing at the edge of the village without paying them any special heed. It was Dagulf who remarked, “Looks like that cursed long-winded bugger of a sergeant is pointing at you.”

“Huh?” Garivald looked up in surprise. Sure enough the redhead who’d delivered the proclamation did have his index finger aimed his way. When he saw Garivald had noticed him, he beckoned.

“What’s he want with you?” Dagulf asked.

“Curse me if I know.” Garivald shrugged and sighed. “Guess I’d better go find out, though.” He turned away from the shortest path toward his home and walked over to the sergeant, who stood with some of the newcomers to the village.

“You being Garivald, is not being so?” the sergeant said. His Unkerlanter was much worse when he had to try to speak it without a script.

“Aye, I’m Garivald,” Garivald answered. The question, plainly, was for the record; the sergeant knew who he was.

All the Algarvians who’d come into Zossen that day aimed their sticks at him. “By order of King Raniero and King Mezentio, you are under arrest,” one of them said. His Unkerlanter was much better than the sergeant’s. Even so, Garivald had trouble following what the fellow said through the roaring in his ears: “You are to be taken to Herborn for trial, the charge being treason through subversive songs. After the trial, you are to be executed in accordance to the law. Any resistance and you shall be blazed without trial. Now come along.”

Numbly, Garivald came. Later, he thought he should have laid about him with the hoe and with luck have slain a couple of the redheads before they did blaze him down. At the moment, stunned by the catastrophe that had overfallen him, he let them take away the hoe, let them tie his hands behind his back, and let them lead him to their unicorns.

With his hands tied, he couldn’t mount one of the beasts by himself. A couple of Algarvians helped him get aboard. He’d never ridden a unicorn before. He would just as soon not have started riding one in this particular way. But he had no choice; he’d lost any possibility of choice once the hoe was gone. The Algarvians tied his feet together under the unicorn’s barrel.

“What happens if I fall out of the saddle?” he asked.

“You get dragged to death or trampled to death,” answered the Algarvian who’d announced his arrest. “We don’t care. We can deliver your body. If you want to keep breathing a little longer, don’t fall.”

They wasted no time. Unkerlanters, at King Swemmel’s urging, talked about efficiency. The redheads personified it. They—and Garivald—rode out of Zossen before Annore could burst shrieking from the house she’d shared so long with her husband.

Even after darkness fell, they kept on heading east, back toward the capital of Grelz. Garivald had heard the irregulars boasting of what they did to small bands of Algarvians they caught away from help. He’d believed those boasts. Tonight, he discovered that, like so many, they were nothing but wind.

The Algarvians treated him like a domestic animal, without either kindness or cruelty beyond what they needed to make sure he didn’t escape. When he asked them to stop so he could ease himself, they did. Toward midnight, they rode into another village. They fed him then, from their own rations—spicier than what he was used to eating, but no worse—and gave him wine to drink. They let him sleep in a hut, but posted guards around it. He was too worn even to think about escape for more than a moment.

Not long after sunset, they—and, perforce, he—started off again. Had he been less weary and saddlesore and frightened, he might have marveled at the endurance of the unicorn he rode. That, though, wasn’t what struck him. By midafternoon, he was farther from his home than he’d ever been in his life.

“Will you sing us one of your songs to pass the time?” asked the Algarvian who spoke Unkerlanter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Garivald said stolidly. “I don’t know anything about making songs.”

To his surprise, the Algarvian nodded. “Aye, I’d say the same in your boots,” he agreed. “But it won’t do you any good, not once we get you to Herborn. They’ll blaze you or hang you or boil you no matter what you tell them.”

“Boil me . . .” Garivald didn’t want to say that aloud, but couldn’t help it. Everybody knew what had happened to Kyot at the end of the Twinkings War. To think of that happening to him . . .

On they rode, past meadows and woods and fields under cultivation and fields going to weeds, past villages that looked achingly like Zossen and past villages that were nothing but charred ruins. Garivald had heard about what the war had done, but he’d never really seen it, not till now. Words started to shape themselves inside his mind. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Whatever songs he made now, he’d never have the chance to sing them.

No village was near when evening came. Confident as if in the middle of their own kingdom, the Algarvians encamped at the top of a low hill. They had three men up and watching all through the night: watching Garivald, watching their unicorns, watching for any trouble that might come their way. Garivald had kept hoping irregulars might use the cover of darkness to attack them, but none did.

“Herborn in a couple of days,” the redhead who spoke Unkerlanter said to him the next morning. “Then your trial, then the end.” He wasn’t gloating. He was as matter-of-fact as if talking about the weather. That made him more frightening to the peasant, not less.

On went the unicorns, taking Garivald on toward the big city he’d never seen and would not see for long. Late that afternoon, the road went through a wood of mixed beeches and birches and pines. The Algarvians chattered back and forth in their own language and kept looking this way and that—they didn’t like riding along so close to the trees that they could reach out and touch them.

And they had reason to mislike it. When the ambush hit, it hit hard and fast. A barricade of logs and brush blocked the road. Mezentio’s men had barely reined in before Unkerlanters started blazing at them from behind trees and bushes. Algarvians tumbled out of the saddle one after another. One of the redheads lifted his stick to blaze Garivald but crumpled, clutching at himself, before he could loose his beam.

Some of the unicorns fell, too, shrieking shrilly from the pain they couldn’t understand. Garivald could only stay where he was. If anyone blazed his unicorn, it would crush him when it went down.

Before long, the irregulars came out of the woods to finish off the two or three Algarvians still groaning. One of them strode up to Garivald. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why did the whoresons grab you?”

“To kill me, that’s why,” Garivald answered. “I’m Garivald the songmaker.”

He wondered if the fellow had heard of him. When the irregular’s eyes widened, Garivald knew he had. “Garivald the songmaker, in my band?” he exclaimed. “I will gain fame for that.” He thumped his chest, then drew a knife. “I, Munderic, set you free. You are one of my men now.” Far from home, suddenly saved from certain death, Garivald nodded eagerly. He was a peasant no more, nor a captive, either. As Munderic’s knife bit through his bonds, he gladly became an irregular.