Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Rathar stared back stonily. Gurmun was an iron-arsed son of a whore, no doubt about it. But he got results. In war, that counted for more than anything else. “This is important, Brigadier,” Rathar said. “If everything goes well, it may prove as important as Sulingen. Have you gotthat?” Wide-eyed, Sigulf nodded. So did Rathar. “Good. See that you do. Gurmun’s right- you’d better not get in the way of this. Nothing and nobody will get in the way of this.”

Garivald kicked at the dirt. He was worn and sweaty and filthy and more frustrated than he’d ever been in his entire life. “It’s no good,” he said. “It’s just no cursed good.”

“We’ve done a lot,” Obilot said. She was every bit as tired and grimy as he was. “We can do more. Every day is longer than the one before. Planting time is always like this.”

“No.” Garivald shook his head. “I don’t care how much we do with hoes and spades and such. We’ll never get enough planted to bring in a crop we can live on-not all by ourselves, we won’t. We’ve got to have a donkey or an ox to pull a plow.”

“That means going into a village,” Obilot said. “Going into a village means getting noticed. And getting noticed means trouble for you. It’s liable to mean trouble for me, too. You’re higher up on the inspectors’ lists, aye, but who’s to say I’m not on ‘em with you? After all, I was fighting against the Algarvians without taking orders from any ofKingSwemmel ’s precious soldiers just the same as you were.”

“Every word of that is true,” Garivald said, “but none of it matters. If we’re going to starve for sure, then we have to take our chances with the villagers and with the inspectors, powers below eat ‘em all. They might recognize us, but they might not, too, and that’s the gamble we’re stuck with.”

He waited for her to tell him he was wrong, and for her to tell him exactly how he was wrong. They’d had this argument several times before. Obilot had always stayed dead set against stirring from this hut in the middle of nowhere. Now…

Now, with a long sigh, she said, “Maybe we do have to try. I still wish we didn’t. For one thing, we haven’t got much money-not enough for an ox, sure as sure.”

“We’ll make some,” Garivald said. “I was doing odd jobs in Tolk before Tantris, curse him, came sniffing around. Chopping wood, mucking out barns-there’s always work people would sooner pay somebody else to do than do inemselves. And you’re a fine hand with a needle. I saw that in the wood, where you had next to nothing to work with. If you have decent cloth, proper thread…”

Obilot sighed again. “All that helps, aye. But do you know what will help even more?”

“Tell me.” Now that Garivald had talked her around, or thought he had, he was more than willing to yield on as many of the little details as he could. Obilot wasn’t pleasant to be around when she was brooding about losing an argument.

“Remembering the names we’ll be using,” she said. Garivald laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. The less his own name was heard these days, the better off he would be. And the same was liable to be true for Obilot as well; without a doubt, she was right about that.

They took such silver as they had and headed for Linnich, the nearest surviving village. It was three or four hours away. Garivald discovered he’d lost the knack for marching. “Not like it was when we’d go out of the woods to pay a call on some village that got too friendly with the redheads,” he remarked as he sat down on a stump to rest.

“No. Not even close.” Obilot sat down beside him. She looked glad to take the weight off her feet, too. Suddenly, though, she snapped her fingers in alarm. “The redheads! We’ve still got some of falseKingRaniero ’s money. If we pass it…” She slashed a finger across her throat.

“Maybe-but maybe not, too,” Garivald answered. “Some people will still take it: some people figure silver is silver. Aye, we have to be careful; I know. I brought it along, but I’ve got it wrapped in a rag so it’s not mixed in with Swemmel’s money.”

Obilot pursed her lips, then nodded. Garivald grinned. He seldom got the chance to feel he was one step ahead of her, and enjoyed it when he did.

Like almost every peasant village in the Duchy of Grelz that Garivald had seen-and he’d seen more villages than he’d imagined he would back in Zossen before the war-Linnich was battered. Neither the Unkerlanters nor the Algarvians had dug in there, or the village wouldn’t hive still stood. But craters showed where eggs had fallen, and ruins or sudden empty places like missing teeth in a jaw marked what had been houses.

A lot of the peasants were already in the fields; it was planting season for them, too. When Garivald walked up to a fellow guiding a plow behind an ox, the other peasant seemed glad enough to stop. He shook his head though, when Garivald asked if anyone had a beast he might sell. “Don’t know about that, stranger,” he said. “Them as still has ‘em left alive are mighty glad to be using ‘em, you hear what I’m saying?”

“I hear,” Garivald answered. Stranger. He would have used the word back in Zossen. Then, though, he wouldn’t have known how being on the wrong end of it burned. He let coins jingle. “I can pay.” He didn’t say he couldn’t pay enough. He wouldn’t say anything like that till he had to.

“Like I say, money’s not the only thing going on,” the other peasant told him. Then he snapped his fingers, as if reminding himself of something. “Dagulf s got a mule, though. He’s been hiring it out and drinking up the money he makes. Maybe he’d sell.”

“Dagulf,” Garivald echoed. It wasn’t an unusual name, but… He pointed at the peasant from Linnich. “Is this Dagulf a short, skinny fellow with sort of a sour smile and with a scar on his face?”

“Aye.” The local nodded. “You know him?”

“Never heard of him,” Garivald said solemnly.

The other peasant stared, scratched his head, and at last decided it was a joke and laughed. Then he nodded. “So you know him, do you? He’s some of the riffraff that’s been coming through here ever since the war stirred things up.” That he’d just, in effect, called Garivald and Obilot riffraff, too, never entered his mind. Garivald gave a mental shrug. He’d been called worse than that.

He said, “So Dagulf drinks up his money, does he? Would I find him in the tavern?”

“It’s a good bet.” The man from Linnich flicked his ox’s back with a long springy branch and started it down the furrow. He’d done all the talking he intended to do.

“This Dagulf is from your village?” Obilot asked as she and Garivald started off toward Linnich itself.

“That’s right. He’s a friend of mine.” Garivald checked himself. “He used to be a friend of mine, anyway.”

Obilot thought about that, then nodded. “Do you want him to know you’re still alive? Is it safe for him to know you’re still alive?”

“Before the war, it would have been,” Garivald answered. “Before the war, though, he wouldn’t have spent all his time in the tavern.” But he kept walking toward the village. For one thing, any Unkerlanter man was likely to spend a good deal of time in a tavern. For another. ..

“It he’s from your village, he’ll know what happened to your family, won’t he?” Obilot said.

“Maybe.” That thought had been uppermost in Garivald’s mind, too. Almost apologetically, he went on, “I do want to find out, you know.”

“Do you? Are you sure?” Obilot’s voice was harsh, her eyes bleak and far away. “Sometimes you’re better off not knowing. Believe me, you are.”

That was as much as she ever said about what had happened to her before she joined Munderic’s band of irregulars. “I want to find out,” Garivald repeated. Obilot only shrugged, as if to say she’d done her best to warn him. By then, they were walking into Linnich. Eyes bright with suspicion, women looked up at them from their vegetable plots. Dogs barked. Garivald stooped and picked up a stone, ready to throw it in case any of the dogs did more than bark. None did. The whole scene achingly reminded him of Zossen; only the faces were different.