The lookout, who was also Istvan’s cousin, laughed and said, “You and what army?” But he didn’t try to keep Istvan out; instead, he ran down off the palisade and opened the gate so his kinsman could enter. As soon as Istvan came inside, the two young men embraced. “By the stars, it’s good to see you,” Csokonai exclaimed.
“By the stars, it’s good to be seen,” Istvan answered, which made Csokonai laugh. Istvan laughed, too, but he hadn’t been joking; plenty of times, he’d thought he would never be seen again, not in his home village.
Inside the palisade, Kunhegyes’ houses were as he remembered them: solid structures of stone and brick, with steep slate roofs to shed rain and snow and to make sure no stick could set them afire. The houses stood well apart from one another, too, to make each more defensible. Despite that, the place seemed crowded to Istvan in a way it hadn’t before he saw the wider world. First the valley felt crowded, and now the village looks too small, he thought. What’s wrong with me?
“You must be glad to be back,” Csokonai said.
“Oh, aye, so I must,” Istvan agreed vaguely, though that had been the furthest thing from his mind.
“Well, don’t just stand there, then,” his cousin said. “I’ll take you along to your house--not likely anybody else’U come along till I get back up on the palisade. We don’t get one traveler most days, let alone two.” His laugh said he was happy to dwell in such perfect isolation.
Istvan had been, too. He kept looking into shops and taverns. Was everything here really on such a small scale? Had it always been this way? If it had, why hadn’t he noticed before? It had been air under the wings of a bird--that was why. He’d never imagined things could be any different. Now that he knew better, Kunhegyes shrank in his mind like a wool tunic washed in hot water.
Up the street toward him came a fellow ten years older than he, a bruiser named Korosi. Every so often, he’d made Istvan’s life in Kunhegyes miserable. He still walked with a swagger. But, like everything else in the village, he seemed to have shrunk. Istvan walked straight toward him, not looking for trouble, but not about to give way, either. In days gone by, he would have yielded. Now Korosi was the one who stepped aside.
He didn’t even growl about it. Instead, he said, “Welcome home, Istvan. May the stars shine on you.”
“And on you,” Istvan answered, half a heartbeat slower than he should have. He glanced over toward Csokonai. His cousin seemed as surprised that he’d got a friendly greeting from Korosi as he was. It must be the uniform, Istvan thought, not realizing that he looked like what he was: a combat veteran who’d seen a lot of fights and wouldn’t shy from one more.
Csokonai pointed. “There’s the house, in case you’ve forgotten where you live. Now I am going to get back up on the palisade, before somebody notices I’m not where I’m supposed to be and pitches a fit.”
“Not know my own house? Not likely,” Istvan said. “If you think I’m that stupid, maybe I ought to knock some sense into your head.” Csokonai beat a hasty retreat.
Istvan’s own house, strangely, seemed as it should have to him. After a moment, he realized it had been shrinking for him as long as he could remember. What had seemed immense to a toddler was just the right size once he had some size of his own. Being away hadn’t pushed that process any further; it had already gone as far as it could.
As with most houses in Kunhegyes, his had only little slits for windows, but out of them floated the delicious smell of his mother’s pepper stew. Spit poured into his mouth. Where so much seemed less than it once had, the stew smelled even better than he’d expected. He hadn’t had anything like it in a long time. He hurried forward to knock on the door.
He heard shouts within. A moment later, he found himself staring at an older, shorter version of himself. “Father!” he exclaimed.
His father had been holding a boot and a length of leather lacing with which he’d been repairing it. Now he dropped them both. “Istvan!” he said joyfully. Istvan’s name produced more shouts farther back inside the house. His father embraced him. “Ah, by the stars, they’ve gone and made a man of you.”
“Have they?” Istvan shrugged as he came inside. “I’m just me.” Alpri, his father, had the same backwoods accent as everyone else in the valley. Istvan didn’t know why that surprised him so much, but it did.
People boiled forward to hug him and pound him on the back and tell him what a wonderful fellow he was: his mother, uncles and aunts, his sisters, cousins of both sexes, a great-uncle leaning on a stick. Somebody--he didn’t know who-- pressed a beaker of mead into his hand. He poured it down. As soon as he did, somebody else took it away and gave him another one. He drank that one straightaway, too. Mead wasn’t the raw spirit for which he’d acquired a taste in the army, but it wasn’t milk, either. After two beakers, sweat broke out on his face. He stopped worrying about people’s accents. Everything anyone said seemed funny.
But not even a couple of beakers of mead could keep him from noticing how dark the inside of the house was after his father shut the door against the chilly drafts outside. And, with so many men just in from long days on the farms around Kunhegyes, the air got thick fast. But that didn’t bother Istvan so much. Barracks weren’t much better, and the field was commonly worse.
As if conjured up, yet another horn of mead appeared in his hand. “Come on.” His mother took him by the arm. “I was about to put supper on the table.”
“Let him stand awhile and talk, Gizella,” his father said. “He’s just got back, after all, and he hasn’t even said how long he can stay. Of course he’ll want to hear everything that’s happened since he’s been gone.”
“As a matter of fact, I am pretty hungry--and I haven’t had proper pepper stew in a long time,” Istvan said. Gizella beamed. Alpri looked surprised and disappointed, but put the best face on it he could. Istvan hurried to the table. To his large and noisy family, things that had happened in this end of their little valley were more important than the Derlavaian War that raged across the continent. The war wasn’t real to them. And the valley hardly seemed real to Istvan any more.
The pepper stew tasted as good as it smelled, as good as he remembered. Istvan said so, over and over, which made his mother flush with pleasure. But sitting down to supper didn’t keep--never had kept--his close kin from going on and on about weather and livestock and the local scandals and the iniquities of the folk who lived in Szombathely, the nearer village down the valley, and the even greater iniquities of the barely human wretches who lived in the next valley over. He wanted to make them quiet down, and he couldn’t.
After what seemed a very long time, Istvan’s great-uncle, whose name was Batthyany, asked, “What’s it like out there, lad? Do the stars still remember you by your right name when you’re so far from home?”
It was, at last, the right question. An expectant hush fell over the table as Istvan’s clanfolk waited to hear what he would say. He looked around. A few of the men, he knew, had been out of the valley, but none had gone too far. They hadn’t seen what he’d seen. They hadn’t done what he’d done.
“Answer your grandfather’s brother, boy,” Alpri said, as peremptory as if Istvan were a child often or so.
“Aye, Father,” Istvan said, and turned to Betthyany. “There’s more world out there than I ever imagined, and it’s a harder world, too. But the stars. . . the stars look down on all of it, Great-uncle. I’m sure of that.”
“Well said,” his father boomed, and everybody else nodded. “And before long we’ll win this war, and everything will be fine.”
Another expectant hush. “Of course we will,” Istvan said. Then he went and got very drunk indeed. Everyone said what a hero he surely had to be.