Into the Darkness by Harry Turtledove

something fell over with a crash. Pekka shut the oven door, splashed water on her hands, and hurried off to see what sort of atrocity Uto had committed this time.
     
    Garivald was weeding—exactly what he was supposed to be doing—when King Swemmel’s inspectors paid his village a visit. The inspectors wore rock-gray tunics, as if they were Unkerlanter soldiers, and strode along as if they were kings themselves. Garivald knew what he thought of that, but letting them know wouldn’t have been efficient. Very much the reverse, in fact.
    One of the inspectors was tall, the other short. But for that, they might have been stamped from the same mold. “You!” the tall one called to Garivald. “What’s the harvest going to look like here?”
    “Still a little too early to tell, sir,” Garivald answered, as any man with an ounce—half an ounce—of sense would have done. Rain as the barley and rye were being gathered would be a disaster. It would be an even worse disaster than it might have otherwise, because the inspectors and their minions would cart off Swemmel’s share no matter what, leaving the village to get by on the remainder, if there was any.
    “Still a little too early to tell,” the short one repeated. His accent said he came right out of Cottbus, the capital. In Garivald’s ears, it was harsh and choppy, well suited to its arrogant possessor. Southerners weren’t in such a big hurry when they opened their mouths. By talking slower, they made asses of themselves less often, too—or so they said when their overlords weren’t around to hear.
    “If this whole Duchy of Grelz were more efficient all the way around, we’d be better off,” the tall one said.
    If Swemmel’s men, and Kyot’s, hadn’t burned about every third village in the Duchy of Grelz back around the time Garivald was born, Unkerlant would have been better off. Being efficient was hard without a roof over your head in a southern winter. It was even harder with your fields trampled and your livestock stolen or killed. Even now, a generation later, the effects lingered.
    The short inspector glared at Garivald, who had stayed on his knees and so was easy to look down on. “Don’t think you can cheat us by lying about how much you bring in, either,” he snapped. “We have ways of knowing. We have ways of making cheaters sorry, too.”
    Garivald had to answer that. “I am only one farmer in this village, sir,” he said, genuine alarm in his voice now. He knew villages had vanished off the face of the earth after trying to hold out on Cottbus: that was the excuse King Swemmel’s men used once the dirty work was done, anyhow. He went on, “I have no way of knowing how much the whole village will bring in. The only one who could even guess would be Waddo, the firstman.” He’d never liked Waddo, and didn’t care what the inspectors did to him.
    They both laughed, nastily. “Oh, he knows what we can do,” the tall one said. “Never fret yourself about that. But we want to make sure everyone else knows, too. That’s efficient, that is.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Everybody needs to know King Swemmel’s will, not just that ugly lump of a Waddo.”
    “Aye, sir,” Garivald said, more warmly than he’d expected. If Swemmel’s inspectors could see that Waddo was an ugly lump, maybe they weren’t asses after all. No. That, surely, gave them too much credit. Maybe they weren’t such dreadful asses after all.
    “A lot of men in this village,” the short one remarked. “A lot of young men in this village.” He jotted a note, then asked Garivald, “When did the impressers last visit here?”
    “Sir, I don’t really recall, I’m afraid.” The peasant plucked a weed from the ground with altogether unnecessary violence.
    “Inefficient.” The inspectors spoke together. Garivald didn’t know whether they meant him or the impressers or both at once. He hoped the village wouldn’t have to try to bring in the