Harry Turtledove: Darkness Descending

On they rode, past meadows and woods and fields under cultivation and fields going to weeds, past villages that looked achingly like Zossen and past villages that were nothing but charred ruins. Garivald had heard about what the war had done, but he’d never really seen it, not till now. Words started to shape themselves inside his mind. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Whatever songs he made now, he’d never have the chance to sing them.

No village was near when evening came. Confident as if in the middle of their own kingdom, the Algarvians encamped at the top of a low hill. They had three men up and watching all through the night: watching Garivald, watching their unicorns, watching for any trouble that might come their way. Garivald had kept hoping irregulars might use the cover of darkness to attack them, but none did.

“Herborn in a couple of days,” the redhead who spoke Unkerlanter said to him the next morning. “Then your trial, then the end.” He wasn’t gloating. He was as matter-of-fact as if talking about the weather. That made him more frightening to the peasant, not less.

On went the unicorns, taking Garivald on toward the big city he’d never seen and would not see for long. Late that afternoon, the road went through a wood of mixed beeches and birches and pines. The Algarvians chattered back and forth in their own language and kept looking this way and that--they didn’t like riding along so close to the trees that they could reach out and touch them.

And they had reason to mislike it. When the ambush hit, it hit hard and fast. A barricade of logs and brush blocked the road. Mezentio’s men had barely reined in before Unkerlanters started blazing at them from behind trees and bushes. Algarvians tumbled out of the saddle one after another. One of the redheads lifted his stick to blaze Garivald but crumpled, clutching at himself, before he could loose his beam.

Some of the unicorns fell, too, shrieking shrilly from the pain they couldn’t understand. Garivald could only stay where he was. If anyone blazed his unicorn, it would crush him when it went down.

Before long, the irregulars came out of the woods to finish ofFthe two or three Algarvians still groaning. One of them strode up to Garivald. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why did the whoresons grab you?”

“To kill me, that’s why,” Garivald answered. “I’m Garivald the songmaker.”

He wondered if the fellow had heard of him. When the irregular’s eyes widened, Garivald knew he had. “Garivald the songmaker, in my band?” he exclaimed. “I will gain fame for that.” He thumped his chest, then drew a knife. “I, Munderic, set you free. You are one of my men now.” Far from home, suddenly saved from certain death, Garivald nodded eagerly. He was a peasant no more, nor a captive, either. As Munderic’s knife bit through his bonds, he gladly became an irregular.