Authors: Harry Turtledove
“Mmm, I can see why they would be,” Skarnu said. “If there’s something out there that can master their magecraft, that’s got to be plenty to set them shivering and shaking.”
“Now you’re getting the idea,” the other underground leader said. “We’re going to send you there, you and Palasta, to see if you can’t make them shiver and shake a little harder.”
“Palasta?” Skarnu knew he’d heard the name before, but where? Then he remembered. “Oh. The little mage who hid my trail when the Algarvians were after Merkela and Gedominu and me in Erzvilkas.”
“That’s right,” “Tytuvenai” said. “I know she looks like she’d blow away in a strong breeze, but she’s as good as we’ve got: the best.”
“All right,” Skarnu said. “I won’t be sorry to see the last of Ukmerge, and I’d be a liar if I said anything different. And Merkela will be even happier to get away from here than I am.”
A bell rang in the nearby shoe manufactory. The workers who’d been eating their dinners in the park hurried away. If they weren’t back before the bell rang again, they might lose their positions. All at once, Skarnu and “Tytuvenai” seemed conspicuous. Skarnu looked around nervously. He saw no constables, Algarvian or Valmieran. He relaxed—a little.
And then he noticed the expression “Tytuvenai” was wearing. The other man didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Skarnu did it for him: “You don’t want Merkela to come along with me.”
“Well, now that you mention it, no,” “Tytuvenai” admitted. “I don’t see what she can do to help you once you get down there. And the redheads will be looking for a fellow traveling with his wife and baby, not for somebody with a girl who could be his almost-grown daughter or his kid sister. Everybody would be better off if Merkela stayed behind.”
“Everybody except her and me,” Skarnu pointed out.
“Tytuvenai” shrugged. “This is still a war. Back before our army fell apart, you went where you were ordered and you did what you were told, and you didn’t think twice about any of it. Now you’ve got a new set of orders, my lord Marquis. Will you follow them, or won’t you?”
“It’s not the same,” Skarnu said. In a certain sense, that was true. The formal structure of the Valmieran army no longer existed. Back in the days when he was a captain, his colonel had had authority to give him orders that they both recognized. “Tytuvenai” didn’t. He could request. But he wasn’t Skarnu’s superior officer. He couldn’t command, not unless Skarnu let him.
Despite that, the other man from the underground had weapons, had them and didn’t hesitate to use them: “I’m not asking for myself, you know. This is for the sake of the kingdom. This is for the sake of the war.”
“Curse you,” Skarnu said wearily; he had no good argument against that. He pointed a finger at “Tytuvenai.” “I’m going to bargain with you.”
In the Valmieran army, that would have got him cashiered. “Tytuvenai” just nodded and said, “Go on.”
“First, before I disappear, I’m going to go back to the flat and say goodbye,” Skarnu said. He knew what “Tytuvenai” would say to that, and forestalled him: “I know better than to tell her where I’m going or what I’ll be doing.”
“All right,” the other man said mildly. “But ‘first’ has ‘second’ on its trail. What else do you want?”
“Get Merkela and the baby out of Ukmerge,” Skarnu answered. “She can’t stand it here, and I can’t say I blame her. Find her some place out in the country where she can stay. She’s lived on a farm all her life. She’s going crazy, cooped up in a flat. Do that and …” He sighed. “Do that and I’m your man.”
“Agreed,” “Tytuvenai” said at once. “There. You see how easy that was?”
“Futter you,” Skarnu said. “Tytuvenai” laughed.
Except for having to climb out of his cot earlier than he would have liked, Bembo faced each new day in Gromheort with more zest that he would have imagined possible when he came west from Tricarico. As his unhappy leave back in Algarve had reminded him, he felt more at home here these days than he did in his own hometown.
Of course, constables back in Tricarico didn’t get rich. Plenty of graft came their way, aye, but it was all petty graft: constables just weren’t important enough to get any more. Things were different here in occupied Forthweg. Here, Algarvian constables often held the power of life and death over Forthwegians and Kaunians. Even with dour, brutal Oraste for a partner, Bembo had done amazingly well for himself.
He found himself grinning at Oraste as they queued up for rolls and olive oil and red wine for breakfast. “No, this isn’t such a bad place after all,” he said.
Oraste only grunted. He wasn’t at his best before he’d had something to eat, and especially before he’d had something to drink.
He’s not always at his best after he’s had something to eat and something to drink, either,
Bembo thought, and his grin got wider.
“What’s so fornicating funny?” Oraste demanded.
“Er—nothing.” Bembo didn’t want to quarrel with his partner. In a brawl, Oraste would tear him in two with no remorse and with no great effort.
“Better not be,” Oraste said. He then clamped his jaw shut till he’d got his food and his wine. Bembo kept quiet, too, though he liked to talk. Intimidation cast almost as powerful a spell as magecraft. Only after Oraste had gulped down his wine and gone back for a second mug did he speak again: “That’s more like it.”
Bembo sipped from his own mug. He smacked his lips together, as if he were a connoisseur. “We can afford better, you know. Powers above, we can afford anything we want.” He blinked. Back in Tricarico, he’d never imagined being able to say anything like that. But it was true.
Oraste grunted again. “Well, so what?” he answered. “I still say we should’ve turned in that Hestan item. He’s trouble. He’ll go on being trouble.”
“Aye, no doubt,” Bembo said. “But if we had turned him in, what would he have done? Paid off somebody else, that’s what, and you know it as well as I do. Go on—tell me I’m wrong.” Oraste let out one more grunt. Bembo wagged a ringer at him. “See? You can’t do it. That’s how the world works.
And since that’s how the world works, I’d sooner see his money in my belt pouch than anybody else’s. The clowns who give us orders have too much money already.”
One of Oraste’s eyebrows twitched—not much, but enough for Bembo to notice. He glanced back over his shoulder. One of the people who gave him orders, Sergeant Pesaro, was heading his way. Fortunately, the fat sergeant couldn’t have heard him; he’d had the sense to keep his voice down. Had Pesaro ever found out how much his two constables had squeezed out of Hestan, he would have demanded a good-sized cut.
A large, meaty hand fell on Bembo’s shoulder, another on Oraste’s. “I want to see you boys in my office as soon as you’re done with breakfast,” Sergeant Pesaro said, and then went on his way, his big belly wobbling as he walked.
Alarm and anger blazed through Bembo. “Oh, that son of a whore!” he whispered fiercely. “That stinking son of a whore! He knows, I bet. If that turd of a Hengist rang the bell on us, he’s going to be one dead Forthwegian.”
But Oraste, whose temper was usually shorter than Bembo’s, shook his head. “I don’t think he knows anything,” he said—not the first time he’d expressed such sentiments about Pesaro. Now, though, he amplified them: “Look. He’s picking on other pairs, too.”
“Probably going to shake down everybody.” Bembo’s voice remained bitter, as if he’d never shaken down anybody. But if Pesaro did have the goods on him, he knew he’d have to fork over: getting your sergeant angry at you wasn’t much different from having the powers below eat you.
Along with the other constables, Bembo and Oraste trooped into Pesaro’s office. They crowded it to the point of overflowing; it was none too big to begin with. Sitting behind his rickety desk, Pesaro seemed almost trapped. “What’s up, Sergeant?” somebody asked—Bembo couldn’t see who.
He had trouble seeing Pesaro, too. But the sergeant never had any trouble making himself heard. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s up. What’s up is, they need more people to hold the lid on over in Eoforwic. There’s a real live nasty Kaunian underground on the loose there, and Forthwegian rebels, and the Unkerlanters have been sending dragons over the place. And so you men are heading west. There’s a ley-line caravan leaving from the depot here an hour before noon. You’re all going to be on it.”
“Eoforwic?” Half the constables in the crowded little office, Bembo among them, howled out the name of the Forthwegian capital in protest. But their hearts weren’t in it—or at least Bembo’s wasn’t. He didn’t much feel like packing up and going, but one Forthwegian town was likely to be much like another.
For any of the constables who didn’t understand that, Sergeant Pesaro spelled it out: “Anybody who doesn’t care for the idea can go put on a different uniform and get shipped a lot farther west than Eoforwic.”
Protest was cut off as if sliced by a knife. Nobody wanted to go fight in Unkerlant. Soldiers coming through Gromheort cursed the constables and envied them their soft jobs. Bembo didn’t envy the soldiers theirs, which were anything but soft.
Into the sudden silence, Sergeant Pesaro said, “That’s better. You will be on Platform Three at the depot by an hour before noon. No excuses—not a chance. Anybody who misses the caravan
will
go straight to Unkerlant, and that’s a promise. Don’t bring anything more than you can carry, either. Questions?”
“Why did you pick
us,
Sergeant?” someone asked.
“Because you’re so sweet,” Pesaro growled. “Any more questions?” After that, there were none. Pesaro waved a hand. “Dismissed.”
Bembo went back into the barracks and started loading a duffel bag. It got full long before he’d gone through everything around his cot. Cursing, he started editing his earthly goods. He needed three tries before finally deciding he could do no better. Even then, the canvas sack left him panting and sweating by the time he’d lugged it to the caravan depot.
“What have you got in there?” demanded the Algarvian who checked his name off a list.
“Your wife,” Bembo snarled. He and the fellow with a clipboard cursed each other till, grunting with effort, he hauled the duffel bag onto the caravan car.
Oraste was already aboard. His sack held about a quarter as much as Bembo’s. “Have you got everything you need?” he asked.
“No,” Bembo said. He would have flung his bag against the wall of the car, but it was too heavy to fling. He eased it over there and flung himself into a seat. Oraste, who laughed at very little, laughed at him. Bembo petulantly glared at his partner till the ley-line caravan glided west out of Gromheort.
Before long, he was in country he’d never seen before. He took a while to realize it; the countryside didn’t look much different from that around Gromheort. Fields with growing wheat and barley slid past his window. So did groves of olives and almonds and citrus fruit. And so did villages full of whitewashed houses, some with red tile roofs, others—more and more as he got farther west—with roofs of thatch.
War had touched the countryside only lightly. Peasants went about their business as they had when King Penda ruled Forthweg. As the ley-line caravan passed through towns—it stopped three or four times to pick up more constables—the ruined buildings nobody had bothered to repair stood out much more noticeably, as they did in Gromheort. Once the caravan got into the territory Unkerlant had occupied before Algarve went to war with her, the wreckage got fresher and worse. King Swemmel’s men had fought hard every inch of the way.
Eoforwic surprised Bembo, who said, “I didn’t think this miserable excuse for a kingdom had such a big city.”
“It’s still full of Forthwegians,” Oraste replied with a shrug. “Them and Kaunians.” He made as if to spit on the floor of the caravan car, but reluctantly thought better of it. When the car stopped at the depot, he shouldered his sack and hurried out. Bembo’s duffel bag hadn’t got any lighter while it lay there. Swearing, bent almost double under it, he followed his partner onto the platform.
Another cheerful fellow with a clipboard checked his name off a list. Then the other Algarvian said, “We’ve got carriages waiting for you people, to take you to your barracks.”
“Oh, powers above be praised!” Bembo said fervently. “I was afraid I’d have to walk.” He carried his duffel bag with jauntier style, not least because he knew he wouldn’t have to carry it far. They did things with class here in the capital.
That impression lasted till he got to the barracks, which were every bit as crowded and gloomy as the ones in Gromheort. He got an iron cot in the middle of a room full of constables—a room full, mostly, of strangers.
Someone called his name in a loud voice. “Here,” he answered, and then, seeing the pips on the other constables’ shoulder boards, “Here, Sergeant.” He wondered what sort of a new boss he was getting.
“I’m Folicone,” the sergeant said. He was younger and skinnier than Pesaro. Of course, even Bembo was skinnier than Pesaro, so that didn’t say much. Folicone went on, “I’m going to partner you with Delminio here.” He nodded toward a constable whose cot stood only a couple of spaces away from Bembo’s.
“Pleased to meet you,” Delminio said, and clasped wrists with Bembo. He wore bushy red side whiskers, and mustachios and chin beard waxed to spikes.
“Pleased to meet you, too,” Bembo answered. But then he turned to Folicone and said, “Sergeant, Oraste and I, we’ve been partners a long time, you know what I mean?”
“And maybe you will be again, in a while,” Sergeant Folicone said. “But I want you with somebody who knows the ropes here while you’re breaking in.”
That made too much sense for Bembo to argue with it. He nodded and said, “No offense,” to Delminio.
“It’s all right,” Delminio answered. “Getting a new partner is a funny business. I know that.” He eyed Bembo the same way Bembo was eyeing him.
What sort of partner will you be?
“You want to go into the Kaunian quarter with me?” Delminio asked. He hesitated. “You do know about the business with the Kaunians?”
“Oh, aye,” Bembo said, and Delminio visibly relaxed. Bembo added, “I’m not what you’d call happy about it, but what can you do? It’s wartime.”