He knew that was liable not to be so easy, too. Again, he kept quiet. Gailisa said, “Don’t tell us where you’re going. If we don’t know, the redheads can’t tear it out of us.”
“Good luck, son,” Traku said gruffly. He held out a small cloth sack. It was heavy in Talsu’s hand, and clinked softly. Traku went on, “Get going now. Maybe that’ll buy you a little luck. Hope so, anyhow.”
With a wordless nod, Talsu started up a side street. When he looked back, he couldn’t see his father and Gailisa anymore. He stuffed the sack of coins into a pocket. He didn’t know how long it would last, but having it was ever so much better than going into exile with no more than a couple of coppers.
He wished Gailisa hadn’t been carrying the olives. They would have given him a snack, if nothing else.
In the old days, Skrunda, like most towns, had had a wall around it. No more. Hardly any of the wall remained; once Jelgava became a united kingdom, builders started making the most of all that ready-cut stone. Why not, when the town was unlikely to have to stand siege? These days, Skrunda had long since outgrown the old walled-in area, anyhow.
As Talsu got to the outskirts, then, he wasn’t in town one minute and out in the countryside the next. He kept passing houses, but less and less often, with more and more open space between them. Presently, he started going past little almond orchards and groves of fragrant lemons and oranges.
At first, all he wanted to do was put distance between himself and Skrunda. The longer the Algarvians had to chase him and the farther into the country they had to go, the better. “If they want to catch me, they’d better work for it,” he muttered. An eagle owl let out a couple of deep hoots, as if agreeing with him.
But once he was well away, he started wondering where he should go and what he could do. Head for Dobele, the next town farther west? What would he do when he got there? The redheads knew he was a tailor, so looking for work with a needle would be asking to get caught. Could he work as a day laborer? He supposed so, but the idea roused no enthusiasm in him.
What I really want to do is fight the Algarvians, not run from them, he thought. If I had a stick in my hands, I wouldn‘t be running now. All he’d ever wanted to do was fight Mezentio’s men. Trying had landed him in the dungeon. Trying again might land him in something worse. He didn’t care. That was what he wanted, more than anything else in the world.
And so, instead of staying on the road and making for Dobele, he turned down a little path that led up toward low, rolling hills south of the two towns. He didn’t know whether bandits lurked in them; what he did know was that, were he a bandit, he would have lurked up there.
He didn’t get to them that night, but fell asleep in bushes by the side of the track. That was uncomfortable, but not too bad on a summer’s night in Jelgava. He wouldn’t have cared to try it in some southern kingdom.
When he came to a farm the next morning, he asked the farmer, “If I give you a day’s work, will you give me a couple of days’ food?” The farmer just stood in the yard, tossing feed to his hens. His eyes measured Talsu. After the silence stretched for a while, Talsu said, “Or, if you want, you can turn me in to the redheads. They’d thank you.” He hadn’t wanted to roll the dice so soon, but seemed to have little choice.
And it worked. The farmer said, “Well, I’ll find something for you to do.” He went into the house and came out with barley bread and hard white crumbly cheese and some olives much like the ones Talsu had bought at the grocery and a flask of wine sharpened with citrus juices. Talsu ate and drank. Then he chopped wood till his palms blistered, and pulled weeds in the vegetable garden after that. The farmer and his wife gave him bread and ham and olive oil and more wine for lunch, and a stew of mutton and grain and almonds and apricots for supper. He slept on straw in the barn.
The following morning, the farmer brought him a couple of loaves of bread, a small flask full of a paste of garlic and olives and oil, and a large flask full of wine. He even gave him a knapsack that had seen better days in which to carry the food. Talsu came to attention and saluted as he might have to an officer.
He wasn’t altogether astonished when the farmer returned the salute. The fellow said, “If you go six or eight miles south, you’ll come to a track that heads southwest into some of the steeper country. It’s the one with a milepost from the old Kaunian days just in front of it. Follow it, if you care to.”
“Why?” Talsu asked. The farmer just shrugged. After a moment, Talsu shrugged, too. He slung the knapsack over one shoulder and started south. His hands hurt. His joints ached, and his muscles were stiff and sore; he wasn’t used to the work the farmer had set him. After a while, though, walking along under the warm sun eased the kinks.
There was the milestone, its gray-streaked marble much weathered but the inscription still legible. And he could make sense of that classical Kaunian inscription, thanks to Kugu the silversmith. He’d had other, less pleasant, things for which to thank Kugu, and he’d had his revenge. He turned right and walked down the track the farmer had mentioned.
Sure enough, the country did get rougher. Anyone with a stick on one of those bluffs could have potted him before he knew where danger lurked. But the fellow with a stick-Algarvian military issue; Talsu recognized it at once-stepped out from behind a tree. “You may have made a mistake, coming along this track,” he said. A fatal mistake, he meant.
“Not if you’re fighting Mezentio’s buggers. A farmer”-Talsu described the man and his farm as well as he could-”sent me on this way. I was in the army till we quit. I know what to do.”
“Do you?” The bandit-or was diehard a better name?-rubbed his poorly shaved chin. He lowered the stick, but not by very much. “Come along with me. We’ll see what we find out.” Talsu gladly came.
Thirteen
Krasta stood naked by the side of the bed, staring down at herself. “I still don’t look like I’m pregnant,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself.
Colonel Lurcanio, lying naked in the bed, lazy and cheerful after making love, nodded. “Not, not very much,” he answered agreeably.
“What do you mean, not very much?” Krasta demanded, her indignation quick to kindle even toward her dangerous Algarvian lover. “My belly doesn’t bulge at all.”
“Well, so it doesn’t.” Lurcanio reached out and set the palm of his hand on that still-flat belly. Krasta expected it to slide lower, down between her legs. Instead, Lurcanio went on, “But your breasts are larger than they were- not that I mind, you understand.” Rather than reaching down from her belly, he reached up to caress her.
She hissed. “Be careful. They’re more tender than they used to be, too.” She couldn’t help admitting that. It was both blessing and curse. When his hands weren’t gentle, or sometimes simply when she moved too fast, they would hurt. But they also gave her more pleasure when he did a proper job of caressing them than they ever had before she quickened.
“Sorry, my dear.” Lurcanio continued in almost clinical tones: “And your nipples are larger and darker than they were.”
“Are they?” Krasta looked down at herself again. “I hadn’t noticed that.”
“I’m not surprised, or not very,” Lurcanio said. “Men are liable to pay more attention to that sort of thing than women do.”
“I should hope so.” Krasta sat down beside him-carefully, so her tender breasts wouldn’t bounce. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re just… there.” A sudden thought took her by surprise. “But I suppose they’ll matter to me if I decide to nurse the baby myself.”
“Aye, I’m sure they would.” Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. “And would you do such a thing, or would you hire a wet nurse?”