Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

Garivald’s son Syrivald grunted like a pig. He was looking at Garivald as he did it, mischief on his face. Garivald grunted, too, and got to his feet. The mischief vanished from Syrivald’s face; alarm replaced it. Garivald caught him and thumped him a couple of times. “Don’t call me a hog—have you got that?” he demanded.

“Aye, Father,” Syrivald blubbered. Had he been rash enough to say anything else, his father would have made him regret it.

As things were, Garivald found a different way to make him regret getting out of line: “Since you haven’t got anything better to do with yourself, you can clean up after the animals. And while you’re at it, you can pick up my eggshell, too.”

Syrivald got to work, not with any enormous enthusiasm but with a very plain sense that he’d be sorry if he didn’t go at it fast enough to suit his father. In that, he was absolutely right. Garivald kept a sharp eye on him till he was almost done, then turned to Annore and said, “There. Are you happier now?”

“I’d be really happy if this house didn’t turn into a sty every winter,” she said. She wasn’t looking at the pigs. She was looking at Garivald.

Her words could have held any of several meanings. Having been married to her a good many years, Garivald knew which one was likeliest. He also knew he would be foolish to acknowledge that one. He said, “Only way I can think of to keep a house clean through winter is by magic.”

“I believe that,” Annore said, a reply not calculated to warm his heart. Before she could elaborate on it, Leuba woke from her nap and started to cry. Annore took care of the baby, whose soiled linen added to the winter atmosphere of the farmhouse. But, after Annore put her daughter to her breast, she resumed: “How much magic can anyone work here?”

“I don’t know,” Garivald answered grouchily. “Enough, maybe.”

Annore shook her head. Leuba, following the motion, found it very funny. “Not likely,” Annore said. “This far from a power point, this far from a ley line, you’d need a first-rank mage. Where would we get the silver to pay a first-rank mage?” Her bitter laugh said she knew that question had no answer even as she asked it.

Garivald said, “I like living without much magic fine, thanks. If we had power points and ley lines coming out of our ears, this place would be just like Cottbus, you know that? We’d have inspectors and impressers peering at us every minute we weren’t squatting on the pot, and half the time we were, too.”

Syrivald wrinkled up his nose at that idea. So did Garivald. In a couple of sentences, he’d summed up everything he knew about the capital of Unkerlant: that it was full of magic and full of people who spied on other people for King Swemmel. He had no notion that that wasn’t a full and complete portrait of Cottbus. How could he? He’d never seen a city, and had been to the market town nearest his village only a couple of times. That didn’t make his opinions any less certain—on the contrary.

“Hurry up there, Syrivald,” he snapped, also having definite opinions on how much work his son ought to be doing. Syrivald’s occasional failure to meet his standards made him add, “Of course, if we offer a sacrifice, we don’t need a power point, let alone a first-rank mage.”

“Stop that!” Annore said at Syrivald’s horrified stare. Garivald laughed; he’d succeeded in getting his son’s attention. “It isn’t funny,” his wife told him.

“Oh, I think it is,” Garivald said. “Look—I’ve worked a magic of my own, and the farmhouse is getting clean. If you think you can get better sorcery around these parts, you’d better to talk to Waddo or to Herka.”

“I don’t want to talk to the firstman or his wife, thank you,” Annore said tartly. “They wouldn’t be able to help me, anyhow. If they knew anything about getting real magic out here, don’t you think they’d have a crystal in their own house?”

“Maybe they don’t want one.” But Garivald shook his head before Annore could correct him. “No, you’re right; never mind. Waddo and Herka always want things. If they didn’t, would they have built that second floor on to their house?” He chuckled. “I bet Waddo has fun getting up there these days, on his bad ankle.”

But that second floor let the firstman and his family live above the livestock during the winter, not with it, as everyone else in the village did. Building a second floor on to his own home would have let Garivald satisfy Annore’s longing for a clean house, or at least part of a clean house, without magic and without threatening to make Syrivald a blood sacrifice. But he and Annore both thought Waddo’s addition a piece of big-city pretentiousness. Doing anything like it had never crossed his mind, nor his wife’s, either.

Annore sighed and said, “It’s no use. I know it’s no use. But I couldn’t help wishing sometimes…” She sighed again. “I might as well wish you were a baron.”

“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” Garivald got off the stool on which he was sitting and puffed out his chest. “Baron Garivald the Splendid,” he boomed in a deep voice bearing little resemblance to the one he usually used.

Syrivald snickered. Annore laughed out loud. Leuba didn’t understand why her mother was laughing, but she laughed, too. So did Garivald. The idea of him as a baron was even funnier than the idea of a farmhouse that stayed clean through the winter. It would need a stronger magic, too.

“Maybe I’d better be happy with things the way they are now,” Annore said.

Garivald snorted. “You think I’d make a lousy baron.” He scratched. He was probably lousy now. People got that way when winter closed down on the land. Nobody bathed often enough to hold the nasty little pests at bay. Sitting in the steam bath till you couldn’t stand being baked any more and then running out and rolling in the snow felt wonderful—once a week, or once every other week. More often than that, it felt like death. And that often wasn’t enough to kill lice and nits. Garivald scratched some more. Can’t be helped, he thought.

Annore didn’t answer him, which might have been just as well. Instead, she put Leuba on her shoulder till the baby rewarded her with a belch. “There’s a good girl,” Annore said. “Don’t you feel better now that that’s out?” She seemed to feel better now that she’d got her complaints out, too.

“Winter,” Garivald said, more to himself than to anyone else. Here he was, in the house with his family and his livestock, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere—or nowhere far, and not for long—for quite a while. Neither would Annore. No wonder she felt like complaining sometimes.

One of the cows dropped more dung on the floor. The only thing Annore said was, “Clean that up, Syrivald.”

She still held Leuba. Syrivald knew better than to think that meant she wouldn’t get up and wallop him if he didn’t hop to it. He’d made that mistake a couple of times. He wouldn’t make it any more.

“Just as well Waddo and Herka don’t have a crystal,” Garivald said. “We’d get endless yattering about the war against the black people up in the north, and how we’d won another smashing battle.” He snorted again. “Don’t they know we know the war would be over by now if it were really going well? And besides”—he added the clincher—“if they had a crystal, the inspector and impressers would be able to give them orders without bothering to come out here.”

“Powers above!” Annore exclaimed. “We wouldn’t want that. I think I am happier with things the way they are now.”

“I think I am, too.” Garivald knew perfectly well he was happier with things as they were. He couldn’t imagine a peasant in Unkerlant who wasn’t happier with things as they were. The only thing change and fancy magic got Unkerlanter city folk was going right under King Swemmel’s thumb. Nobody could want that. He was sure of it.