Part 37 (1/2)

He nodded. ”He was one of us, all right. If they made him disappear, that's one thing. If they squeezed him first, that's something else--something worse.”

”Will they come after us next, do you think?” Merkela asked.

”I don't know,” Skarnu answered. ”I can't know. But we'd better be ready to disappear or fight before long.” He'd been striking blows at the Algarvian occupiers for a couple of years, ever since he'd sneaked through their lines instead of surrendering. But they could strike back, too. The day he forgot that would be the day of his ruination.

”I want to fight,” Merkela said, ferocity filling her voice.

”I want to fight, too--if we have some chance of winning,” Skarnu said. ”If they land on us in the middle of the night, though, and paint NIGHT AND FOG on the front door--that's not fighting. We wouldn't have a chance.”

Merkela walked along for a while, kicking at the slates of the sidewalk. She muttered a curse under her breath. Skarnu muttered one even more quietly under his. When she got into one of these moods, sometimes he had everything he could do to keep her from trying to murder the first Algarvian soldier she saw. He understood why, but knew she needed the restraint if she wanted to go on fighting the redheads.

But then, to his surprise--indeed, to his astonishment--she spoke in much milder tones than she'd used before: ”You're right, of course.”

Skarnu gaped. He wanted to dig a finger into one ear to make sure he'd heard correctly. ”Are you feeling well?” he asked. At first, he meant it for a joke, but after a moment he realized she hadn't quite been herself lately.

She walked on for another few paces, head down, hands in her trouser pockets. ”I hadn't meant to tell you so soon,” she said, still looking at the sidewalk and not at him, ”but I think I'd better.”

”Tell me what?” Skarnu asked.

Now she did lift her head and face him. He had trouble reading her smile. Was she pleased? Rueful? Something of each, perhaps? And then all his thoughtful a.n.a.lysis crashed to the ground, because she answered, ”I'm going to have a baby. Not much doubt of it now.”

”A baby?” Skarnu wondered what his own face was showing. Astonishment again, most likely, which was foolish--they'd been lovers a good while. He did his best to rally. ”That's--wonderful, sweetheart.” After a moment, he nodded; saying it helped make him believe it.

And Merkela nodded, too. ”It is, isn't it? For me especially, I mean--when I didn't quicken with Gedominu, I wondered if I was barren. When I didn't quicken with you, I thought I must be. But I was wrong.” Now nothing but joy blazed from her smile.

Gedominu had been an old man. If anyone was to blame for Merkela's not getting pregnant, Skarnu would have bet on him, not her. As for himself. . . He shrugged. He'd never fathered a b.a.s.t.a.r.d before, but who could say what that meant about his own seed? Nothing, evidently, or Merkela wouldn't be with child now.

He also wondered if he should let the child stay a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. In the normal course of events, he never would have met Merkela; if he had met her and bedded her, it would have been a night's amus.e.m.e.nt, nothing more. Now... Thanks to the war, nothing was what it had been. Who would call him a madman if he took a farmer's widow to wife?

Krasta would. That occurred to him almost at once. He shrugged again. Once upon a time, he would have cared what his sister thought. No more. Having let an Algarvian lie in her bed, Krasta could hardly complain about whose bed he lay in.

He took Merkela's hand. ”Everything will be fine,” he said. ”I promise.” He didn't know how he would keep that promise, but he'd find some way.

And Merkela nodded. ”I know it,” she told him. ”And . . . the child will grow up free. By the powers above, it will.” Skarnu nodded, too, though he wasn't sure how that vow would come true, either.

Holding hands, they walked into the market square. Farmers displayed eggs and cheeses and hams and preserved fruit and gherkins and any number of other good things. The eye Skarnu and Merkela turned on those was more compet.i.tive than acquisitive. Their own farm--which seemed much more real to Skarnu than the mansion he hadn't seen for so long--supplied all they needed along those lines, and they sometimes sold their surplus here in the square, too.

But Pavilosta's cloth merchant and potter--aye, and the ironmonger, too--had stalls of their own in the market square. Merkela admired some fine green linen, though she didn't admire the price the cloth merchant wanted for the bolt. ”You might get that from a marchioness,” she said, ”but how many n.o.blewomen will you see here?”

”If I sell it for less than what I paid for it, I won't do myself any good,” the merchant said.

”You won't do yourself any good if you don't sell it at all, either,” Merkela retorted. ”I think the moths will get fat on it before you move it.” Off she went, nose in the air as if she were a marchioness herself--indeed, Krasta could hardly have done it better. Skarnu followed in her wake.

Pavilosta's townsfolk sneered at the goods the farmers had brought to market. The farmers who'd come to shop and not to sell disparaged everything the local merchants displayed. Some of them were much louder and ruder than Merkela.

Algarvians prowled through the square, too: more of them than Skarnu was used to seeing in Pavilosta. Put together with the cordwainer's disappearance, that worried him. Weren't the redheads supposed to be throwing everything they had into the fight in Unkerlant? If tliey were, why bring so many soldiers to a little country town where nothing ever happened?

But Pavilosta wasn't quite a little country town where nothing ever happened. Count Enkuru, who'd been hand in glove with Mezentio's men, had been a.s.sa.s.sinated here. A riot had broken out at the accession of his son Simanu, another n.o.ble who'd been too cozy with the Algarvians. And Simanu was dead, too; Skarnu had blazed him. So maybe the redheads had their reasons after all.

One of their officers practically paraded through the square, his uniform kilt flapping around his legs as he hurried this way and that. Merkela noticed him, too. ”He's trouble,” she whispered to Skarnu.

”Any time a colonel starts poking his nose into things, he's always trouble,” Skarnu whispered back. An overage lieutenant headed up the little garrison in Pavilosta; he trotted along after the graying colonel, hands waving as he explained this or that.

Whatever he was saying, he failed to impress the senior Algarvian officer. At one point, the colonel said something that had to be downright cruel, for the lieutenant recoiled as if a beam had wounded him. Striking a dramatic pose, he cried, ”Do please be reasonable, Colonel Lurcanio!”

Whatever the colonel answered, the lieutenant got no satisfaction from it. Whatever it was, Skarnu couldn't hear it. He wasn't quite sure if the Algarvian word he had heard meant reasonable or fair, his command of Algarvian, never great, was badly rusty these days. But that didn't matter, either.

As soon as he could, he took Merkela aside and murmured, ”I had better make myself scarce. If they're not after me in particular, I'd be amazed.”

”Why do you say that?” Merkela asked.

He didn't point. He didn't want to do anything to draw the Algarvian officer's notice. Quietly still, he answered, ”Because that fellow over there is my dear sister's lover.”

Merkela needed a moment to realize what that meant. When she did, her eyes flashed fire, almost as if she were a dragon. ”The wh.o.r.e didn't just sell her body to the Algarvians--she sold you, too!”

Skarnu didn't want to believe that of Krasta. Of course, he didn't want to believe his sister gave herself to the redhead, either, but he had no choice there. He said, ”Whether she sold me or not, this Lurcanio's not likely to be here by accident.”

”No, not likely at all.” Merkela frowned, then grew brisk. ”You're right-- you'd better disappear. Vatsyunas and Pernavai have to go with you, too. They can't sound like proper Valmierans. Raunu can stay--if the redheads come to the farm, I'll be a widow making ends meet with a hired man.”

She marshaled the people in her life as if she were a general marshaling armies. ”That may serve,” Skarnu said, ”but it may not, too. Plenty of people in these parts can tell the Algarvians I've been living with you.”

She pondered, but not for long. ”I'll say we quarreled, and I cursed well threw you out.” Then she raised her voice to a furious shout: ”You stinking c.o.c.khound, if you don't keep your eyes and your hands where they belong, I'll make sure you sing soprano for the rest of your days!”

People stared. Lurcanio was one of those people. His face twisted into an amused smirk. For a moment, Skarnu gaped--drawing Lurcanio's attention was the last thing he wanted. But, a little slower than he should have, he saw how Merkela was building her alibi, and remembered that, at the moment, Lurcanio couldn't recognize him. He did his best to get into the spirit of things, yelling, ”Oh, shut up, you noisy b.i.t.c.h! I ought to give you a good one-- and I will, too, if you don't keep quiet.”

”You try it and you'll be sorrier than you ever have been,” Merkela snarled. She sounded as if she meant it, too; she made a fine actress. And she wasn't just acting, either. Skarnu wouldn't have wanted to be the man who laid a hand on her when she didn't care to be touched.

They kept on quarreling till they left Pavilosta. As soon as they were alone on the road back to the farm, they started to laugh. Skarnu wasn't laughing, though, when he went off into the woods with Vatsyunas and Pernavai. He felt a coward for leaving a woman--and especially a woman carrying his child--to face the redheads alone. And the Kaunians from Forthweg were city folk, without much notion of how to take care of themselves in what seemed very wild country to them. Skarnu stayed busy showing them what needed doing. He tried to remember that he hadn't known, either, till he went into the army.

He could sneak back to the farm for food; he didn't have to hunt. About a week later, Merkela said, ”They came today. And sure enough, that redhead who swives your sister is a dangerous man. But Raunu and I played the fool and sent him on his way.”

”Good enough,” Skarnu said. ”Better than good enough, in fact. But I won't come back to stay for a while yet. What do you care to bet they'll swoop down here again, to see if you were playing tricks?”

”Aye, that Lurcanio would,” Merkela said at once. ”He might even come back three times, curse him. Let him. He won't catch you. And the fight goes on.”

Skarnu nodded. As if they were a spell, he repeated the words. ”The fight goes on.”

Istvan studied the scar on his left hand. It still pained him every now and again; Captain Tivadar had cut deep. Istvan didn't blame his company commander. Tivadar had had to let the sin out of him and out of the men of his squad. Istvan just hoped the cut proved expiation enough.

Corporal Kun came back through the trees toward him. ”No sign of the Unkerlanters ahead, Sergeant,” he said.

”All right--good. We'll move forward, then,” Istvan said. Kun nodded. They were oddly formal with each other. All the men who'd eaten goat were like that these days. They had a bond. It wasn't one any of them would have wanted, but it was there. Feeling it, Istvan understood how and why criminals and perverts sometimes sought out goat's flesh. It set them apart from the rest of mankind--the rest of Gyongyosian mankind, at any rate. They had to band together, for no one else would have anything to do with them.

”Sergeant?” Kun asked again in that oddly formal tone.

”Aye? What is it?” Istvan wanted to hara.s.s the bespectacled mage's apprentice as he had before they shared the contents of that stewpot, but found he couldn't. He looked down at his scar again.

Kun saw where Istvan's eyes went, and he opened his own left hand. He was similarly marked--and, no doubt, similarly scarred on his soul as well. He let out a long, unhappy breath, then said, ”Do you suppose the rest of the company knows . . . what happened there, back in that clearing?”

”Well, n.o.body's called me a goat-eater, anyhow,” Istvan answered. ”A good thing, too--anybody did call me anything like that, I'd have to try to kill him for my honor's sake: either that or admit it.”