Out of the Darkness

suddenly didn’t seem so dreadful.

The city of Durrwangen was still in ruins. Plenty of labor gangs were slowly putting the place back together again. Captives didn’t man all of them. Garivald got the idea that King Swemmel didn’t have enough captives to do all the things he wanted to do. He joined a gang that paid a little-not much, but a little. He’d had plenty of practice in Zossen at making a little stretch. Before too long, he’d saved enough silver for a ley-line caravan fare to Linnich.

And then, when he went to the depot in Durrwangen to buy the fare, he bought it for Tegeler, the next town northwest of Linnich-he remembered the name from his journey back from Algarve. Someone in Linnich might be looking for him. No one in Tegeler would be. The price went up a little, but he reckoned it silver well spent.

When he climbed down from the caravan car in Tegeler, he saw a lounger keeping an eye on people descending. But the lounger had never seen him before, and had no reason to suspect him of anything. Aye, he was ragged and none too clean, but a lot of men on the ley-line caravan could have used a bath and new clothes.

He started for Linnich on foot. He didn’t know exactly how far it was: if he’d had to guess, he would have said about twenty miles. It proved farther than that, for he needed a day and a half to get there. He had no trouble cadging a couple of meals along the way. For one thing, there were no works with lots of captives anywhere close by. For another, his Grelzer accent sounded just like everyone else’s hereabouts.

Garivald didn’t go into Linnich, but skirted the town. Maybe Dagulf hadn’t told the impressers where he was working a farm. Maybe. But he didn’t want his former friend-or anyone else-to have another chance at betraying him.

He worried about going back to the farm, too. Did an inspector have an eye on it, wondering if he’d return? How many inspectors did King Swemmel have? Garivald had no idea. Of one thing he was sure, though: Obilot was all he had left in the world. Without her, he might as well have stayed in the mines.

The track leading to the farm was as overgrown as it had been the last time he’d walked it, more than a year before, between the impressers who’d hauled him into the army. What did that mean? He couldn’t know till he got where he was going, which didn’t stop him from worrying. His heart pounded in his chest as he came round the last bend and saw the farm at last.

Crops are getting ripe, he thought. And then he spied Obilot, weeding in the vegetable patch by the farmhouse. He didn’t see anyone else. That had been another worry. He’d been gone a long time, including some little while after the end of the war. How could anyone blame her for thinking he was dead?

She looked up and saw him coming through the fields toward the house. The first thing she did was reach for something beside her-a stick, Garivald thought. Then she checked the motion and got to her feet. Garivald waved. So did Obilot. She ran to him.

She almost knocked him off his feet when she took him in her arms, but her embrace helped keep him upright. “I knew you would come back,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I did.”

“Where else would I come?” Garivald said, and kissed her for a long time. That dizzied him; it felt stronger than spirits. But he couldn’t afford to get drunk on anything, even sensuality, now. He asked, “Do they watch this place?”

Obilot’s eyes narrowed. “It’s like that?” she said. He nodded. “I haven’t seen anybody,” she told him. “Not since Dagulf. . died, and that was a while ago now.”

“Oh?” Garivald said. “How did that happen?”

“Nobody seems to know,” Obilot answered, not quite innocently enough. “Are we going to have to find another abandoned place and learn new names for ourselves all over again?”

Garivald looked around. She’d done an astonishing job of keeping this farm going. All the same, he nodded. “I’m afraid so. A couple of men ended up dead when I got out of the mines.”

“Mines? Oh.” Obilot nodded, too, briskly and without regret. “All right, we do, then. We can manage. I’m sure of it.”

“We’ll have a chance,” Garivald said, ingrained peasant pessimism in his voice. But then he shrugged. In Unkerlant, a chance was all you could hope for, and more than you usually got.

Istvan climbed down from the wagon near the mouth of the valley that held Kunhegyes and the neighboring villages. “Thank you kindly for the lift, sir,” he told the driver, a gray-bearded man with stooped shoulders.

“Glad to help, young fellow,” the other Gyongyosian replied. “Nothing’s too good for our fighters, by the stars. You’d best believe it.”

“Uh, the war is over,” Istvan said-maybe the wagon driver hadn’t heard. “We lost.” He brought the words out painfully. They hurt, aye, but they were true. No one who’d seen Gyorvar could doubt it even for a moment. He wished he hadn’t seen Gyorvar himself. He wished he hadn’t seen a great many things he’d had to see.

But the driver waved his words away, as if they were of no account. “Sooner or later, we’ll lick ‘em,” he declared. Istvan doubted he had a particular ‘em in mind-any enemy of Gyongyos would do. He wished things still looked so simple to him. They never would again. The driver flicked his whip and said, “Stars shine bright on you, Sergeant.”

“And on you,” Istvan called as the wagon rattled away.

Shouldering the duffel that held his few belongings, he trudged toward Kunhegyes. He wasn’t sure he’d been formally discharged from the army. Back in the coastal lowlands, government had been a matter of opinion since the death of Ekrekek Arpad and the destruction of Gyorvar. No one in all his long journey east had asked to see his papers. He didn’t expect anyone here would, either.

He looked around his home valley with wonder on his face. He’d been back only once since the war began. The place had seemed smaller then than when he’d gone forth to fight for Gyongyos. It seemed smaller still now, the mountains looming over the narrow bit of land trapped between them. Mountain apes up there, Istvan thought. He’d seen one of those, too. I’ve seen too much. He looked down at the scar on his left hand, the scar that had expiated his goat-eating, and shuddered. Aye, I’ve seen much too much.

Somewhere back on Obuda-or, more likely, back in Kuusamo by now-a little slant-eyed mage knew what he’d done. That made him shudder, too. Not that she would ever come to Kunhegyes-Istvan knew better than that. But he knew she knew, and the knowledge ate at him. He might as well have been naked before the world.

He tramped up to Kunhegyes’ battered old palisade. He had a much keener eye for field fortifications than he’d owned when he left the village. A couple of egg-tossers could have knocked it down in nothing flat. Rocks and bushes within stick range might give marauders cover. I’ll have to talk to somebody, he thought. Never can tell what those whoresons from the next valley over-or even from Szombathely down the valley from us-might try and do.

A sentry did pace the palisade. That was something. Istvan wondered how much, though. Had the fellow been more alert, he would have already spotted him. That thought had hardly gone through Istvan’s mind before the lookout stiffened, peered out toward him, and called, “Who comes to Kunhegyes?”

Istvan recognized his voice. “Hail, Korosi,” he called back. The villager had made his life difficult before he’d gone into Ekrekek Arpad’s army, but he’d been mild enough when Istvan visited on leave. Easier to overawe a youth than a veteran on leave, Istvan supposed.

“Is that you, Istvan?” Korosi said now. “Have you got another leave?”

“Another leave?” Istvan gaped. “Have the stars addled your wits? The war’s over. Haven’t you heard?” He’d known his home village was backward, but this struck him as excessive. Kun would have laughed and laughed. But Kun was dead, struck down by the sorcery that had slain Gyorvar.

Korosi said, “Some commercial traveler tried to tell us that a couple of days ago, but we figured it was a pack of lies. He spouted all sorts of nonsense-the ekrekek, stars love him, slain; Gyorvar gone in a flash of light; the goat-eating Unkerlanters licking us in the east; us surrendering, if you can believe it. Some of us wanted to pitch him in the creek for that pack of crap, but we didn’t.”

“A good thing, too, because it isn’t crap,” Istvan said, and watched the village bruiser’s jaw drop. Istvan qualified that: “Well, I don’t know about Swemmel’s bastards, not so I can take oath about it, but the rest is true. I was stationed near Gyorvar, I saw the city die, and I’ve been in it since. The ekrekek’s dead, and so is his whole family. And we have yielded-it was either that or get another dose of this wizardry. I saw a Lagoan going through what’s left of Gyorvar, looking to see just what the magic did. One of our mages was with him, and acting mild as milk.”