Harry Turtledove - Rulers of the Darkness

At sunrise, they came to a tent city that hadn't been there a few days before and probably wouldn't be there in another few days. "Can you spare us any bread?" Obilot called to the soldiers.

Had Garivald asked, the troopers likely would have cursed him or worse. But a woman's voice worked wonders. They got black bread and ham and butter and pickled onions. "Go on back to your farm, if there's anything left of it," one of the soldiers said in a northern accent. "Here's hoping you find some pieces worth picking up."

"Thanks," Garivald said. "Powers above keep you safe."

"Same to you," the soldier answered. "I may see you again one of these days. Wherever your farm's at, the inspectors and impressers'll be paying you a call sooner or later. They want everybody to join the fun- that's how things work."

"That's how things work," Garivald repeated bitterly as he and Obilot walked west against the flow of military traffic. "The worst of it is, he's right. Some locusts have two legs, too. Don't they know they have to leave some people on the land to keep everybody from starving?"

"Nobody from Cottbus knows anything." Now that Obilot was back under King Swemmel's rule, she mocked his officials, too.

They slept for a few hours in a wrecked peasant hut, lying in each other's arms under both their cloaks. When they woke and went back to the road, they couldn't go down it for quite a while: a great column of Algarvian captives filled it. Some of the redheads looked glum. Some seemed relieved just to be alive. And a few, with the lighthearted Algarvian arrogance Garivald had seen before, were doing their best to make a lark of it, singing and grinning and acting the fool.

"What'll happen to these bastards?" he called to one of the Unkerlanters herding the captives along.

"Oh, they're for the mines, every stinking one of 'em," the soldier answered. "Let 'em grub out brimstone and quicksilver and coal, so we get some use out of 'em. A short life and a not so merry one."

"Even that's too good for them," Obilot said. "I wish they had just one neck, so we could take off all their heads at once." The guard laughed and nodded. Any of the redheads who understood were probably less amused.

Garivald and Obilot fell in behind the column. They walked at whatever pace they chose. The Algarvians walked at the faster pace the guards set. Every so often, one wouldn't be able to keep up anymore. Garivald and Obilot walked past redheaded corpses in the roadway. Obilot kicked the first couple they passed. After that, she didn't bother.

A strange cracking noise made Garivald turn around to see what it was. Another, smaller, column of captives was gaining on him. These weren't Algarvians. They were men who looked a lot like him. They looked a lot like their captors, too. But their uniform tunics weren't rock-gray. They were dark green. Some of the Grelzers who'd been fighting for Raniero still lived, then.

Their guards hustled them forward, driving them even faster than the Unkerlanters in charge of the Algarvian captives. Garivald and Obilot scrambled out of the roadway to let them pass. And Garivald discovered what that cracking noise was: one of the guards carried not a stick but a whip, which he brought down again and again on the back of a Grelzer captive.

"Mercy!" the captive cried, in accents much like Garivald's.

"Mercy? For you?" His tormentor laughed. "By the time we're finished with you and your pals, filth, you'll end up envying Raniero, you will." The whip came down.

The Grelzer dashed forward, not in a run for freedom but straight toward an oncoming behemoth. As the beast raised a great foot, he dove under it. Red smeared the road when the behemoth took another step. The Unkerlanter guardsman cursed. Someone had escaped him.

Toward evening, Obilot again begged food from soldiers. "Here," one of the men said. "We can spare you and your man a tent for the night, too." To their own, they could be kindly. To their own who'd turned against them… Garivald fought to forget the sound the behemoth's foot had made as it crushed the life from the Grelzer captive.

Only a few peasants were left in the villages by the side of the road. Garivald asked an old man, "How far to Zossen?"

"Never heard of it," the fellow answered.

A couple of hours later, another old man said, "Zossen? A day, I think- maybe not even."

"No, a day and a half, easy," a woman insisted. They started to argue.

She turned out to be closer to right. Early the following morning, Garivald began recognizing the countryside. He might have done it sooner, but the fighting looked to have been heavy in these parts. He and Obilot walked on. Some time in the middle of the afternoon, he said, "Around that next bend, there'll be Zossen."

Obilot stopped. She looked at him. "You'll want to go on by yourself," she said. Rather miserably, Garivald nodded. He'd fought for his life with Obilot as well as lain beside her, but all his life before the Algarvians snatched him lay ahead. He wouldn't have come back if he hadn't wanted that. "Go on, then," Obilot told him. "I'll come along in a little while. We'll see how things are when I get there." When he still hesitated, she pushed him. "Go on, I told you. I knew how things were when we left the woods."

"All right." Garivald trudged on along the path. When he looked back over his shoulder, Obilot stood in the middle of the road, cradling her stick in a way that said she'd used it many times before and was ready to use it again if anyone bothered her.

But Garivald was looking ahead, eagerly looking ahead, when he rounded that last bend. Obilot was behind him now, in the path and in the past. Ahead of him lay the field he and his fellow peasants worked and…

Nothing.

When he looked to where the village had stood, nothing was what he saw. The Algarvians must have made a stand here. Not a house still stood: not his hut, not Waddo the firstman's two-story home, not his friend Dagulf's. None. The buildings of Zossen- the houses, the smithy, the tavern- were erased as if they had never been.

The people? His wife? His son and daughter? Maybe they'd fled. He shook his head. He knew what the odds were. Far more likely- likely almost to the point of certainty- they'd died with their village.

He was still standing, still staring, when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned. Obilot came up and put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry," she said. "Now you have nothing, too, just like me."

"Aye." Garivald's voice was still dull with shock. He and Obilot stood side by side surveying the devastation, both their lives in ruin.

Vanai was cooking rabbit stew with prunes and dried mushrooms when Ealstan gave the coded knock at their door. She hurried over to unbar it and let him in. When she did, his face glowed with excitement. That made her smile, too. She kissed him and then asked, "What's happened? Something has. I can see it."

"You'll never guess," he said.

She looked at him in amused annoyance. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to."

"You know how Herborn's fallen to the Unkerlanters," he said.

"Oh, aye." Vanai nodded. "The news sheets finally admitted that a couple of days ago, when they couldn't not admit it anymore, if you know what I mean."

"That's right- and the Algarvians and Plegmund's stinking Brigade were going to chase the Unkerlanters out again any minute now. I lose track of the lies sometimes," Ealstan said. "Well, Pybba knows more than the news sheets do. For instance, had you heard the Unkerlanters caught King Mezentio's cousin Raniero, the fellow he'd named King of Grelz?"

"No!" Vanai kissed Ealstan again, this time for bringing home such wonderful news. "What are they going to do to him?" To her way of thinking- Brivibas' way of thinking, too, but her grandfather never entered her mind- the Unkerlanters were barbarous enough to be capable of anything.