Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

“I’m a fornicating constable,” Oraste answered. “It’s my fornicating job to hate everybody. Back in Tricarico, I hated Algarvians. I can still think of some Algarvians I hate, matter of fact.”

Bembo hoped Oraste was talking about Sergeant Pesaro. He didn’t ask, though. Had Oraste’s disdain been aimed at him, the other constable wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him so. Instead, Bembo said, “How are we supposed to win the war if the places we’ve conquered keep giving us trouble?”

His partner shrugged again. “We kill enough of those whoresons who think they’re so cursed smart, the rest will get the idea pretty stinking quick. One thing about dead men: they hardly ever talk back to you.”

A live man, a scrawny Kaunian with a leather apron over his tunic and trousers, came out of his shop and beckoned to the constables. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. When a Kaunian actually wanted something to do with them, something fishy was liable to be going on. “What is it?” Bembo growled in his own language; if the blond didn’t speak Algarvian, the powers below were welcome to him.

But the Kaunian did, and pretty well, too: “Can you gentlemen please help me with a quarrel I am having with my neighbor?”

An unpleasant light blazed in Oraste’s eyes. Bembo understood what it meant. The Kaunian shopkeeper, perhaps luckily for him, didn’t. If Oraste decided this fellow was right-or if he could pay-his neighbor would regret it. If the neighbor had a better case-or more silver-this blond would rue the day he was born. Either way, Oraste would end up happy.

“What’s he doing to you?” Bembo asked. “Or what does he think you’re doing to him?”

The shopkeeper started to explain. A moment later, another Kaunian popped out of the shop next door and started screaming at him. This fellow’s Algarvian was worse than the first man’s, but he made up in excitement what he lacked in grammar. Bembo smiled to listen to him. Even if he didn’t talk any too well, in a way he sounded very Algarvian indeed.

Before long, both Kaunians were dropping broad hints about what they would do if only things were decided in their favor. Bembo smiled some more. This was shaping up as a profitable afternoon. And then, just when the excitable blond was about to make a real offer, Oraste gave Bembo a shot in the ribs with his elbow. The other constable pointed. “Look at that old bugger. If he’s not sneaking back after he was out when he wasn’t supposed to be, what is he doing?”

Sure enough, the silver-haired Kaunian was trying to edge past the constables and the argument and go deeper into the part of town where he was allowed to be. Since Bembo and Oraste were only paces inside the edge of that district, the Kaunian had to be coming from outside it. A schoolmaster’s logic couldn’t have cut more sharply.

“Hold up there, pal,” Bembo called to the man, who turned back to him with surprise and alarm on his face. A moment later, Bembo was surprised, too: surprised that he recognized the fellow. “It’s that old son of a whore from Oyngestun,” he said to Oraste.

“Well, kiss my arse if you’re not right,” Oraste said. “I knew he was mouthy. I didn’t know he was sneaky, too.”

Bembo advanced on the Kaunian. So did Oraste. Behind them, the two shopkeepers both exclaimed. The constables ignored them. “All right, pal,” Bembo said. “What were you doing sliding through the parts of Gromheort where you’re not supposed to go?”

“I was looking for word of my granddaughter,” the Kaunian answered in his slow, precise Algarvian. “I am concerned for her safety.”

Oraste laughed. “She’s a Kaunian, right, same as you are? None of your buggers are safe. You sure aren’t safe, old man.” He pulled his bludgeon off his belt and twirled it by its leather thong.

The scar where Bembo had struck the Kaunian on the road from Oyngestun to Gromheort was still bright pink. If he needed another lesson, Oraste looked eager to arrange it. The Kaunian licked his lips. He saw what was on Oraste’s face, too. One of his hands slid into a trouser pocket. Coins jingled. He said, “You never really saw me outside this quarter, did you?”

“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Although the Kaunian had proved pretty dense before, he had no trouble figuring out what that meant. He gave Bembo and Oraste enough silver to make them decide they hadn’t seen him sneaking back after all. And then, showing he really could learn, he got out of there in a hurry, to keep the constables from beating him even after he’d paid them.

They turned back to the two Kaunian shopkeepers, only to discover the blonds had made up their quarrel. Oraste hefted his bludgeon. “I ought to bloody both of you for wasting our time,” he growled.

Both the shopkeepers started jingling coins. Bembo, a mild enough sort most of the time, wouldn’t have got so much out of them. They were, however, plainly scared to death of Oraste-and they couldn’t very well bribe him without bribing Bembo, too. The plump constable’s belt pouch grew full and nicely rounded.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said as he and Oraste returned to their beat. Behind them, the two Kaunians started shouting at each other again. Bembo still had a miserable time following their language, but he thought the excitable one was berating the other for calling the constables.

Oraste spat on the cobblestones. “Oh, aye, it’s some silver,” he said, “but what can we spend silver on? Not much, not in this rathole of a town. I’d sooner have broken some heads.”

“You can always spend money in a tavern,” Bembo said. “If you feel like it, you can break heads in a tavern, too.”

“It’s not the same,” Oraste said. “Breaking heads in a tavern is just brawling. If I do it on the job, I get paid for it.”

Bembo had known a fair number of constables with that attitude, but few so open about it as Oraste. Preferring bribes to brawls, Bembo said, “There’ll be other chances. The way we’ve stuffed all these Kaunians into this little tiny stretch of town, they’re going to be at each other’s throats all the time, so we’ll get plenty to do.”

Oraste looked down a cross street toward the heart of the Kaunian district in Gromheort. The blonds had set up a market along both sides of the street, which was too narrow to begin with. Bembo wondered what they sold one another; none of them could have had very much.

“Aye, they are packed pretty tight,” Oraste allowed. “I just hope there’s no pestilence that starts going through ‘em.”

“Why?” Bembo said in some surprise; his partner usually showed no concern whatever for Kaunians. “Because the pestilence might spread to us, you mean?”

“Oh, that, too,” Oraste said, though he didn’t seem to have thought of it himself. “But what I mostly meant is, a pestilence would kill off the lousy blonds before we got the chance to use their life energy against the Unkerlanters or wherever else we need it.”

“Oh,” Bembo said. “That’s true.” And so it was, even if his stomach did a slow flipflop every time he thought about it. “I wish we could have beaten King Swemmel without using magic like that.”

“So do I, on account of it would have been easier on us,” Oraste said. “But the more Kaunians we get rid of, the better off everybody’ll be after we finally win the war. They’ve been stepping on our faces for too long. Now it’s our turn.”

Bembo couldn’t disagree, not out loud. Oraste would have thought him a slacker or, worse, a closet Kaunian-lover. He wasn’t. He had no use for the blonds. He hadn’t back in Tricarico, and he didn’t here in Gromheort, either. But he was too easygoing to enjoy massacre.