Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Bembo went past the same sorts of warning signs he would have seen in Gromheort. The Kaunian district here looked much the same as Gromheort’s, too, though it was larger. He watched Kaunian women’s backsides, as the blonds went around in trousers. So did Delminio. They noticed each other doing it, and they both grinned. “I think I can manage here,” Bembo said. His new partner nodded. Bembo wondered if he could find a Kaunian wench for himself. It might not be too hard.

Up till the time when the redheads swept through the Kaunian quarter of Eoforwic, Vanai had been through only one roundup. And back then, she hadn’t even known what the Algarvian constables were doing when they took Kaunians out of Oyngestun. They’d told soothing lies then: they’d said they were sending people west as laborers. Some of her fellow villagers had even gone with them of their own free will.

It wasn’t like that anymore. The surviving Kaunians knew the Algarvians wanted them for one thing and one thing only: their life energy. And so, when the redheads swarmed into the Kaunian district, the blonds did their best to hide.

The roundup, of course, came without warning. Anyone the hunters caught on the street was simply nabbed and grabbed and hauled away. But the captured Kaunians’ cries of despair and the Algarvians’ shouts of triumph warned others of the raid. Like any hunted animals, most of the Kaunians who weren’t caught in the open had holes in which to hide.

Vanai was no exception. After she was captured and brought into the Kaunian district, she’d expected something like this to happen sooner or later-probably sooner. And so she’d gone exploring in the block of flats where the redheads had put her. Waiting quietly in her flat for them to come get her and take her away… She shook her head. By the powers above, I’m not going to make it easy for them, she thought.

Exploring had been easier because so many of the flats stood empty. She didn’t like to think about that. But it gave her a lot more choices than she would have had otherwise.

She’d found a good spot in a vacant ground-floor flat: a closet that had a lot more room than it seemed to, and one where a searcher peering in, even with a lamp, wouldn’t be able to spy her. He would have to step all the way into the closet to notice it took an unexpected dogleg. Whoever’d made it that way might have had a hidey-hole in mind.

When the first terrified cries rang out, Vanai knew at once what they meant, what they had to mean. She wasted not an instant. She had to get downstairs and into her hiding place before constables started swarming through the building. If she didn’t, she was ruined. The baby she carried made her awkward and slow, but she forced herself to hurry downstairs anyhow.

More Kaunians, many more, were going up than down. “You fool, it’s death on the streets!” a man said as she pushed past him, moving against the tide.

He was bound to be right, of course. But Vanai wasn’t heading for the streets, though she didn’t say so. She burst out of the stairwell and went down the hallway toward that empty flat at a lumbering trot.

Just outside the open door, panic nearly froze her. What if someone else has found this place, too? It won’t hold two, and I won’t have time to go looking anywhere else.

Almost moaning in terror, she dashed back to the closet. No one cried out in fear even greater than hers, believing her to be one of the hunters rather than the hunted. And no one shouted for her to go away, either. She still had the place to herself.

“Powers above be praised,” she gasped, making herself as comfortable as she could in the little hidden niche.

Only then did another bad thought strike her: if this hiding place was so splendid, why did this flat stand empty? The redheads must have caught whoever had been living here before. Would constables come casually walking in, check the closet, and take her away? She couldn’t run, not any more. It was too late for that.

Footsteps in the hallway and loud Algarvian voices said she had indeed made her choice. Now she would have to live-or die-with it. “Miserable blonds,” a man growled, his voice sounding as if it came from right outside the doorway to the flat in which she cowered. “Finding the lousy buggers is getting to be like pulling teeth.”

“We’ve got to do it, though,” another Algarvian answered. He might have been talking about any hard, not particularly pleasant job… till he went on, “The Forthwegians here won’t miss them, anyhow.”

“Well, of course they won’t,” the first constable said, as if his friend were belaboring the obvious. And then that first redhead’s voice came frominside the flat: “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Vanai shivered. She forced herself to stop-it might make a noise. She tried not even to breathe.

“Not bloody likely we’ll flush anybody out of this place-Kaunians usually like to run upstairs, not hide down low.” The second Algarvian spoke now as the voice of experience.

“I know, I know,” his pal said. “We’ve got to go through the motions, though.” A piece of furniture went over with a crash. The Algarvian grunted. “Nothing there. Let me check this closet here, and then we can go on upstairs, like you said.”

He spoke his last few words just outside the closet where Vanai hid. The baby growing inside her chose that moment to kick. The unexpected motion within her made her want to jump. It made her want to scream. She did neither. She bit down hard on her lower lip and waited in dark, dusty silence.

Then she wanted to scream again; for the silence, while it remained dusty, was no longer so dark. That Algarvian had a lamp, which he used to illuminate as much of the closet as he could from the entrance to it. Just for a moment, light touched the tip of Vanai’s right shoe. She started to jerk it back, but checked herself. Motion and sound could betray her, too.

“Anything?” the second Algarvian asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” the first one answered. The hateful light receded. “Now we can go on upstairs and get down to business.”

“Right,” his friend said, “Here, I’ll paint a cross on the front door to keep anybody else from wasting his time.” The two sets of footsteps receded.

I’m safe, Vanai thought dizzily. For a little while, I’m safe. Now she could shake. Once she started, she discovered she had a hard time stopping.

And, just because she’d escaped the roundup for the time being didn’t mean the other Kaunians in the block of flats were so lucky. She heard Algarvians hauling them downstairs, heard men cursing and begging, heard women shrieking in despair. Neither curses nor pleas nor shrieks had the slightest effect on the constables, except to annoy them. Then Vanai heard bludgeons striking flesh-which, if they didn’t quiet the curses and pleas, did turn them to shrieks.

“Well, that’s not a bad bag,” one Algarvian said to another in the ground-floor hallway.

“Not too bad, anyhow,” his companion agreed. “How close to quota are we?”

“How should I know?” the first man answered. “You think our officers tell me anything more than they tell you?”

“Fat chance,” the second man said. “Screw ‘em all.”

They’re just doing their job, Vanai thought again. They don’t much like the people who give them the work, but they do it. How can the? I don’t understand. Could anyone understand?

Silence returned. Vanai didn’t dare move. They’d said they were done with this block of flats, but had all of them left? If she came out before they had, she was sure they would be happy enough to scoop her up. How would she know? When could she be sure? She shook her head. She couldn’t be sure. When would she have to take a chance?