Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“Sir, this stinking Kaunian-lover called me a filthy name,” Merwit said, his voice dripping with righteous innocence and indignation. “I got sick of it, so when he started the fight, I did my best to give him what-for.”

“I didn’t start the fight,” Leofsig exclaimed. “He did! And he’s been calling me names since we got here—you just heard him do it again now. I finally called him one back. He didn’t like that so much. Most bullies are better at giving it out than taking it.”

“Conflicting stories,” Cynfrid said with another sigh. He glanced over toward the guards. “I don’t suppose you gentlemen know who did start the fight?” The redheads laughed, not so much at the idea that they should know, but at the notion that they might care. The Forthwegian brigadier sighed yet again. “Any chance of witnesses?”

Now Leofsig had all he could do not to start laughing himself. His fellow captives wanted as little to do with the guards as they could. They would make themselves scarce and deny seeing anything … or would all of them? Slowly, he said, “Sir, I think the Kaunians in my barracks would tell the truth about what went on.”

“They’d lick your arse for you, you mean, like you lick theirs,” Merwit snarled, his eyes blazing.

Leofsig had succeeded in gaining the guards’ attention. He wasn’t nearly sure he wanted it. To Cynfrid, one of the Algarvians said, “The Kaunians, they is no to being trusted, eh?”

“No, probably not,” the Forthwegian brigadier said, “although they haven’t done nearly so much to Forthweg as you Algarvians, wouldn’t you think?”

If the Algarvians thought any such thing, their faces didn’t show it. With a dismissive gesture, the one who did most of the talking said, “You no can trusting nothing no yellowheads telling you.”

“That’s right,” Merwit said. “That’s just right, sir.”

“Is it?” Cynfrid didn’t sound convinced. “You seem none too trustworthy yourself there, soldier.” But he failed to follow through, just as Forthwegian officers had failed to follow through on their early victories over Algarve. “Well, if we’ve got no trustworthy witnesses, these two chaps will have to share and share alike. A week’s latrine duty each ought to teach them to keep their hands to themselves.”

Merwit jerked a thumb toward Leofsig. “ He likes latrine duty. He gets to hang around with his Kaunian chums.”

“They’re better company than you are,” Leofsig retorted. “They smell better than you do, too.”

Only the presence of the Algarvian guards kept the fight from flaring again. “That will be quite enough, both of you,” Brigadier Cynfrid said sternly. “The order holds—a week’s latrine duty for each of you. Any further incidents between you two, and we shall see what sort of view the Algarvian authorities take of such business.”

“Aye, sir,” Merwit and Leofsig said together. Leofsig did not want to go before the redheads, not after he’d got a name for sticking up for Kaunians. The Algarvians lorded it over his own people, aye, but their feud with folk of Kaunian blood went back into the ancient days of the world.

He hoped Merwit wouldn’t be clever enough to see that. Merwit, fortunately, had never struck him as very clever. Merwit had struck him, though—struck him with fists like rocks. He knew no small pride at having come close to holding his own against the other captive.

“You hearing the brigadier,” the talky Algarvian guard said. “Now you coming, you do your deservings. You do the shovelings of shits, aye?” He and his comrades both gestured with their sticks. Leofsig and Merwit left. Looking back over his shoulder, Leofsig saw Brigadier Cynfrid return to the paperwork he’d had interrupted.

Merwit did as little as he could on latrine duty, or perhaps a bit less. Leofsig had expected nothing else; he’d already seen that Merwit was a shirker even by the lax standards of the captives’ camp. He did his own work, not as if he were in a race but steadily nonetheless.

Late that afternoon, a shout made his head whip around. Somehow, Merwit had contrived to fall into a slit trench about due to be covered over. When he scrambled out again, he was as magnificently filthy a man as Leofsig had ever seen. He glared at Leofsig, but Leofsig hadn’t been anywhere near him.

At the moment, none of the Kaunians who did most of the latrine work was anywhere near him, either. Leofsig hadn’t noticed any of them hurrying away. Maybe Merwit had been clumsy. Maybe some Kaunian had been sneaky. By the way Merwit stared wildly around him, he thought some Kaunian had been sneaky.

The Kaunians ignored him. They didn’t even suggest that he pour a bucket of water over himself because he stank. If they looked pleased with themselves—well, Kaunians often looked pleased with themselves, that being one of the characteristics that failed to endear them to their neighbors. If they’d been sneaky enough to dump Merwit into the slit trench without getting caught: if they’d been that sneaky, Leofsig wondered how sneaky they might be in other ways. That might be worth finding out one of these days, if he could figure out how.

Down in the farming villages of the Duchy of Grelz, fall gave way to winter early. Most of Unkerlant had a harsh climate; that in the south was far worse than the rest. Animals that hibernated went into their burrows sooner there than anywhere else in the kingdom.

People in those farming villages went into their burrows sooner than anywhere else in the kingdom, too. Like dormice and badgers and bears, Garivald and his fellow farmers had stuffed themselves and filled their larders. Now, with the harvest gathered, they had little to do but keep themselves and their livestock alive till spring eventually returned.

Garivald had mixed feelings about the long winters. On the one hand, he didn’t have to work so hard as he did when the weather was better. If he felt like pulling out a jug of raw spirits and spending a day—or a couple of days, or more than a couple of days—drunk, he could. It wouldn’t mean starvation because he hadn’t done something that vitally needed doing. The worst it would mean was a disastrously thick head when he stopped drinking. He was used to those, and sometimes even took a certain melancholy pleasure in them. They were one more way of helping time go by in winter.

As far as he was concerned, making time go by was the biggest trouble winter offered. Unlike a dormouse or a badger or a bear, he couldn’t sleep away the whole season. Except when very drunk, he remained aware: aware he was cooped up in a none-too-big farmhouse with his wife and son and daughter and with a lot of livestock that would otherwise have starved or frozen.

Annore, his wife, liked it even less than he did. “Can’t you keep anything clean?” she shouted when he threw the shell of a hard-boiled egg on the floor after scooping out white and yolk with a horn spoon.

“I don’t know what you’re fretting about,” he answered in what he thought were reasonable tones. “There’s cow shit over there”—he pointed—“and pig shit over there”—he pointed again—“and the hens shit all over everywhere, so why are you shouting at me over an eggshell?” Trying to be helpful, he ground it into the dirt floor with the sole of his boot.

Annore put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes, so maybe he hadn’t been so helpful after all. “Can I make the cows do their business where I tell them to? Can I do that for the pigs? Can I do that for the miserable, stinking chickens? They won’t listen to me. Maybe you will.”

Garivald didn’t feel like listening. He’d been drunk up until the day before, and was still feeling the effects. He’d beaten Annore only a couple of times, which made him a prodigy, as husbands in the village of Zossen went. That was only partly because he had a milder temper than most of the other village men. The other side of the coin was that Annore had a fiercer temper than most of the other village women. If he beat her too hard or too often, she was liable to cut his throat or break his head while he lay in a drunken stupor. Almost every winter, someone in Zossen met an untimely demise.