Darkness Descending

sowing. It was not a time for dances and feasts, as it was among the nobles of Valmiera. Skarnu kicked a pebble in a show of defiance. Count Simanu would give no dances this winter, host no feasts for his Algarvian friends and overlords. I made sure of that, Skarnu thought.

Triumph filled him, which meant he needed longer than he should have to notice that no smoke curled up from the chimney of Dauktu’s farmhouse. When he did notice that, he frowned; on a day like this, he would have wanted a good fire roaring in the fireplace. And Dauktu had plenty of firewood: a big pile, covered by a canvas tarpaulin, stood by the barn.

Still, Skarnu didn’t think much of it. If Dauktu and his wife and their daughter preferred bundling themselves to the eyebrows, that was their business. Swinging the chicken as he walked, Skarnu drew near the farmhouse.

Then he noticed the front door standing open. He stopped in his tracks.

“Something’s wrong,” he muttered, and stood irresolute, not knowing whether to go forward or to flee. In the end, warily, he went forward.

When he got closer still, he saw the door had something written on it. Scratching his head, he took step by cautious step till he could read it. It was five words in all, daubed on with whitewash that had run: SIMANU’S VENGEANCE--NIGHT AND FOG.

He scratched his head again. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked the winter air. He got no answer. He raised his voice and called Dauktu’s name. Again, no answer. Wondering if he should go back, he went forward again.

All at once, the quiet seemed eerie. When Skarnu set foot on the wooden steps leading up to the porch, the thunk of his bootheel made him start in alarm. He called Dauktu’s name once more. Not a sound came from the house. He went inside, though half of him was warning that he ought to turn tail. Too late for that anyway, he thought.

Something in the front room moved. Skarnu froze. So did the red fox that had been eating from the plate spilled on the floor. The fox darted under a rough-hewn chair. Skarnu went into the kitchen. The oven was as cold and dead as the fireplace. When he walked back into the front room, the fox had scurried away.

“Dauktu?” he called up the stairway. Only silence answered him. Normally, he would never have presumed to go up to the farmer’s bedchamber uninvited. Now... Now he didn’t think it would matter.

The bedchamber was neat and empty. So was the smaller one across the hall, which had to belong to Dauktu’s daughter. As far as Skarnu could see by anything up there, the other farmer and his family might just have stepped away for a moment. They’d stepped away, all right. The spilled plate of food downstairs argued that they weren’t ever coming back.

“Night and fog,” Skarnu murmured. He’d never seen the phrase before. He didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it couldn’t have meant anything good for Dauktu and his wife and daughter.

Skarnu went back downstairs, and then back out of the farmhouse. He stared at the words painted on the doorway. Ever so slowly, he shook his head. Still carrying the chicken, he started the long walk back to the farmhouse where he lived. It seemed much longer than the walk out to Dauktu’s house had. He’d been bubbling with ideas on how to strike another blow against the Algarvian occupiers of Valmiera. Unless he was dreadfully wrong, they’d struck a blow of their own.

Again, the road might have been deserted but for him. Everyone else might have vanished--vanished into night and fog, he thought uneasily, and his shiver had nothing to do with the weather.

When he got back, he breathed a silent sigh of relief to see Merkela scattering chicken feed in front of the barn. If disaster had struck Dauktu’s farm, it might have struck here, too. But no: there stood Raunu not far away, nailing a fence rail to a post. Skarnu waved to both of them.

They waved back. Raunu called, “What’s the matter? Dauktu didn’t want that scrawny old hen, so you had to bring it back?”

Merkela laughed. Skarnu knew he would have laughed, too, had he found things different at Dauktu’s farm. But he said, “He wasn’t there.” His voice came out as flat as if he were reciting a lesson in a primer.

Merkela went on feeding the chickens. She didn’t know what that flat tone meant. Raunu, who’d seen combat since before Skarnu was born, did. Instead of asking where the other peasant had gone, he found the right question on the first try: “What happened to him?”

That made Merkela stop scattering grain and come to alertness herself. Skarnu answered, “Night and fog.” He explained how he’d found the words painted on Dauktu’s door, and what he’d discovered when he went into the farmhouse.

“Simanu’s vengeance, eh?” Raunu looked unhappy. “Did they pick him because he was one of us, or just because they pulled his name out of a hat? And if they wanted to avenge Simanu, why didn’t