Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Leofsig said, “Everyone calls his neighbors names. Why, I would bet even the Unkerlanters aren’t too efficient”—he had to drop into Forthwegian for that, being unable to come up with the Kaunian word—“to call their neighbors names.” He rolled his eyes to show he intended sarcasm.

Gutauskas nodded. “I would bet you are right: you prove it with your own speech, in fact. So tell me, would you sooner dwell in that part of Forthweg occupied by the Algarvian barbarians or the portion occupied by the Unkerlanter barbarians?”

“I would sooner no one occupied Forthweg,” Leofsig answered.

“That was not one of the choices offered,” Gutauskas said in the quietly mocking way that so often set Forthwegians’ teeth on edge.

By then, though, Leofsig had grown used to it. He gave the question serious thought; it was more interesting than what he had been doing. At last, he said, “It is likely easier for your people under the Unkerlanters, for my people under the Algarvians.”

“Aye, I think you are right,” the Kaunian agreed, “for the Algarvians have us to despise, which keeps them from despising you quite so much.” He waited while Leofsig threw a couple of shovels’ worth of dirt into the slit trench, then went on, “Perhaps around midnight tonight, you will need to make a call of nature, as I shall.”

“Will I?” Leofsig scratched his head. “I knew you Kaunians were an orderly, regular folk, but I didn’t realize you were as regular as all that.” Gutauskas said nothing, but kept looking at him with head cocked slightly to one side. Leofsig scratched his own head again. In a romance about the Six Years’ War, he would have figured out right away what the Kaunian was trying to tell him. At least he’d figured out Gutauskas was trying to tell him something. He said, “Well, who knows? Maybe I will.”

Gutauskas still didn’t say anything. He went off and started digging a new slit trench. Leofsig went back to covering over the one at which he’d been working. He didn’t move any faster than he had to. The Algarvians didn’t feed him enough to make him want to move very fast—and latrine duty wasn’t the sort of work that fired a man’s enthusiasm anyhow.

At last, as sunset drew near, he stowed his shovel in the rack and lined up for the meager supper that made a perfect accompaniment to his meager breakfast and meager dinner. He got a small slab of brown bread and a bowl of cabbage-and-turnip soup with a few small floating bits of salt pork so fatty it might as well have been lard. He also got a small cup of what the Algarvians insisted was beer. By the way it tasted, it might have come straight from the latrine trenches.

He drank it anyway. He ate and drank almost anything he even vaguely suspected of containing nourishment. He’d seen men pop their own lice into their mouths. He hadn’t fallen that far himself, but he knew he might. All too often, his belly ached like a rotting tooth. He cherished the hour or so after each meal, when that ache drew back and waited for a while.

After supper, the captives formed up in front of their barracks hall for the day’s final roll call and count. For a wonder, the Algarvian guards managed to get the same number twice running, which satisfied them. Their leader spoke in bad Forthwegian: “You going in now. You no coming out till morning roll call unless you pissing, you shitting. You trying any other come-outings …” He drew a finger across his throat. Leofsig wished that finger were the sharp edge of a knife.

Along with the rest of the men from his barracks, he went inside. Some of them clumped into little groups to talk. Others diced for money or, more often, for food. A few wrote letters or read the handful they’d been allowed to receive. By far the largest number lay down on their cots to rest or sleep away as much time as their captors allowed them.

Merwit glared at Leofsig in the dim lanternlight. Leofsig glared back. They were both too hungry and tired to do anything more than glare—and neither was eager to go up before the Algarvian authorities. That would mean half rations for sure, and whatever other punishments the redheads chose to add. Such delights made good behavior seem sensible even to Merwit.

The bruiser eventually rolled over and started to snore. Leofsig wanted to go to sleep, too; every fiber of his being cried out for it. If he did doze off, he’d miss whatever Gutauskas had in mind for midnight. If he didn’t, he’d be a wreck tomorrow. Which had the greater weight? Not nearly sure he was doing the right thing, he feigned sleep instead of falling headlong into it.

Gutauskas came back to his own cot. He’d been talking in a low voice with the few other Kaunians in the hall, as he usually did before the guards came in and blew out the lanterns. His breathing soon grew slow and regular. Had he fallen asleep?

Leofsig watched him out of half-closed eyes that kept wanting to slide all the way shut. No strip of moonlight shone on the barracks floor to let Leofsig gauge the hour even roughly; the moon, nearing new, would not rise till a little before the sun did. How, Leofsig wondered resentfully, is Gutauskas supposed to know when it’s midnight, anyway?

He got angry enough at the Kaunian captive to keep himself a little less sleepy than he might otherwise have been. And at last, at an hour that might have been midnight or might not, Gutauskas rose from his cot and walked toward the barracks door, which was always open—and which, at the moment, let a chilly breeze into the hall.

Heart pounding, Leofsig got to his feet and walked out into the night after Gutauskas. If anyone challenged him, he intended to curse the Kaunian for waking him and making him get up in the middle of the night. But no one did. Yawning, he stumbled toward the latrines.

The one advantage of the cold was that the slit trenches did not stink quite so badly—or maybe it simply numbed Leofsig’s prominent nose. That dim shape ahead had to be Gutauskas. Leofsig yawned again, wishing he were back on his hard cot under his thin blanket: a strange wish, when most of the time he would have given anything to get away from the barracks.

Someone—a Forthwegian—came back from the latrine, tugging at his tunic. He grunted at Leofsig as they passed each other in the darkness.

Several men straddled slit trenches. All, by their silhouettes, were Kaunians. A couple exchanged soft comments in their own language: “They’re here.” “Aye. The last of them.”

Gutauskas set a hand on Leofsig’s arm. “Come. Come quickly. Come quietly. Ask no questions, not now. Soon enough, you will know.”

Naturally, questions flooded into Leofsig’s head. When he started to ask the first one, Gutauskas’s hand closed tight enough to hurt. Leofsig’s mouth stayed closed, too. Gutauskas jerked his chin toward the small knot of Kaunians ahead. Leofsig followed him over to them without another word.

As he came up, one of the Kaunians spoke in quiet Forthwegian: “An advantage to digging trenches is that there is digging, and then there is digging.”

A light shone in Leofsig’s dark, sleepy mind, bright as if an egg had burst in front of his face. Gutauskas said, “Come. It will be noisome. We could not keep everyone from using this trench. But will you set filth on your feet against the chance for freedom?”

“By the powers above, no!” Leofsig said in the best classical Kaunian he could muster.

“Hmm. As well we do take him, Gutauskas,” said the Kaunian who’d spoken a moment before. “Some of them, in truth, can be decent.” By them, Leofsig realized, he meant Forthwegians. He himself was the only non-Kaunian here.

Gutauskas said, “We can all be caught if we stand around here much longer.”