Everyone’s eyes swung toward Waddo. The firstman looked about ready to burst into tears. But he did what he had to do--in the most abject tones Garivald had heard even from his lips, he cried, “Have mercy, sir!”
“Mercy?” The Algarvian threw back his head and laughed. He spoke one word in his own language--probably translating for his men. They laughed, too, and their laughter was like the baying of wolves. “Mercy?” the redhead repeated. “What have any Unkerlanters ever done to deserve mercy?”
“These are not men of our village.” Waddo pointed at the captives as the Algarvian had. “By the powers above, they aren’t! If you don’t believe me, ask your own men who have been here for months. They will know.”
“He’s selling those two poor buggers to the Algarvians,” Garivald whispered to his wife.
“If he didn’t, he’d be selling all of us,” Annore whispered back. Reluctantly, Garivald nodded. He wouldn’t have wanted to stand in Waddo’s felt boots, not for all the money in the world.
And he wondered if Waddo’s betrayal of the Unkerlanter irregulars caught in the forest would go for naught. The Algarvian still seemed poised to order his men to start blazing. But the soldiers stationed in Zossen spoke up. They spoke up, naturally, in Algarvian, which Garivald didn’t understand. But his hopes rose when he saw how unhappy the leader of the combat troops looked. Algarvians always seemed to show just what was in their minds--one more reason they struck Garivald as strange, hardly human.
At last, the bad-tempered redhead who spoke Unkerlanter threw his hands in the air. He shouted something in his own language at the garrison troops. They all grinned. Garivald knew they’d helped save Zossen, not least because they wanted to go on living here, but
“We’ll still hang these lousy bandits,” the combat leader said. He jerked a thumb toward Waddo. “You! Aye, you, fat and ugly--you with the big mouth. Fetch me a coil of rope and be quick about it.”
Waddo gulped. He had no choice, not if he wanted Zossen to stay standing. “Aye,” he whispered, and limped away as fast as he could go. If he’d said he had no rope, the Algarvian would have blazed him on the spot--him and who could say how many others? He came back in a hurry, clutching a coil.
The hangings were worse than Garivald had imagined they could be. The Algarvians simply fastened nooses around their captives’ necks and tossed the ropes up over the top beam of the gibbet. Then they hauled the captives up off the ground to kick their lives away.
“This is what comes to anyone who tries to fight against Algarve,” the combat leader shouted while the Unkerlanters were still thrashing. “These swine deserved it. You’d better not deserve it. Now get out of here!”
Several people--not all women, by any means--had fainted in the snow. Garivald and Annore didn’t wait to see them revived. They fled back to their own hut as fast as they could. “What was it?” Syrivald asked. “What did they do?” Fear and curiosity warred on his face.
“Nothing,” Garivald mumbled. “They didn’t do anything.” His son would find out it was a lie as soon as he went outside; the Algarvians had been wrapping the ropes around and around the top beam of the gibbet, to keep the corpses hanging on display. But Garivald couldn’t bring himself to talk about what had happened, not yet.
Syrivald turned to his mother. “What did they do? You can tell me!”
“They killed two men,” Annore answered bleakly. “Now don’t ask me any more questions, do you hear?” Her voice warned what would happen if Syrivald did. He nodded. He understood that tone.
Annore found the jar of spirits and took a long pull at it. “Leave some for me,” Garivald warned. He wanted to drink himself into oblivion, too. After another swig, Annore passed him the jar. They kept passing it back and forth till they fell asleep side by side.
When Garivald woke, he almost wished the Algarvians had hanged him. His head pounded like a hammer on the smith’s anvil. His mouth tasted the way it would have if the livestock had fouled it. When he took a sip from the jar, his stomach loudly told him what a bad idea that was.
And, as soon as he was conscious, visions of the dead irregulars came flooding back. He couldn’t find a better reason for drinking himself blind again. He wanted to stay blind drunk till spring came, and maybe after that, too.
Annore looked no happier than he felt when she opened her eyes. She reached for the jar. He handed it to her. She drank as desperately as he had. With a grimace, she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her tunic. “It really happened,” she said.
“Aye, it did.” Garivald didn’t care for the sound of his own voice. He didn’t care for the answer he had to give her, either.
