Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“The rest of the company, you mean,” the other soldier said.

Both statements amounted to about the same thing. A couple of run-ins with the redheads had melted what was a regiment on the books to a company’s worth of men. Leudast hoped the Algarvians who’d faced his regiment had melted in like proportion, but wouldn’t have bet on it.

He stumbled along, sticking a foot into the muck every now and again himself. When he would cock his head to listen to the redheads’ progress, the noise they made got fainter and fainter. He nodded to himself. No, they couldn’t follow the path in the dark.

Somewhere before midnight, the ground grew firm under his feet no matter where he set them. Swamp gave way to meadow. What was left of the regiment waited there. Leudast lay down on the sweet-smelling grass and fell asleep at once. He’d come through another one.

In summertime, after the hucksters and farmers and artisans left the market square in Skrunda, young Jelgavans took it over. By the light of torches and sorcerously powered lamps, they would promenade and flirt. Sometimes, they would find places where the lights didn’t reach and do other things.

Talsu and Gailisa headed for the market square hand in hand. Talsu walked more freely these days; the knife wound an Algarvian soldier had given him in the grocery Gailisa’s father ran still troubled him, but not so much as it had. He said, “At least the cursed redheads let us keep our lights. Down in Valmiera, everything goes dark at night so enemy dragons can’t see where to drop their eggs.”

“No enemy dragons around these parts,” Gailisa said. She lowered her voice and leaned over to whisper in Talsu’s ear: “The only enemies in these parts wear kilts.”

“Oh, aye,” Talsu agreed. With her breath soft and warm and moist on his earlobe, he would have agreed to just about anything she said. But he might not have had that fierce growl in his voice. He’d reckoned the redheads enemies long before one of them stuck a knife in him, and had been part of Jelgava’s halfhearted attack on Algarve before the Algarvians overran his kingdom.

Into the square he and Gailisa strolled, to see and to be seen. They weren’t the chief attractions, nor anything close to it. Rich men’s sons and daughters didn’t stroll. They strutted and swaggered and displayed, as much to show off their expensive tunics and trousers and hats as to exhibit themselves.

Gailisa hissed and pointed. “Look at her, the shameless creature,” she said, clicking her tongue between her teeth. “Flaunting her bare legs like a, like an I don’t know what.”

“Like an Algarvian,” Talsu said grimly, though he didn’t mind the way the rich girl’s kilt displayed her shapely legs. To keep Gailisa from thinking he was enjoying the spectacle too much, he also pointed. “And look at that fellow there, the one with the mustache. He’s as blond as we are, but he’s in a kilt, too.”

“Disgraceful,” Gailisa said. “What’s the world coming to when Kaunian folk dress up in barbarian costumes?”

“Nothing good,” Talsu said. “No, nothing good at all.”

Something new had been added to the promenade since Algarve invaded Jelgava and King Donalitu fled for Lagoas: redheaded soldiers leaning against the walls and eyeing the pretty girls along with the young men of Skrunda. One of the Algarvians beckoned to the girl in the kilt. When she came over, he chucked her under the chin, kissed her on the cheek, and put his arm around her. She snuggled against him, her face shining and excited.

“Little hussy,” Gailisa snarled. “I want to slap her. Shameless doesn’t begin to say what she is.” She stuck her nose in the air.

Talsu had been looking at the girl’s legs again. If kilts hadn’t been an Algarvian style, he would have said they had something going for them … for women. As far as he was concerned, the young Jelgavan man in a kilt simply looked like a fool.

A Jelgavan in proper trousers came by, squeezing music out of a concertina. The Algarvians made horrible faces at the noise. One of them shouted at him: “Going away! Bad musics.”

But the Jelgavan shook his head. “My people like it,” he said, and half a dozen Jelgavans raised their voices in agreement. They far outnumbered the redheads, and the soldiers weren’t carrying sticks. A fellow in a sergeant’s uniform spoke to the music critic, who didn’t say anything more. The concertina player squeezed out a happy tune.

Gailisa tossed her head. “That’ll teach ‘em,” she said.

“Aye, it will.” Talsu pointed toward a fellow trundling a barrel along on a little wheeled cart. “Would you like a cup of wine?”

“Why not?” she said. “It’ll wash the taste of that mattress-backed chippy out of my mouth.”

The wine seller dipped up two cups from his barrel. The wine was of the plainest-an ordinary red, flavored with oranges and limes and lemons. But it was wet and it was cool. Talsu poured it down and held out the cheap earthenware cup for a refill. The wine seller pocketed the coin Talsu gave him, then plied his tin tipper once more.

As Talsu sipped the citrus-laced wine, he glanced at the Algarvians in the market square. He knew it was foolish, but he did it anyhow. He might recognize the one he’d hit in the nose in the grocer’s shop, but he had no idea what the one who’d stabbed him looked like. A redhead-that was all he knew.

Gailisa was glancing across the market square, toward the other side of town. “It still doesn’t seem right,” he said.

“Huh? What doesn’t?” Talsu asked. So many things in Skrunda didn’t seem right these days, he had trouble figuring out which one she meant.

“That the Algarvians knocked down the old arch,” Gailisa answered. “It had been here more than a thousand years, since the days of the Kaunian Empire, and it hadn’t done anybody any harm in all that time. They didn’t have any business knocking it down.”

“Ah. The arch. Aye.” Talsu nodded. He’d been running an errand to that side of town when a couple of Algarvian military mages brought it down with well-placed eggs. He hadn’t thought much about the arch-which commemorated an imperial Kaunian victory over long-dead Algarvian tribesmen-while it stood, but he too missed it now that it was gone.

Maybe the wine he’d drunk made him say, “The arch,” louder than he’d intended. A fellow a few feet away heard him and also looked toward the place where the monument had stood. He said, “The arch,” too, and he said it loud on purpose.

“The arch.” This time, a couple of people said it.

“The arch. The arch! The arch?’ Little by little, the chant began to fill the square. The concertina player echoed it with two notes of his own. The Algarvian soldiers started watching the crowd of Jelgavans in a new way, looking for enemies rather than pretty girls.

One of the redheads, a lieutenant wearing a tunic Talsu’s father had sewn for him, spoke in Jelgavan: “The arch is down. Not going up again. No use complaining. Go home.”

“The arch! The arch! The arch!” The cry kept on, and got louder and louder. Talsu and Gailisa grinned at each other as they shouted. They’d found something King Mezentio’s men didn’t like.

Like it the Algarvians certainly didn’t. They huddled together in a compact band. They’d come to the market square to have a good time, not to fight. The promenading Jelgavans badly outnumbered them. If things went from shouting to fighting, the unarmed redheads were liable to have a thin time of it.

In an experimental sort of way, Talsu kicked at one of the cobbles in the square. It didn’t stir. He kicked it again, harder, and felt it give a little under his shoe. If he needed to pry it out of the ground and fling it at the Algarvians, he could. If he wanted to, he could. And he knew he couldn’t be the only Jelgavan in the crowd having such thoughts.