more reluctantly, he opened it. Sure as sure, three Algarvian soldiers stood there shivering and trying to look fierce. Their own kingdom hadn’t given them proper cold-weather gear; they’d added hats and cloaks stolen from villagers to their short tunics and kilts. That made them look less uniform and, somehow, less ferocious. It didn’t make them look much warmer.
“We coming in,” one of them said in bad Unkerlanter. The other two pointed their sticks at Garivald, as if to tell him he’d better not complain.
He already knew that. “Well, come in if you’re coming,” he said gruffly. “Don’t stand there letting all the heat out.” Cold flowed over his feet and legs in waves. As soon as the tall redheaded soldiers were inside, he shut the door behind them.
One of them wrinkled his nose and spoke in his own language. The other two grinned. Garivaid didn’t know what they were grinning about and didn’t want to find out. These garrison soldiers had been in Zossen since the village was captured. Not all of them were bad fellows, not as people. He’d come to know them. That didn’t mean he wanted them in his house.
They were looking around. He didn’t like it when their eyes settled on Annore. The garrison troops lived up to the Algarvians’ name for lechery. Regardless of whether they carried sticks, if they aimed to torment his wife they’d have to kill him first. But, after a couple of leers, their gaze showed what they really had in mind.
“You giving us a pig,” said the one who spoke Unkerlanter. “You giving us a sheep, too. Or--” He gestured with his own weapon.
“Take them,” Garivaid said in disgust. Aye, he shouldn’t have said anything about how the Algarvians weren’t so good at robbing peasants as Unkerlanter inspectors were. The words came back to mock him. But even if he had to eat peas and beans and pickled cabbage till spring, he wouldn’t starve and neither would his family. “Take them,” he repeated. The sooner the Algarvians were out of the house, the smaller the chance they’d start looking toward Annore again.
They’d come prepared. One tied a rope around the sheep’s neck. The other two had a harder time catching the pig, but they managed. Both animals let out piteous sounds of protest when the redheads took them out into the snow, but they went. Garivaid closed and barred the door once the Algarvians were gone.
“Well,” he said with peasant fatalism, “the house isn’t so crowded now.” But fatalism went only so far. “Powers below eat the stinking thieves as they’ll eat my beasts!” he burst out.
“Aye, and may their bellies gripe,” Annore agreed.
A couple of days later, new Algarvian troops came stumbling into Zossen out of the west. They were leaner, tougher-looking men than the little squad of garrison soldiers: wolves rather than dogs. But they were sadly battered wolves, a couple of them wounded, all of them half frozen and weary unto death. After they’d paused to get warm and to eat--maybe some of Garivald’s pork and mutton--they went on, heading east. The soldiers they’d left behind began looking like worried dogs.
Dagulf came to visit in a state of high excitement. “Maybe our own men’U be coming back in a few days,” he said, sipping the mug of spirits Garivaid gave him. That was a thought worthy of getting a man out of his own house--and Dagulf’s wife nagged. He went on, “Maybe they’ll chase these raggedy kilted buggers back to Algarve where they belong.”
“That’d be good.” Garivaid was halfway to being drunk himself, and would have agreed to almost anything.
Dagulf had a scar on his cheek. It twisted his smile. “Aye, it would,” he said. “And then we can let people know who played along with the redheads. You know names. So do I. Not as bad here as some places, they say. Some places, lots of people are willing to lick Raniero’s Algarvian arse.”
But the folk of Zossen did not get the chance to inform on their collaborationist neighbors. No Unkerlanter soldiers fought their way into the village to slaughter the garrison or drive King Mezentio’s men back toward the border. Instead, struggling forward through the snow, half a dozen Algarvian behemoths and a company of footsoldiers camped in Zossen.
One of their officers, a young lieutenant, spoke Unkerlanter pretty well. At his order, the villagers had to assemble in the central square. “You wish we were gone, don’t you?” he said with an unpleasant smile. “You wish Swemmel’s men were here instead, don’t you? If they do come, how glad will you be to see them after they cut your throats to power their magecraft against us? Eh? Think on it.”
By the next morning, the Algarvians were gone, heading west to get into the fight. Garivald feared more would be coming, though. “He was lying, wasn’t he?” Annore said. Garivald only shrugged. He remembered the convicts who’d been sacrificed for the sorcerous energy to power Zossen’s crystal. He wished he didn’t, but he did. Who could say what Swemmel would or wouldn’t do to drive the redheads back?
When Krasta walked through the west wing of her mansion, the wing given over to the Algarvians who helped rule occupied Priekule, she knew at once that things were not as they should have been. On
