Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“It’s not right,” Obilot said savagely. “With your songs, you did as much as anybody to get the Algarvians out of Grelz. The redheads must’ve thought so, or they wouldn’t have wanted to boil you. But what thanks do you get from your own side? Back in the woods, they were going to arrest you or kill you.”

With another shrug, Garivald answered, “When have you seen a peasant win? Not with our own kings, not with the redheads, not ever.” He didn’t even sound bitter. What point, when he told simple truth?

A youngster who might have been the tapman’s little brother or son brought in more wood and threw it on the fire. A couple of people in the tavern clapped their hands. The young man grinned, taken by surprise. The wood, well-seasoned pine, burned hot and bright.

“We’ve got the right table,” Obilot said, and turned toward the flames. Their reflections danced in her eyes. Garivald was about to do the same when somebody new came in from outside.

“Close the door, curse you,” someone inside said. “You’re letting out the heat.”

Garivald started to chime in, but the words never passed his lips. Instead, he turned his back on the door and leaned toward the fire, as Obilot had done. In a whisper even he had trouble even he had trouble hearing above the crackling flames, he said, “That’s Tantris who just walked in.”

“Tantris! What’s he doing here?” Obilot’s face went hard and feral. “He’s supposed to be off in the woods seventy-five miles east of here. The only reason he’d come to Tolk…”

“Is because he knows what we look like,” Garivald finished for her.

“He knows whatyou look like, the whoreson,” Obilot said. “He’s got to be after you. I don’t count for anything, not to the likes of him.”

She was bound to be right. When Garivald had slipped out of the woods with her and headed back toward Zossen without pursuit, he’d thought the Unkerlanters were willing to let him alone. That seemed a mistake, a bad mistake.

“I led fighters who didn’t take orders straight fromKingSwemmel,” he said. “I made songs people liked, songs that made people want to fight the redheads. This is how my own kingdom pays me back.”

Mezentio’s men had been ready to kill him. Now Swemmel’s were, too. The knowledge tore at him, as if he’d set his foot in a trap. And maybe he had. He sipped spirits and watched Tantris out of the corner of his eye.

The soldier didn’t want to be recognized for what he was; he wore a dark blue tunic of civilian cut rather than the rock-gray uniform tunic in which Garivald had always seen him in the woods. He glanced Garivald and Obilot’s way, but gave no sign of knowing who they were. After a moment, Garivald realized the two of them were silhouetted against the flames in the fireplace. He stayed where he was. Tantris bought a beaker of ale and stood at the bar drinking it.

Obilot kept her voice very low. “Is it true,” she said, “that now there are irregulars-Grelzer irregulars, I mean-fighting for the Algarvians in the lands our armies have taken back from them?”

“I’ve heard it, the same as you have,” Garivald answered. “I don’t know whether it’s true… but I’ve heard it.”

“Till that cursed Tantris walked thought the door, I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” Obilot said. “But now, do you know, I almost begin to understand.” Considering how she felt about the redheads, that was no small statement.

“A good many peasants fled east when Mezentio’s men had to retreat,” Garivald said. “I used to think they were the ones in bed with the Algarvians. I guess a lot of them were, but maybe not all.” If he hadn’t got in trouble with the redheads for his songs, his life in Zossen wouldn’t have been too very different under them from what it had been before the war. That was a judgment on Algarve and Unkerlant both, he supposed.

Obilot turned her head ever so slightly toward Tantris. “What are we going to do about him?”

“Hopehe goes away,” Garivald answered. Tantris drank his ale. He bought a chunk of chewy bread and dipped it into the bowl of coarse salt the tapman kept on the bar. Bite by bite, the bread disappeared. He washed down each bite with another swig of ale. Garivald might have done the same. He had done the same, many times.

The tavern door opened again. This newcomer, unlike Tantris, did not try to disguise what he was: a military mage. Two troopers tramped in behind him. He strode up to the tapman and snapped, “Let me see your cashbox, fellow.”

“Why should I?” the tapman asked. “Are you robbing me?”

“Why?” the mage echoed. “I’ll tell you why. Treason toKingSwemmel , that’s why.” He dropped a silver coin on the bar. It rang sweetly. “This is money of Raniero, the false king, the king of traitors. By the law of similarity, like calls to like. This foul coin calls to one in your box. Whoever harbors money of Raniero is a traitor to His Majesty.”

Garivald’s blood ran cold. The fellow behind the bar had to say no more than, I got it from him, and point, and he would find himself in more trouble than Tantris could give him. What the tapman did say was, “It’s here, under the bar.” He reached down. But what he came out with wasn’t the cashbox, but a stout bludgeon he doubtless used to break up tavern brawls. He didn’t break one up this time. With a shout, he brought the bludgeon down on the military mage’s head.

With another shout, somebody else threw his mug at one of the Unker-lanter troopers behind the mage. It shattered against the back of the soldier’s skull. He went down with a groan. Somebody shouted, “KingSwemmel!” and punched the man who’d thrown the mug. Somebody else shouted, “Powers below eatKingSwemmel!”-a shout nobody would have dared to raise before the Algarvian invasion-and kicked the fellow who’d yelled the king’s name.

In the blink of an eye, the desperate struggle between the Grelzers who’d fought for Swemmel and those who hated him broke out anew in the tavern. The weapons weren’t so fancy as those of the great war still wracking Unkerlant, but that made the battle no less ferocious. People kicked and punched and grappled and bit. Knives flashed in the firelight.

And Garivald and Obilot made their way through the chaos toward the door as best they could. He punched whoever got in his way, regardless of which side the fellow was on. “Let’s see Tantris track us throughthis” he told Obilot, who’d just kicked a man where it did the most good. A savage grin on her face, she nodded.

A jar full of potent spirits flew into the fireplace and smashed. The spirits caught fire as they splashed out. Flames clung to an overturned chair close by. “Fire!” somebody shrieked. Then everybody was fleeing-everybody who could.

Garivald and Obilot weren’t the only ones who ran not just out of the tavern but away from it as fast as they could. “We got away,” she panted. “This time,” he answered, and ran harder.

The sun rose earlier and set later these days. Before long, the equinox would come to the Naantali district. In much of the world, that would mean spring, and so it would here-formally. Pekka was from Kajaani, which lay even farther south. She knew the snow and ice wouldn’t start melting for quite a while after that.

If anything, the weather here was worse than in Kajaani, a port city that had the ocean to soften its climate. In most circumstances, Pekka would have complained about that. Not now. As she rode in the sleigh from the hostel to the blockhouse, she turned to Fernao and said, “I dread the spring thaw.”

She’d spoken Kuusaman. The Lagoan mage nodded and answered in classical Kaunian: “I understand why-all this will turn to mud, and we shall have a demon of a time moving from where we stay to where we need to go to keep on with our experiments.”