The Pixilated Peeress (35 page)

             
"A few loaves and the like in the houses, if the lads haven't eaten them all."

             
"Stupid oafs," muttered Sergeant Herminus. "Vet
erans know what to do with a village. Don't chase the villagers out; command them to stay and to feed and shelter you and allow you a go at their women, on the promise not to burn their town. There's nought
l
ike hunger to touch off a mass desertion."

             
Thorolf and the other sergeants agreed to divide the battalion, each to take his group to a different part of
town to seek quarters, and then to reunite at sunrise.

-

             
Thorolf s men at last found a group of ho
uses contain
ing only a couple of fugitive soldiers. The other troop
ers they tossed out and made do with the few provisions left in the peasants' larders. When a fight threatened over a cabbage, Thorolf grabbed the combatants and banged their heads toget
h
er until they agreed to an eq
uitable division.

             
The houses of the more prosperous peasants were two-storey structures, the upper storey being the living quarters and the lower a barn for carts, implements, and livestock. The owners of these three houses
had driven away their oxen, goats, and asses when they fled.

             
Thorolf had taken off his boots and, with two others, had lain down on the main bed when female shrieks came to his ears. Pulling on his boots and seizing his sword, he went out and scrambled d
own the outside stair to the street. The moon had set, but the feeble light from rooms in which lamps or candles burned en
abled him to see his way.

             
The sounds were coming from the house to the right of that which he and a score of other soldiers occupie
d. The main room on the second level shed candlelight.

             
Thorolf mounted the stair of this building, which he had assigned to another score of his soldiers. The door was open, and sound and motion came from within.

             
Thorolf stepped into the peasant's bed-
sittingroom. The soldiers were crowded in the middle and did not notice Thorolf
'
s arrival. He grasped a couple by the slack of their jackets and hauled them away from the ring. One snarled: "How now, thou whoreson
—
" but fell silent when he recognized Thoro
lf.

             
In the middle of the crowd, Thorolf now saw, a woman lay on her back on the floor, with her skirt and petticoat pulled up to her chin and four men holding her down, one on each limb. Her outcries were now muffled by a gag. A fifth man, kneeling uprig
ht be
tween her spread legs, had just pulled down his breeches, showing a lusty erection.

             
Thorolf pushed into t
he circle, grasped the man by his hair, hauled him erect, and dealt him a buffet that sent him falling backward over another soldier, one of the pair holding the woman's ankles.

             
"Let her go!" Thorolf roared.

             
"And who in hell be ye?" began the man holdi
ng the other ankle. Thorolf's boot caught him in the ribs and tumbled him over.

             
The men holding the woman's wrists let go and un
certainly got to their feet. The woman pulled out the gag, put down her skirt, and rose likewise.

             
"You bastards heard your
orders!" said Thorolf. "No beating, robbing, or raping. Do you want the country
side hunting us down? Know you what peasants do to stragglers from a beaten army when they catch them? Skin them alive! The next offender shall be hanged
—
"

             
A fierce blow with
a blade caught Thorolf on the side of the face. The blow staggered him, but he recovered his balance and whirled. The would-be rapist had pulled up his breeches, taken up a sword, and come at Thorolf from behind.

             
"That for thee, misbegotten swine!" shou
ted the man.

             
To escape another slash, Thorolf sprang back, bowl
ing over another trooper. Before the swordsman could close to finish him, Thorolf got his sword out. The blades clanged. Everyone yelled:

             
"Clear a space! Clear a space!" "That was a foul b
low!" "Stop them, somebody!" "Why stop a good fight?" "Tenpence on the sergeant!" "I'll take Frinzl if ye'
ll
give me odds!"

             
Back and forth, round and round went Sergeant Tho
rolf and Pikeman Frinzl, hacking and thrusting. At last Thorolf got a thrust hom
e on Frinzl's arm. As the wounded arm sagged, Thorolf sent a full-armed lunge into Frinzl's chest. Frinzl, like nearly all the other sur
viving men of the First Battalion, had arrived in Formi wearing either a cuirass or a mailshirt over an acton;
but Frin
zl's defenses were piled in a corner of the room with others. Frinzl staggered back, coughed blood, and sagged to the floor.

             
"Anyone else?" said Thorolf to the suddenly quiet crowd, holding his sword with a drop of blood forming on the point. He knew tha
t all they needed was a vig
orous leader to rouse them against him, and he would be pulled down and slain in a trice, like a stag by hounds or wolves. They would be furious at his spoiling their gang rape; but no leader spoke up.

             
"Then throw this carrion
into the street, and the lot of you get out!" he continued, speaking with difficulty because of the gaping wound on his face.

             
The men shuffled out the door and down the stairs, two bearing the late Trooper Frinzl. Thorolf heard a mutter: "Damned bluenos
ed Zurshnitters hate to see anyone else having fun
...
"

             
Thorolf turned to the woman, who shrank back. Now that he had a chance to view her more closely, she was young, quite comely, and just a trifle plump.

             
"How came they to catch you?" he asked in T
yrrhenian.

             
"I pray you, sir, I had lain down for a nap when the soldiers came. My parents fled with my brothers and sisters in such haste that they forgot to awaken me."

             
"How could your parents forget one of their own children?"

             
"I am the eldest of e
ight; so I ween they lost count. And now what, sir? Am I to be raped by you alone instead of by the whole battalion?"

             
"You shan't be raped at all, if I can prevent."

             
"Oh, thank you, sir. Meanst it that ye have lost your member in the wars?"

             
Thorolf g
ave a laugh that was half a gurgle because of the blood in his mouth. "Nay indeed. But this cut on my face begins to hurt abominably. Canst wash it and show me what it looks like?"

             
"Oh, yea, sir. Sit ye down here, and I'll wash it and sew it up."

             
She b
rought in a bronze mirror, which gave a wobbly image of Thorolf with a huge gash on his right cheek, through which some of his teeth could be glimpsed. Be
low it his face and garments were soaked with blood.

             
"This will hurt," she said.

             
"Go ahead," said
Thorolf. "A soldier must expect such dolors. Ouch!"

             
While the stitching and the pains associated with it took nearly all of Thorolf's attention, he became aware that the young woman was silently weeping. When the last bit of thread had been tied, he too
k his mind off the ache long enough to say:

             
"Why weep you
—
and what is your name, by the way?"

             
"Ramola, sir."

             
"Very well, Ramola, why weep you? Your family seem to have gotten clean away, and you've been res
cued from a gang rape."

             
The tears trickle
d silently. "I do think on what will befall me, for now I shall never get a decent husband."

             
"How so?"

             
"No local swain will ever believe I was not flittered by the soldiers; and they are fussy about virgin brides, not
withstanding that they all go to t
he city to tup the whores. I see nought ahead but a short life of city whoredom."

             
"You want a husband, then?"

             
"Oh, certes, good sir. In Aemilia, a woman's nought without one."

             
Thorolf remained silent for a space, dabbing at his cheek with a cloth Ram
ola had given him. At last he said: "In good sooth, it happens that I need a wife. Would the post beguile you?"

             
"Why, sir, I never thought of wedding a foreigner. But in view of your acture tonight, ye cannot be all evil, even if a foreigner and a soldie
r. Suffer me to think on the matter. Think ye we should come to love each other, as do the luckiest couples?"

             
"Belike. There is but one way to find out."

             
"Whilst I think on the matter, that dried blood on your garments doth begin to stink. Let me wash
them!"

-

             
A year after his departure from Rhaetia, when the last snow of spring was melting and dripping from eaves, Captain Thorolf Zigramson knocked on the door of Di
rector Berthar's chamber of office in the Zoological Park. When he entered, Berthar l
eaped up, crying:

             
"Thorolf! I feared you dead! What hath befallen? I see ye have a new scar."

             
Thorolf touched his right cheek, where the ridged purple-and-white scar showed above the edge of his beard. "No great matter; I lost no teeth, albeit I was bedded for a fortnight in the lazaretto at Fiensi by a fever. How about you?"

             
Berthar grinned.
"I
made the Board at last. Lust ye still after your professorship?"

             
"By Kemun's antlers, indeed I do! I've seen enough soldiering for a lifetime."

             
"What happened? I heard your Duke's forces were routed."

             
"So they were, and soundly. The Brandescans had a
mort of Serican thunder tubes, or 'guns' as they call them nowadays. We were advancing by battalions in phalanx formation
...
" Thorolf narrated the Battle of Formi. "I saw that this Saracen horse were but illusions cast by the Brandescans' wizards; but by
then our for
mations were breaking up."

             
"I
heard ye heroically saved the remnant of your bat
talion."

             
Thorolf shrugged. "After our officers had fallen, I saw no way to survive save an orderly retreat, and by shouting and beating with the flat I kept t
hem in ranks and brought them off."