a little work.
“We’re looking for somebody,” the lieutenant said, speaking slowly and clearly.
“What say?” Giurgiu kept right on acting like a moron--an outsize and possibly dangerous moron, for he leaned on the handle of an axe bigger and heavier than those of the other woodcutters.
“We’re looking for someone,” the Algarvian repeated. He sounded as if his patience was wearing thin. Staring from one woodcutter to another, he asked, “Does anybody here speak Algarvian or even a civilized dialect of Sibian?”
No one admitted to that. Under other circumstances, Cornelu might have, but not now. He wondered which man in particular Mezentio’s soldiers were looking for. He didn’t think the Algarvians knew he was here, but. ..
“What say?” Giurgiu repeated, in dialect even broader than before. He didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t even come close. Cornelu admired his straight face.
“Bunch of bumpkins, sir,” one of the Algarvian troopers said. “Bunch of ugly, stupid bumpkins.”
Maybe he was just saying what he thought. Maybe he was trying to make the Sibians angry enough to show they understood Algarvian. Maybe he was doing both at once; Cornelu wouldn’t have put it past him.
Whatever the trooper was doing, the officer shook his head. “No,” he said in tones of cheerful unconcern. “They’re just lying. They can follow me well enough, or some of them can. Well, we’ll pay plenty of silver if they bring us this chap called Cornelu. And if they don’t, we’ll hunt him down sooner or later. Come on, boys.” He gathered up the soldiers by eye and headed up the track past the woodcutters.
The woodcutters returned to work. Cornelu kept on splitting rounds of lumber. He didn’t look up from what he was doing. He seldom did, but now even less than usual. Whenever he straightened and looked around, he found other men’s eyes on him. Cornelu wasn’t the rarest Sibian name, but it was a long way from the most common.
At supper--a big bowl of oatmeal mush with a little salt pork stirred in--Giurgiu strode over and sat down beside him on a fallen pine. “You the fellow Mezentio’s hounds are sniffing after?”
“I don’t know.” Stolidly, Cornelu spooned up some more oatmeal. “I could be, I suppose, but maybe not, too.” He wished he’d given a false name when he joined this gang.
Giurgiu nodded. “Thought I’d ask. Fellow who fights like you likely learned how in the army or navy. Somebody who learned there might be somebody those loudmouthed fools’d want to work over.”
“Aye, that’s so.” Cornelu still didn’t look up from his oatmeal. He didn’t want to meet Giurgiu’s eyes--and he was hungry enough to make such bad manners seem nothing out of the ordinary. All the woodcutters ate like that; the work they did made them eat like that. Between a couple of mouthfuls, Cornelu added, “I’m not the only one who knows those tricks, though. There’s you, for instance.”
“Oh, aye, there’s me, all right.” Giurgiu’s big head bobbed up and down, almost as if he were once more making himself out to be more rustic than he really was. “But that Algarvian didn’t know my name. He knew yours.”
Anger flared in Cornelu. “Turn me in, then. If I’m the one they want, they’ll probably pay you plenty. They’d like us to be sweet. ‘Sibians are an Algarvic folk, too.’ “ With savage sarcasm, he quoted the broadsheet he’d seen down in Tirgoviste town.
“Bugger that with an axe handle,” Giurgiu said. “If they loved us so bloody much, they shouldn’t have invaded us. That’s how I see things, anyway. But there’s liable to be some as see ‘em different.”
“Traitors,” Cornelu said bitterly.
Giurgiu didn’t argue with him. All he said was, “They’re there. You try and pretend they aren’t, it’ll cost you.” He got to his feet, towering over Cornelu. “Try to stay warm tonight. I’ve got a feeling the weather’s going to turn nasty by sunup.”
Cornelu had the same feeling. He wouldn’t have expected it in a man who spent all his life on land. The weather was often bad at this season of the year; Tirgoviste lay far to the south, and they were well up in the hills. Even on rare clear days, the sun hardly seemed to have risen before it set again in the northwest. When clouds covered the sky, murk and night were hardly distinguishable.
Like everyone else, Cornelu had plenty of thick wool blankets. He swaddled himself in them, curling up close to the cookfire. On nights like this, it burned till daybreak, even if that meant
