Through the Darkness

“Ale and roasted chestnuts,” Skarnu answered, as he’d been told to do.

The taverner eyed him, then slowly nodded. After giving him what he’d asked for, the fellow said, “Why don’t you take ‘em over to that table by the fireplace? Looks like it’s got room for a couple more.”

“All right, I’ll do that,” Skarnu said. The men sitting at that table didn’t look much different from the rest of the crowd. Some were old. Some were young. None looked rich. One or two looked a good deal shabbier than Skarnu did. A couple, but only a couple, looked as if they’d be nasty customers in a fight.

“Where you from?” one of the tough-looking fellows asked.

That was the question he’d been waiting for. “Pavilosta,” he answered.

“Ah,” the tough said. Several of the men nodded. One of them lifted a glass of wine in salute. “Simanu. That was a nice piece of work.”

Skarnu had never heard an assassination praised in such matter-of-fact terms. This was the crowd he’d come to meet, all right. He hoped none of the blonds at the table was an Algarvian spy. By coming to Tytuvenai, he’d bet his life none of them was.

A balding fellow with silver-rimmed spectacles said, “We’re just about all here now. I don’t know if Zarasai will be able to come.” That was not the name of a man but the name of a town: a sensible precaution, Skarnu judged. The bespectacled man went on, “Those people talk all the way across Valmiera. They can act all over the kingdom at the same time, too. We have to be able to do the same if we’re going to make their lives interesting.”

“It sounds good,” the ruffian said, “but how do we go about it? The post is slow, and the whoresons read it. Where are we going to get enough crystals? And how do we keep their mages from listening in on them? Emanations will leak, and we can’t afford it, not if we want to keep breathing we can’t.”

“Those are good questions,” the man with the silver spectacles said, nodding. “But we can’t go on as we have been, either. A good blow like the one at Count Simanu went half wasted because we didn’t make those people sweat all over the place at the same time. And we could have. But we didn’t, because we didn’t know it would happen till after it did.”

Nobody talked about Algarvians or redheads, or named King Mezentio. That, Skarnu judged, was also wise: no telling who might be trying to listen at some of the nearby tables. Skarnu said, “Only trouble is, if you’d known ahead of time, they might have known ahead of time, too.”

“Aye.” That was the tough again, his voice gone savage. “We’ve spawned enough traitors and to spare, that’s certain. And it’s not just the nobles who go riding with. . those people, or the noblewomen who let those people go riding on them, either.” Skarnu thought of his sister, the Marchioness Krasta-an Algarvian colonel’s lover these days-but not for long, for the fellow was continuing, “There’s traitors all the way down. When our time comes round again, we’ll have some fancy killing to do.” He sounded as if he looked forward to every bit of it.

“We must be ruthless, but we must be fair,” the bespectacled man said. “This isn’t Unkerlant, after all.”

The tough tossed his head. “No, it sure isn’t, is it? Unkerlant is still in the fight. Don’t you wish we could say the same?”

Skarnu winced. That hit home, painfully hard. He said, “We’re still in the fight.”

“A whole table’s worth of us,” the tough said. “Speaks well for the kingdom, that it does. But you’re right, Pavilosta. We’re what Valmiera’s got, and we’re the ones who are going to set her to rights when the day is ours.”

One of the other irregulars was about to say something when the tavern door opened. The fellow with the silver-rimmed spectacles nodded to himself. “Maybe that will be Zarasai after all.”

But it wasn’t yet another Valmieran who hadn’t given up on the fight against Algarve. Instead, it was a kilted Algarvian officer, backed by a handful of his own countrymen and quite a few more Valmieran constables. He spoke in a loud voice: “I am hearing there is an unlawful assembling here. You are all under arresting for questioning.”

Somebody threw a mug at him-not somebody from the table at which Skarnu sat. It caught the redhead in the face. He went down with a yowl, clutching at his smashed face. A moment later, all the mugs in the Drunken Dragon seemed to be flying. Skarnu wasn’t sure the Valmieran army had tossed so many eggs at the redheads while it was still a going concern.

But mugs were less deadly than eggs, and these Algarvians and their Valmieran stooges surged into the tavern. Some of them had bludgeons, and started beating on anyone they could reach. Some of them had sticks. To Skarnu’s shame, the redheads trusted the Valmieran constables with such weapons, sure they would use them against their own countrymen.

Except for the fire, all the lights in the tavern went out. That just made the brawl more confusing. Skarnu sprang off his chair and laid about him. The chair slammed into somebody’s ribs. Whoever it was went down with a groan. Skarnu hoped he’d flattened a foe, not a friend.

“Back here!” That was the bespectacled man’s voice. It came from the direction of the bar. Skarnu fought his way toward it. Someone close by him took a beam in the chest and toppled. When Skarnu smelled burnt flesh, he went down, too, and crawled the rest of the way. The Valmieran army had failed against Algarve, but he’d learned how to fight in it.

Behind the bar, he almost crawled over the tough. The fellow grinned at him and said, “Come on, pal. I know the back way.”

“Good,” Skarnu said. “I hoped there was one.” He also hoped the Algarvians and the constables who did their bidding weren’t watching it and scooping up fleeing foes one by one.

The tough scrambled into the little room in back of the bar. Skarnu followed him. The little room had a door that opened on the alleyway behind the Drunken Dragon. The tough hurried through it. Skarnu would have peered out first. But when the tough didn’t get blazed, he followed again.

Nobody looked to be watching the alley. Maybe the Algarvians didn’t know it was there, and maybe the Valmieran constables hadn’t bothered telling them about it. Skarnu hoped the constables weren’t cooperating so enthusiastically as they seemed to be, anyhow. After looking this way and that, he said, “Now we split up.”

“Aye, I was going to tell you the same thing, Pavilosta,” the other Valmieran answered. “You’ve got a pretty good notion of what you’re doing, looks like. Powers above keep you safe.”

“And you,” Skarnu said. The tough hadn’t waited for his reply, but was already strolling down the alley as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Skarnu strolled up it, trying to act similarly nonchalant. He felt easier when he ducked into another alleyway that ran into the one behind the tavern. That second alley led him to a third, and the third to a fourth. Tytuvenai seemed to have a web of little lanes going nowhere in particular. By the time Skarnu emerged onto a real street, he was several blocks away from the Drunken Dragon. He hoped more of the men who kept on resisting the Algarvians had got out after the tough and him.

“You, there!” The call was sharp and peremptory. Skarnu turned. A constable was pointing at him. “Aye, you, bumpkin. What are you doing here?”

If he was trying to panic Skarnu, he failed. For all the world as if he were nothing but a bumpkin, the marquis jingled coins in his pocket. “Sold some eggs,” he answered. “Now I’m heading home.”

“Well, go on, then,” the constable growled. He might not have caught hold of foes of the Algarvians, but he had exercised his petty authority. That was enough to satisfy him.

Skarnu hurried out of Tytuvenai. He breathed easier once he was out in the countryside. Most people on the roads outside the towns looked like farmers-which made sense, because most of them were farmers.

He wondered how the Algarvians had got word of the meeting their enemies were having. Someone betrayed us. The thought was inescapable. And everyone who’d sat around that table now knew what he looked like and near which village he lived. If the Algarvians caught his comrades and squeezed them, would they send a company of soldiers-or a couple of officers and a company of Valmieran constables-looking for him on the farms round Pavilosta? In their boots, he would have. That worried him more than anything.

“Come on!” Sergeant Pesaro boomed to the squad of Algarvian constables he led west from Gromheort. “Keep moving! You can do it!”