Darkness Descending

the raiders waited.

Raunu chuckled mirthlessly. “Now we find out who’s sold whom.”

“Aye,” Skarnu agreed. “Did that groom tell us the count would come this way today because he couldn’t stand his master, or was he taking Simanu’s money to suck us into the redheads’ web?”

One of the peasants nodded in the direction of the fortress. “I don’t see any more soldiers coming forth there, and we’d know if the Algarvians had men in these woods. They’d already be at us.” What he meant by that was, We’d already be dead. Since Skarnu thought the fellow was right, he didn’t argue.

Simanu shouted something. The count was still too far away for Skarnu to make out his words, but he sounded carefree. Maybe that meant he was a good actor. Skarnu hoped it meant he suspected nothing.

“We don’t start blazing too soon,” he warned his comrades--Merkela in particular. “This is likely to be the best chance we’ll ever have. If we waste it, we’re stuck with the bugger forevermore.”

He wondered if he ought to be talking like that. Simanu was a reprobate, but he was also a member of Skarnu’s class. Nobles who maligned their fellows to commoners got themselves a bad name. But what of nobles who went to bed with the Algarvians? What did they get? Not half what they deserve, Skarnu thought. He’d do his best to fix that.

Simanu shouted something else. This time, Skarnu caught a phrase--”after a wild boar”--though the breeze blew away the rest. One of the Algarvians answered in his own language. Then Simanu said something in Algarvian, too; the rhythms and trills were unmistakable. Skarnu didn’t know why that should have surprised him, but it did, and infuriated him, too.

“Closer,” Raunu said softly. “Let ‘em come closer.” He might have been watching a wary doe approaching a deadfall. “We don’t want to spook ‘em by--”

Before he could finish, one of the peasants at the far end of their little line started blazing. The Kaunian behind Simanu threw up his hands and slid bonelessly off his unicorn. It was a very fine blaze. Skarnu didn’t think he could have matched it, not at that range.

“Oh, you cursed fool,” he muttered under his breath. Because it was such a fine blaze, who else would have the chance to get an easier one? No help for it now; Simanu and his henchmen were already shouting in alarm. Skarnu shouted, too: “Let’s get them!” He raised his stick to his shoulder, aimed at Simanu, and blazed.

The collaborationist count’s unicorn reared, let out a horrid shriek, and then toppled. Skarnu and his friends cheered. Then they cried out again, this time in dismay. Simanu had managed to kick free. Now he lay behind the beast’s thrashing body and started blazing toward the woods.

Most of his henchmen galloped back toward the safety of the keep. A couple of men, though--both Algarvians, Skarnu saw with mixed admiration for their courage and shame that they had no Valmierans with them--spurred their unicorns straight for the woods. They blazed as they came, buying time for their comrades to get away. They couldn’t have known how many foes they faced, or just where among the trees those foes hid, but they attacked anyhow.

Several beams converged on them, Merkela used Gedominu’s hunting stick for all it was worth. As each redhead fell, she grunted breathily, as she might have done while building toward her peak of pleasure with Skarnu atop her. When they both lay unmoving, she nodded to him. “You were right,” she said. “They are brave. Now these two are brave and dead, which is better yet.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said. A hole appeared in a branch too close to his head for comfort. “But Simanu’s not dead, curse him, and he’s got some cover.”

“We’d best do something about him quick, too,” Raunu said. “They’ve seen something’s wrong, back there in the castle. We’ll have all of Simanu’s cursed retainers coming down on us if we hang around too long.”

“Aye.” Skarnu called quick orders to Dauktu and the other raiders at the far end of the line.

They didn’t obey automatically, as true soldiers would have had to do. “And while we’re up to that, what’s your part of the game?” Dauktu demanded.

“You’ll see,” Skarnu said. “I won’t shrink, I promise. Now--do you want Simanu dead or don’t you?” That decided the peasants. They started blazing at the count without taking so much trouble about their cover. One of them cried out in pain a moment later, too, for Simanu was alert and no bad blazer himself.

But while he traded beams with the raiders, Skarnu burst from cover a good ways away and rushed toward him. As soon as the unicorn’s body no longer shielded the count, Skarnu raised his