Out of the Darkness

Captain Dagaric shook his head. “You’re wrong, Lieutenant. You know soldiering. You were in the army at the start, and you came out alive at the end. Have you got any idea how unusual that is? Millions of men know farming. Not very many have experience to match yours.”

He was probably right. The only trouble was, Leudast didn’t want most of the experience he had. He knew how lucky he was to have come through all the dreadful fighting he’d seen with only two wounds. But the wounds weren’t all of it-in many ways, weren’t the worst of it. Terror and hunger and cold and exhaustion and filth and the agony of friends. . Did he want to stay in a trade that only promised more of the same?

Something else occurred to him, too, something that had been in the back of his mind ever since the Gyongyosians yielded. “Sir, there was this girl, back in a village in the Duchy of Grelz.” Would Alize even remember who he was if he showed up there now, or would she be married to some local man? Plenty of wartime romances didn’t mean a thing once the war was done. Some did, though. No way to find out which sort was which without going back there and seeing how things stood.

“A girl, eh?” Dagaric said. “You serious about her, or are you just looking for another excuse?”

“I’m serious, sir. I don’t know if she is. I’d have to go back to Leiferde to find out.”

“In peacetime, you know, a married officer isn’t necessarily at a disadvantage,” Dagaric remarked. “And who knows? She may be looking for a way to get off the farm and out of her village.” He rubbed his chin. “I’ll tell you what. You want to court her, do you?”

Leudast nodded. “Aye, sir, I do.”

“You don’t need to resign your commission to do that,” Dagaric said. “I think the most efficient thing to do would be to give you, oh, a month’s leave so you can sort out your personal affairs. At the end of that time, you’ll have a better notion of what you want to do-and you’ll have an officer’s travel privileges to get to this Leifer- wherever-in-blazes-it-is. Does that suit you, Lieutenant?”

“Aye, sir! Thank you, sir!” Leudast said, saluting. The military ceremonial let him hide his astonishment. Dagaric really must want me to stay in the army, or he wouldn’t go so far out of his way to help me. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to remain a soldier, but knowing his superior wanted him to was no small compliment.

Leave papers in his beltpouch, he was two days in a wagon making his way back to the nearest ley line. Then he spent another nine days traversing Unkerlant from west to east, as he’d gone across the kingdom from east to west not so long before. The month of leave Dagaric had given him suddenly seemed less generous than it had when he’d got it: it left him about ten days in and around Leiferde.

He found he could tell exactly how far the Algarvians had come. All at once, the countryside took on the battered look with which he’d grown so familiar during the war. How long would it take to repair? So many men were gone. Every glimpse he got of life in the fields confirmed that. The old, the young, the female: they labored to bring in the harvest. He shivered anew when the ley-line caravan passed through Herborn, the capital of the Duchy of Grelz. There among those ruins King Swemmel had boiled false King Raniero of Grelz alive. Thanks to me, Leudast thought, and wondered if he would ever get the smell of Raniero’s cooking flesh out of his nostrils.

Leiferde wasn’t on a ley line, but didn’t lie far from one. Leudast needed only half a day to get to the village. After so long cooped up on the wagon and the caravan, getting down and using his own legs felt good. The sun was sliding down the sky toward the western horizon when he strode up the dusty main street. Women peered at him from their vegetable plots and herb gardens. “A soldier,” he heard them murmur. “What’s a soldier doing here now?”

He knocked on the door at Alize’s house. He’d hoped she would open it herself, but she didn’t. Her mother did-a woman who looked much the way Alize would in twenty years or so. “Hullo, Bertrude,” Leudast said, pleased he remembered her name.

The woman’s jaw dropped. “Powers above!” she exclaimed. “You’re that lieutenant. How are you, your Excellency?” She curtsied.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Leudast had never said he was a nobleman. On the other hand, he’d never said he wasn’t. He asked the question that needed asking: “Is Alize anywhere about?”

“She’s out in the fields. She’ll be back for supper,” Bertrude answered. “That shouldn’t be long, sir. Won’t you come in and share what we have?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, and if you have enough,” Leudast said. “I know how things are these days.”

But Bertrude shook her head. “It’s no trouble at all, and we’ve got plenty,” she said firmly. “Come have something to drink while you wait.”

Leudast found the world a rosier place after pouring down most of a mug of spirits. He was fighting to stay awake when Alize and her father, Akerin, walked in. “Leudast!” Alize said, and threw herself into his arms. Her face against his shoulder, she added, “What are you doing here?”

“With the war over, I came back,” he said simply. It had been a long time since he’d had his arms around a woman, even longer since he’d had them around one who wanted to be held.

Alize stared at him. “Men say they’ll do that all the time. I didn’t think anybody really would, though.”

“Here I am,” Leudast said. She seemed glad to see him. That made a good start.

Before he could go on from there, Bertrude broke in: “Supper’s ready.” Leudast sat down with Alize and her mother and father. The stew Bertrude served was full of oats and beets, not wheat and turnips, as it would have been in Leudast’s village in the north. Mutton was mutton, though Bertrude flavored it with mint rather than garlic. Nothing at all was wrong with the ale she gave him to go with the supper.

After he’d eaten, Alize said, “I hoped you’d come back. I didn’t really think you would, but I hoped so. Now that you have come, what exactly do you have in mind? It can’t be just. . you know.”

You can’t have me for the sport of it, she meant. Leudast nodded. He’d already understood that. He said, “I came to wed you, if you’ll put up with me.”

“I think I can,” Alize said with a smile. Leudast grinned with relief; he hadn’t known how she would answer, though he wouldn’t have returned to Leiferde if he hadn’t had his hopes.

Her father asked, “You aim to settle down here and farm, then?”

The question went to the nub of things. “That depends,” Leudast said. “I might, but then again, I might not. My other choice is staying in the army. The way the world looks, there’ll always be jobs for soldiers.”

“That’s so,” Akerin said, and Bertrude’s head bobbed up and down. Alize’s father asked another question: “How do you aim to make up your mind?”

“Well, if you really want to know, a lot of it depends on what your daughter wants.” Leudast looked to Alize. “If you’d sooner stay in Leiferde, I know how to farm, or I did up north. It can’t be too different here.” He realized he’d just shown he was no noble. Shrugging, he went on, “Or if you’d rather be a soldier’s wife. .” Again, he shrugged the Unkerlanter peasant’s businesslike shrug, so different from the fancy Algarvian variety. “I can do that, too.”

“Go to a city?” Alize breathed. “Maybe even to Cottbus?” Her eyes glowed. “I’ve seen enough of a farming village to last me the rest of my days. However life turns out in a town, it has to be easier there than here.”

Her father and mother didn’t argue with her. In fact, they nodded solemnly. Leudast thought her likely right, too. He also nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll stay a soldier.” Captain Dagaric would be pleased. Marshal Rathar might be pleased. Leudast wondered if he’d be pleased himself. That depends on how long peace lasts, he thought. Of course, if war came again, a peasant village near Unkerlant’s eastern border wasn’t safe, either. But if war came again, was any place at all safe? One way or another, he’d find out.

After supper, Ealstan tried to read the news sheet and play with Saxburh at the same time. That didn’t work very well, because he couldn’t give either one of them his full attention. The news sheet didn’t care. His daughter did. “Dada,” she said, and managed to put a distinct note of reproach in her voice.

“You’re fighting a losing battle, son,” Hestan said.

“What other kind is there, for a Forthwegian?” Ealstan answered. That earned him one of Hestan’s slow smiles.

When he was talking to his own father, he wasn’t paying attention to Saxburh, either. “Dada,” she said again, and tugged at his hand. Laughing, he picked her up. She grabbed for his beard.

He managed to fend her off. “No, you can’t do that,” he told her. “That hurts.”