As if to underscore Oraste’s words, Pesaro went on, “We go in there; we grab our quota, and we get out. Has everybody got that?”
“Permission to fall out, Sergeant?” Almonio asked. The young constable never had been able to stand rounding up Kaunians.
But Pesaro shook his head. “Not this time. You’re coming along with us, by the powers above. This isn’t some little village in the middle of nowhere. This is the Kaunian quarter in the middle of Gromheort. You never can tell who’s liable to be watching. Any other questions?” He looked around. Nobody said anything. Pesaro stuck out a meaty forefinger. “All right. Let’s go.”
Off they went, bootheels clattering on cobbles. Almonio muttered to himself and swigged from a hip flask as they tramped along. Pesaro affected not to notice that. So did Bembo, though he wished he’d thought to equip himself with a hip flask, too.
They weren’t the only squad of constables on the march, either. Most of the Algarvians who kept order in Gromheort were moving toward the Kaunian quarter. With a chuckle, Bembo said, “Any Forthwegian crooks who know what we’ve got laid on could rob this town blind while we’re busy.”
“They could
A couple of Kaunians saw what amounted to a company of constables bearing down on their quarter. The blonds ran back toward the miserable market square they’d set up in the middle of the district, calling out in alarm. “Don’t worry about it, boys,” said the constabulary lieutenant in charge of the Algarvians. “Don’t you worry about it one little bit. You know what you’re supposed to do, don’t you?”
“Aye, sir,” the constables chorused.
“All right, then.” The lieutenant wore a whistle on a silver chain around his neck. He raised it to his lips and blew a long, piercing blast. “Go do it, then!”
“My squad-perimeter duty!” Pesaro bellowed, for all the world as if the constables were assaulting a fortified position down in southern Unkerlant. “Move! Move! Move! Don’t let the blond buggers get past you.”
Bembo never liked moving fast. Here, though, he had no choice. Along with the rest of the constables from Tricarico-and several other squads besides-he trotted two blocks into the Kaunian quarter, then moved along a street parallel to the one marking the district’s outer border. More constables fanned out through the couple of square blocks thus cut off, crying, “Kaunians, come forth!”
Some Kaunians did come forth. The Algarvian constables pounced on them and hustled them away toward the edge of the district, where more Algarvians took charge of them. Other blonds tried to hide. Wherever no one came forth, the constables broke down the doors and went through flats and shops. Bembo listened to shouts and screams and the sound of blows landing.
So did Oraste. Bembo’s burly partner kicked at the cobblestones. “Those buggers get to have all the fun, and we’re stuck here twiddling our thumbs,” he grumbled.
“There’s always next time,” answered Bembo, who was just as well pleased not to be beating people-and not to run the risk that some desperate Kaunian might fight back with a knife or even with a stick.
By the noises coming from the sealed-off blocks, the Kaunians weren’t doing much in the way of fighting back. The Algarvians’ descent on their district must have caught them by surprise. That rather surprised Bembo. Given the way his countrymen liked to brag and boast, they weren’t the best folk for keeping secrets.
He was about to say as much when a Kaunian woman fleeing from the constables dashed across the street toward the interior of the district to which the blonds had been relegated. Oraste let out a roar of glee. “Hold it right there, sister,” he shouted, “or you’re dead the next step.” He leveled his stick at the woman.
She skidded to a stop. Obviously, he meant what he said. If his tone hadn’t told her as much, the fierce eagerness on his face would have. “Why?” she asked bitterly, in good Algarvian. “What did I ever do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oraste said. “Just get moving, or it’s all over now instead of later.”
Her shoulders slumped. All the fight oozed out of her; Bembo watched it happen. She turned away and stumbled back toward the other blonds who were being rounded up.
Oraste still didn’t seem satisfied. “That was too easy,” he complained.
“You really want to kill somebody, don’t you?” Bembo said.
His partner nodded. “Sure-why not? That’s what this business is all about, isn’t it? — killing Kaunians, I mean. Of course, they do us more good dead if the mages get to use their life energy, but a couple knocked off here won’t make much difference one way or the other.”
“If you say so.” Bembo would sooner have collected bribes or favors of a more intimate sort from the blonds, but nobody paid any attention to what he wanted. He sighed, wallowing in self-pity.
And then several more Kaunians came dashing toward him, desperation in every line of their frantically fleeing bodies. Oraste didn’t have time for wordy challenges now. “Halt!” he shouted, and started blazing.
A Kaunian man went down almost at once, howling and grabbing at the wounded leg that would no longer bear his weight. A woman fell a moment later. She didn’t howl. She didn’t move, either. Red, red blood pooled under her head.
But the rest of the blonds ran the gauntlet and vanished into buildings beyond the constables’ perimeter. Oraste turned a furious glare on Bembo. “Well, you’re fornicating useless, aren’t you?” he snarled.
“They caught me by surprise,” Bembo said-not much of an excuse, but the best he could come up with. He advanced on the wounded Kaunian. “Let’s take charge of this son of a whore.”
“He hasn’t got all he deserves yet, by the powers above,” Oraste said, yanking his bludgeon from the belt loop that held it. “You can help me give him what for.”
He laid into the Kaunian with savage gusto. Every cry the wounded man let out seemed to spur him on. And Bembo had to beat the blond, too-either that or have Oraste reckon him a slacker. “You stupid bugger,” he said again and again as he swung his own club. “You ugly, stupid bugger.” He hated the Kaunian for not either escaping or dying. As things were, the fellow had left Bembo no choice but to do something for which he had no stomach.
When more blonds tried to break free of the Algarvian net, Bembo got to stop beating the wounded Kaunian man. Instead of blazing at the fugitives, he ran after them. Rather to his own surprise-he wasn’t especially fast on his feet-he caught up with one of them-a woman-and brought her down with a tackle that surely would have started a brawl on any football pitch.
“That’s more like it,” Oraste shouted from behind him. “Maybe you’re worth a little something after all.”
The blond woman, after letting out a shriek of despair when she fell, lay still on the cobbles, her shoulders shuddering with sobs. After a few deep, panting breaths of his own, Bembo said, “See? Running away didn’t do you any cursed good.” To drive the point home-and to look good to Oraste-he whacked her with his bludgeon. “Stupid bitch.”
“Futter you,” she said in clear Algarvian. Hate blazed from her blue eyes as she glared up at him. “If I hadn’t been big with child, you never would have caught me, you turd-faced tun of suet.”
Bembo stared down at her belly. Sure enough, it bulged. All his pride at running down anyone, even a woman, evaporated. He raised his club, then lowered it again. He couldn’t enjoy the notion of hitting a pregnant woman, either, even if she cursed and reviled him.
“Get up,” he told her. “You’re caught now. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“No, there isn’t, is there?” she answered dully as she climbed to her feet. Her trousers were out at both knees; one of them bled. “They’ll take me away, and sooner or later they’ll cut my throat. And if I stay alive long enough to have the baby, they’ll cut its throat, too, or blaze it, or whatever they do. And they won’t care at all, will they?”
“Get moving,” Bembo told her. It wasn’t much of an answer, but he didn’t have to give her much of an answer. He was an Algarvian, after all. His folk had won the war here. Winners didn’t need to give losers an accounting of themselves. All they had to do was enforce obedience. Bembo brandished the bludgeon. “Get moving,” he said again, and she did. She had no choice-none except dying on the spot, anyhow. Bembo wasn’t sure he could blaze her in cold blood, but he hadn’t the slightest doubt Oraste could.
Oraste was interested in other things. “How many of them do you suppose we’ve caught?” he asked Bembo as the pregnant Kaunian woman limped away.
“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “They’re stuffed in here pretty tight, I’ll tell you that. Hundreds, anyway.”
