square.
Getting out into the countryside let him visit the farm near Jurbarkas run by a man who worked with the underground. After visiting, Skarnu wished he hadn't. Those fields grew rank and untended; the farmhouse stood empty. Three words had been daubed on the door in whitewash now rain streaked and fading: NIGHT AND FOG. Wherever the farmer had gone, he wouldn't be coming back. Skarnu hurried back to town as fast as he could.
Jurbarkas wasn't far from Pavilosta. That thought kept echoing and reechoing in Skarnu's mind. If Merkela hadn't had her baby- his baby- yet, she would any day now. But if he showed himself around those parts, he would be recognized. Even if the redheads didn't catch him, he might give them the excuse they needed to write NIGHT AND FOG on Merkela's door. He didn't want to do that, no matter what.
He wondered if Amatu would come after him. But as day followed day and nothing happened along those lines, he began to feel easier there. The returned exile was somebody else's worry now.
He did wonder a little that no one from the underground tried to get hold of him. But even that didn't worry him so much. He'd spent three years sticking pins in the Algarvians. He was willing- even eager- to let somebody else have a turn.
He stood in the market square at sunrise one morning. Despite the mug of hot tea he'd bought from a small eatery there, he shivered a little. Fall was in the air, even if the leaves hadn't started turning yet. Farmers came into town early, though, to get a full day's work from whomever they hired there and to keep from losing too much time themselves.
A fellow who wasn't a farmer walked up to Skarnu and said, 'Hello, Pavilosta.'
Only a man from the underground would have called him by the name of the hamlet near which he'd lived. 'Well, well,' he answered. 'Hello yourself, Zarasai.' That was also the name of a town, not a person. He didn't know the other man's real name, and hoped the fellow didn't know his. 'What brings you here?'
'Somebody got wind that you were in these parts, even if you have been lying low,' answered the other fellow from the underground. 'I just came around to tell you lying low's a real good idea these days.'
'Oh?' Skarnu said.
'That's right.' The man from Zarasai nodded. 'We've got trouble on the loose. Some madman is leaking to the redheads, leaking like a cursed sieve.'
Skarnu rolled his eyes. 'Just what we need. As if life weren't hard enough already.' That got him another nod from the fellow who called himself Zarasai. Skarnu asked, 'Who is the whoreson? Are we trying to kill him?'
'Of course we're trying to kill him. You think we're bloody daft?' 'Zarasai' answered. 'But the Algarvians are taking good care of him. If I were in their boots, curse them, I'd take good care of him, too. As for who he is, I haven't got a name to give him, but they say he's one of the fancy-trousers nobles who came back across the Strait of Valmiera from Lagoas to fight Mezentio's men. Then he changed his mind. He should have stayed down there in Setubal, powers below eat him.'
'Powers below eat me,' Skarnu exclaimed. The man from Zarasai raised a questioning eyebrow. Skarnu said, 'That's got to be Amatu. The blundering idiot kept trying to get himself and everybody with him- including me- killed. He couldn't help acting like one of those nobles who want commoners to bow and scrape before 'em- that's what he was. Is. We finally fought about it. I gave him a good thumping, and we went our separate ways. I came here… and I guess he went to the redheads.'
'I can see how you wouldn't have had any use for him,' 'Zarasai' said, 'but he's singing like a nightingale now. We've lost at least half a dozen good men on account of him. And even a good man'll sing sometimes, if the Algarvians work on him long enough and hard enough. So we'll lose more, too, no doubt about it.'
'Curse him,' Skarnu repeated. 'He wasn't important enough in the underground to suit him. He's important to the Algarvians, all right, the way a hook's important to a fisherman.'
'Zarasai' said, 'Sooner or later, he'll run out of names and places. After that, Mezentio's men will probably give him what he deserves.'
'They couldn't possibly.' Skarnu didn't try to hide his bitterness.
'Mm, maybe not,' the other underground leader said. 'But you're safe here, I think. If you parted from him, he won't know about this place, right? Sit tight, and we'll do our best to ride things out.'
'I wish the redheads had caught him and not Lauzdonu over in Ventspils,' Skarnu said. 'He's not a coward. I don't think he would have had much to say if they'd just captured him. But he's a spoiled brat. He couldn't have everything he wanted from us, and so he went to get it from the Algarvians. Aye, he'd sing for them, sure enough.'
'You've given us a name,' 'Zarasai' said. 'That'll help. When we listen to the emanations from the Algarvians' crystals, maybe we'll hear it, so we'll know what they're doing with him. Maybe he'll have an accident. Aye, maybe he will. Here's hoping he does, anyhow.' He slipped away. Skarnu didn't watch him go. The less Skarnu knew about anyone else's comings and goings, the less the Algarvians could tear out of him if they caught him and squeezed.
Lie low. Sit tight. Ride it out. At first, that all seemed good advice to Skarnu. But then he started to wonder, and to worry. He'd spent a lot of time with Amatu before they had their break. How much had he said about Merkela? Had he named her? Had he mentioned Pavilosta? If he had, would Amatu remember?
That seemed only too likely. And if he remembered, what would make him happier than betraying Skarnu's lover to the Algarvians? Nothing Skarnu could think of.
If he sat tight, if he lay low, he might save himself- and abandon Merkela, abandon the child he'd never seen, and, not quite incidentally, abandon his old senior sergeant, Raunu, to the tender mercies of Mezentio's men, to say nothing of the Kaunian couple from Forthweg who'd escaped the sabotaged ley-line caravan that was carrying them to their death. Ever since he'd fled Merkela's farm, he'd told himself he would endanger her if he went back. Now he decided she would face worse danger if he stayed away. He left Jurbarkas without a backwards glance and went off down the road toward Pavilosta with a smile on his face.
He slept in a haystack that night, and had a chilly time of it: fall was on the way, sure enough. Because the night was cold, he woke in predawn grayness and got moving before the farmer knew he'd been there. After an hour or so, he came on a roadside tavern, and paid the proprietor an outrageous price for a sweet roll and a mug of hot herb tea thick with honey. Thus fortified, he set out again.
Before long, the road grew familiar. If he stayed on it, he would go straight into Pavilosta. He didn't want to do that; too many of the villagers knew who he was. The fewer folk who saw him, the fewer who might betray him to the Algarvians.
And so he left the road, heading down one narrow dirt track that looked no different from any of the others. The path, and others into which it led, took him around Pavilosta and toward Merkela's farm. He nodded to himself whenever he chose a new track; he knew these winding lanes as well as he knew the streets of Priekule. Soon, he thought. Very soon.
But the closer to the farm he got, the more fear fought with hope. What would he do if he found only an empty, abandoned farmhouse with NIGHT AND FOG scrawled on the door or the wall beside it? Go mad, was the answer that sprang to mind. Setting one foot in front of the other took endless distinct efforts of will.
'Powers above,' he said softly, rounding the last bend. 'There it is.'
Tears sprang into his eyes: tears of relief, for smoke rose from the chimney. The fields were golden with ripening grain, the meadows emerald green. And that solid, stolid figure with the crook, keeping an eye on the sheep as they fed, could only belong to Raunu.
Skarnu hurried forward and climbed over the sun-faded wooden rails of the fence. Raunu trotted toward him, plainly ready to use that crook as a weapon. 'Here now, stranger!' he shouted in a voice trained to carry through battlefield din. 'What in blazes do you want?'
'I may be shabby, Sergeant, but I'm no stranger,' Skarnu answered.
Raunu stopped in his tracks. Skarnu thought he might come to attention and salute, but he didn't. 'No, Captain, you're no stranger,' he agreed, 'but you're an idiot to show your face in these parts. There's a hefty price on your head, there is. Nobody ever gave a fart about a sausage-seller's son' -he jerked a thumb at himself- 'but a rebel marquis? The redheads want you bad.'
'They're liable to care about you if you're here,' Skarnu said, 'you and Merkela and the Kaunians from Forthweg.' He took a deep breath. 'How is she?'
'Well enough, though she'll have that baby any day now,' Raunu replied.
Skarnu nodded, but cursed softly under his breath. 'That'll make moving fast harder, but we have to do it. I
