Darkness Descending

“Wouldn’t catch me wearing one of those little short kilts,” Dagulf said.

“Curse me if I’ll argue with you,” Garivald said. “First blizzard comes, it’d freeze right off.” He paused meditatively. “Might be the best thing that could happen to the whoresons, eh?”

“Aye.” Dagulf pulled a sour face. “They’re a lickerish lot, Mezentio’s buggers. Looks like they’ll swive anything that moves--and if it doesn’t move, they’ll shake it.”

“That’s so,” Garivald said. “We’ve already had more scandal since they came than for years before. And afterwards, the women say the soldiers made ‘em do it and they didn’t have a choice, but a lot of ‘em look pretty cursed contented while they say it. All this Algarvian swaggering and hand-kissing and what have you spoils ‘em, you ask me.”

Dagulf said something vaguely related to hand-kissing. He and Garivald let out loud, coarse laughs. Then he said, “You ought to make a song about it--a song that’d keep our women from lying down with the redheads, I mean.”

“Nothing will keep them from lying down if it’s that or be blazed,” Garivald observed. “You can’t blame ‘em for that. But the other . . .” His voice trailed away. His expression went slack and distant. Dagulf had to nudge him to get him to keep walking. He murmured, “We’d have to be careful where we sung it.”

Dagulf grunted. “So we would.” He pointed toward Waddo, the firstman, who was limping toward them across the village square. With the ground pardy frozen, Waddo’s stick got better purchase than it had when everything was knee-deep in mud. Dagulf went on, “Algarvians aren’t the only reason we’d have to be careful, either.”

“He wouldn’t betray us to the redheads,” Garivald said, but then softened that by adding, “I don’t think.”

“He might,” Dagulf said darkly. “Selling us out is about the only way I can think of that he’d get himself in good with the Algarvians.”

“He hasn’t pulled anything like that yet, powers above be praised.” Garivald knew something else that might make King Mezentio’s men happy with Waddo. If the firstman led them to the buried crystal, they might forgive him for having buried it. And if he wasn’t sure they would, he might try to blame everything on Garivald, who’d helped him hide it.

“Hello, hello,” Waddo said as he came up to them at last. “A very good day to you both, I am sure.” He didn’t sound so sure of anything as he had before the Algarvians seized Zossen. He remained firstman, and did their bidding when they gave him any bidding to do, but he’d lost most of the authority he’d had as the nearest approach to King Swemmel’s representative in the village. As far as King Mezentio’s men were concerned, he was just a dog slightly larger than the other dogs in Zossen--and much more likely to be kicked.

“Good day,” Garivald and Dagulf said together. Dagulf pointed to Garivald and added, “Our friend here may be in the way of coming up with a new song.”

Garivald wished he hadn’t said even so much. Waddo, however, beamed. “I saw him looking all dreamy, so I hoped he might be. A new song would help make the long, cold winter nights pass quicker.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Garivald said. Now he’d have to come up with an ordinary song as well as the one urging the village women not to give themselves to Algarvian soldiers. He hoped “Waddo wouldn’t hear that one, even if the firstman had a daughter of an age, if not of a beauty, to draw the redheads’ notice.

“If it’s half as good as a couple you’ve come up with, it’ll be twice as good as a lot of the ones we’ve known for years,” Waddo said. “A minstrel in our own village--a songsmith, no less. Who would have thought it?”

“I thank you,” Garivald said shyly. The idea that he could make songs still astonished him.

“No, we thank you. You do us credit.” Waddo was very effusive. Is he laying it on too thick? Garivald wondered. Is he trying to lull me to sleep so he can sell me to Mezentio’s men? He wondered if he ought to dig up the crystal and hide it somewhere only he knew or throw it in a creek. If he could do it without being noticed, that might prove wise.

Of course, if the Algarvians caught him digging up the crystal, they’d blaze him, or maybe just hang him with a placard round his neck warning others not to do as he had done. Did Waddo want him to try something foolish? That way, he’d be punished, leaving the firstman in the clear. Garivald shook his head, as if to knock such notions out of it. He hated having to think that way.

“Aye, a new song would be fine,” Waddo said. “Anything that takes our minds off our empty bellies would be fine.”

“It would have been a good harvest,”