Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

Ealstan waved around the flat. The wave encompassed thick carpets, fine furnishing, books, paintings, drums and viols and flutes. “The other thing you have to ask yourself is, how much is all this worth to you?”

Ethelhelm gave him an odd look. “I never thought I’d see my conscience sitting in a chair talking to me. What do you think I’ve been asking myself ever since the Algarvians came to me? It’s not an easy question.”

“Why not?” It was easy for Ealstan.

Now Ethelhelm did look exasperated. “Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because I’ve worked a long, long time, and I’ve worked really hard all that time, to get where I am. And now I have to throw it away by making the redheads angry? That’s why it’s not easy.”

Ealstan hadn’t spent a long time working toward anything. The only thing he had that he couldn’t bear to give up was Vanai, and he’d already given up everything else for her. He got to his feet. “I think I’d better go.”

“Aye, I think maybe you’d better,” Ethelhelm replied. “I haven’t told them we would yet, you know. I just haven’t told them we wouldn’t, either.”

With a nod, Ealstan left. As usual, he noted the stairwell didn’t stink of cabbage or of anything worse. As much as all the fine furnishings in Ethel-helm’s flat, that reminded him of what the band leader had to lose.

Heat smote when he left the block of flats. Summer in Eoforwic, like summer in most of Forthweg, was the savage season of the year, the sun beating down from high, high in the sky. Tempers could fray. His almost had, and so had Ethelhelm’s. He sighed, seeing himself in Ethelhelm’s place, listening to himself telling the Algarvians they had no business raising Plegmund’s Brigade, let alone expecting him to play for it.

But he was his father’s son, too. After a moment, he laughed at himself- easy enough for a man with nothing to lose. Ethelhelm had rather more than that. Ealstan had already known as much. This whole block of flats told him as much. Ethelhelm didn’t want to lose it, either. Ealstan hadn’t known that, but he did now. He wondered how the bandleader would get around it, and if Ethelhelm could. For Ethelhelm’s sake and his own, he hoped so.

He passed a recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund’s Brigade, and another, and another. The Algarvians made sure there were plenty about. Had Sidroc finally joined it, as he’d kept saying he would, or had he found better sense somewhere? For his cousin’s sake, Ealstan hoped that last was true.

He walked by another one of those ubiquitous broadsheets. This one, though, had ALGARVE’s DOGS scrawled across it in bold strokes of charcoal. Seeing that made Ealstan smile. In spite of Plegmund’s Brigade, not all, or even most, of his countrymen had any use for their occupiers.

He saw several more defaced broadsheets on his way back toward his own block of flats. They all had different slogans on them: either they’d been written by different hands or by one fellow with a lot on his mind. One of the slogans read, STOP KILLING KAUNIANS! Ealstan almost burst into tears when he spied it. He sometimes wondered if he were the only Forthwegian who cared. Being reminded he wasn’t felt good.

A Forthwegian dashed round a corner and ran toward and then past him with what looked like a woman’s leather handbag pressed to his side. And so it was: a moment later, a couple of Algarvian constables, whistles shrilling, rounded that same corner in hot pursuit. They pointed at the fleeing Forthwegian and shouted, “Stopping thief!”

No one on the crowded street showed the least interest in stopping the thief. Cursing, sweating, the Algarvians pounded after him. They didn’t get far before somebody stuck out a leg and tripped the one who was in front. His partner fell over him. Both of them howled.

They got up with filthy tunics and with bleeding elbows and knees-the kilts they wore made their scrapes worse by leaving knees bare. Each of them yanked his bludgeon off his belt and started belaboring the Forthwegian they thought had tripped them. After he went down with a groan, the Algarvians started beating all the Forthwegians they could reach. One of them swung at Ealstan, but missed.

And then a Forthwegian leaped on one of the constables. The other Algarvian dropped his bludgeon, grabbed for his stick, and blazed the Forthwegian. The fellow let out a shriek that echoed through the street. The redhead he’d jumped scrambled to his feet.

A rock-probably a pried-up cobblestone-whizzed past the Algarvians’ heads. An instant later, another rock caught one of them in the ribs. They both started blazing then, blazing and shouting for help at the top of their lungs. Ealstan had no idea whether any help for them was close by. He didn’t wait around to find out, either, especially not after a beam zipped past his head and burned a scorched, smoking hole in the wooden front of the leather-goods shop by which he was standing.

Forthwegians fell, screaming and thrashing. But more rocks flew, too, along with curses. One of the Algarvians went down when a stone caught him in front of the ear. His comrade stood over him, still blazing. Then someone tackled the standing constable from behind. Baying like wolves, the mob swarmed over both redheads.

Ealstan cheered to see them go down. But he didn’t linger to help stomp them to death. He hadn’t seen a riot in Eoforwic, but the stories he’d heard about the one that had happened not long before Vanai and he came to the city made him want to get away rather than join in. His own countrymen would have things all their own way for a little while, but then the Algarvians would gather enough men to restore order-and they wouldn’t much care whom they killed while they were doing it, either.

Breaking glass announced that the Forthwegians were starting to plunder the shops along the street. Ealstan stepped up his pace, hoping to put as much distance between himself and trouble as he could. He didn’t like to think about Forthwegians robbing other Forthwegians, but he’d heard stories about that, too. He hadn’t believed all of them. Now he realized he might also have been wrong about that.

He’d just turned onto his own street when a couple of squads of Algarvian constables tramped up it, every one of them looking as grim as any soldiers he’d ever seen. The redheads carried infantry-style sticks, not the shorter, less powerful weapons they usually used. Their eyes swung toward him in frightening unison. He shrank away from them. He couldn’t help himself. Had he given them the least excuse, they would have blazed him, and he knew it.

When he got up to his flat, Vanai exclaimed, “Powers above, what’s going on out there?”

“Riot,” he answered succinctly. “For once, you can be glad you’re holed up in here. I’m going to stay right here, too, till things quiet down or till I have to go out for food.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that sounded less than heroic. After listening to himself again, he decided he didn’t care.

Bembo and Oraste paced along the edge of the district into which Gromheort’s Kaunians and those from the surrounding countryside had been crowded. As long as the blonds stayed inside the district, everything was fine. When they didn’t, the Algarvian constables had to make them regret it.

“Supposed to be a tough time over in that Eoforwic place,” Bembo remarked. “For a couple of days there, I was wondering if they were going to stick us on a caravan and send us over there to help put out the fire.”

With a shrug, his partner answered, “Wouldn’t matter to me. If the Kaunians get out of line, we kick them around. If the Forthwegians get out of line, we kick them around, too.”

“You hate everybody, don’t you?” Bembo meant the question sardonically, but it came out sounding half admiring.