“We’ll shoehorn ‘em in somehow,” Oraste said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.” He chuckled nastily. “And we can feel up the broads as we shove ‘em in.”
The blond man who knew Algarvian turned to him and said, “I already knew better than to expect mercy from you. Is the smallest decency too much to ask for?”
“You Kaunians spent years and years and years grinding a foot down on Algarve’s neck, and nobody ever heard a word about mercy or decency from you,” Oraste said. He chuckled again. “Now you’re going to get it in the neck and see how you like it.”
Guards opened doors on some of the cars. They and the constables herded the Kaunians into them. It did take a lot of pushing and shoving. The seat of the trousers was one obvious place to shove. Oraste enjoyed himself. Bembo confined his shovings to the back, though he couldn’t have said why he bothered.
Even before the last of the Kaunians were inside the cars, workmen--Forthwegians with an Algarvian boss--began nailing over the windows wooden grates with only the narrowest of openings between the slats. “What’s that all about?” Bembo asked.
At last, the job was done. The guards forced the caravan-car doors closed, then barred them from the outside. From within, Bembo could still hear the moans and cries of the Kaunians as they sought whatever comfort they could find. He doubted they would find much.
Oraste waved to the cars, though with those grates on the windows the men and women inside could hardly have seen him. “So long,” he called. “You think it’s bad now; it only gets worse later. Off to Unkerlant with the lot of you!” He threw back his head and laughed.
A couple of the Forthwegian carpenters must have understood Algarvian, for they laughed, too. But Sergeant Pesaro rounded on Oraste, growling, “Shut up, curse you! They won’t want trouble on the caravan while it’s going west, so don’t stir up the stinking Kaunians.”
“He’s right,” said Bembo, who as usual on roundup duty wished he were doing anything but. Oraste nodded to Pesaro and gave Bembo a dirty look.
As soon as the carpenters had nailed a grate over the last window, the ley-line caravan silently glided away. For a moment, Bembo simply watched it. Then he gaped. “It’s going east!” he exclaimed. “East, toward Algarve! Why are they sending Kaunians that way?” No one had a good answer for him; all the Algarvians on the platform looked as surprised as he was.
Skarnu laughed softly as he strode through Pavilosta toward the market square. Merkela, who walked beside him, sent him a curious look. “What’s funny?” she asked. “The town hasn’t changed much, not that I can see.”
“No, the town hasn’t changed,” Skarnu agreed, “but I have. I’ve been on your farm so long now, and spent so much of my time there, that Pavilosta’s starting to look like a big city to me.”
“It looks big to me,” she answered, matching him stride for stride. She wasn’t far from his height or from his strength; she’d done farm work all her life, not just over the past year and a half. Looking first to one side of the street and then to the other, she murmured, “Buildings all around, and some of them three, four stories high. Aye, it looks plenty big enough.”
“It does to me, too--now,” Skarnu said. “I grew up in Priekule, though. Pavilosta didn’t used to seem so much of a much, not after the capital. It’s all what you get used to, I suppose.”
An Algarvian soldier carrying several links of sausage looked Merkela up and down and gave her a saucy smile as he walked by. Her answering stare would have chilled live steam to ice on the instant. It didn’t chill the soldier, who went on up the street laughing.
“Some things you never get used to,” Merkela said. “Some things you keep on fighting, even if they slay you for it.”
“Aye,” Skarnu said. Unlike most of Valmiera, Merkela and he were still fighting.
“Vengeance,” Merkela murmured softly. It was, these days, the most important thing she lived for. One reason she favored Skarnu these days was that he lived for it, too.
They walked past a broadsheet pasted on a wall. FOR THE KILLER OF COUNT SIMANU, 1,000 GOLD PIECES, it proclaimed. Merkela reached out and squeezed Skarnu’s hand. He’d slain Simanu, after all. And if he hadn’t, Merkela might have.
A greengrocer’s was quiet, while the rest of the shops on the street bustled. Painted across the window were half a dozen words: REVENGE FOR SIMANU--NIGHT AND FOG. Skarnu’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. Whoever met night and fog vanished off the face of the earth. He’d found that out when he visited a comrade’s farm. Dauktu was gone, and all his family with him.
Skarnu didn’t want to think about that. As he and Merkela neared the square, he remarked, “Do you know what I miss from Priekule?” She shook her head. Her straight blond hair, even fairer than his, flew back and forth. Skarnu said, “I miss news sheets.”
Merkela shrugged. “Pavilosta never had one of its own. It isn’t big enough for that, I suppose. Sometimes they bring them in from other towns. These days, a news sheet would be full of Algarvian lies, anyhow.”
“Aye, so it would,” Skarnu agreed. “The biggest news is, the redheads have to keep on fighting in Unkerlant. If they’d taken Cottbus, we’d all be singing a sorry tune right now.”
“Good they didn’t,” Merkela said fiercely. “The only thing wrong is, the Unkerlanters won’t give Mezentio’s men everything I would.” Skarnu wasn’t so sure of that; the soldiers who followed King Swemmel were anything but gentle. Then Skarnu glanced over to Merkela. On second thought, she was probably right. Whatever Swemmel’s men did to the Algarvians, it wouldn’t match what she’d do if only she could.
He didn’t remark on that. Whatever he said, Merkela would come back with something like, Well, of course. One of the reasons she’d been drawn to him, even before the Algarvians killed her husband, was that he’d refused to quit fighting them. He didn’t think it was the only reason--he hoped not--but he was a long way from sure it was the smallest one.
Instead of a daily or a weekly news sheet, Pavilosta had the market square. People gathered to gossip as much as they did to buy and sell. Algarvian soldiers walked through the square, but not so many as had walked it before fall turned into winter. That wasn’t the cold keeping them indoors so much as it was the war in the distant west pulling them out of Valmiera. Skarnu wished it would pull them all out of his kingdom.
Merkela went off to buy pins and needles, which she couldn’t make for herself on the farm. Skarnu cared nothing about pins and needles. He wandered over to the table from which an enterprising Pavilosta taverner sold ale. The taverner nodded to him as he came up. He would never be a proper local, not if he stayed on the farm near town till his hair went from gold to silver. But he’d been here long enough--and kept his mouth shut well enough--to win a little respect. He laid coins on the table. The taverner poured him ale from a big stoneware jug.
He sipped, then nodded. “Good,” he said. His accent still announced that he came from the capital, not the provinces. Imitating the local dialect only made him sound like a bad actor. Imitating peasant taciturnity worked better.
“Aye, it is, though the weather’s too cold for the proper tang to come through,” the taverner answered. He was no peasant, and the hinges of his jaws worked fine. He looked around for the closest Algarvians. Not seeing any kilted soldiers within earshot, he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Have you heard the latest?”
“Don’t think so.” Skarnu leaned forward, too, till their heads almost touched. “Tell me, why don’t you?”
“I’ll do that. I will indeed.” Had the taverner brought his mouth any closer, he could have given Skarnu a kiss. “They say--I can’t prove it’s true, but they do say it, and nobody says anything different, not that I’ve heard--they say the redheads are going to knock over the Column of Victory down in Priekule.”