Counting Up, Counting Down

by Harry Turtledove

  He expected that to finish demoralizing the irregular, but the fellow had more to him that Valsak had expected. He put hands on hips and said, “Hoity-toity! You talk like that, why weren’t you on the other side at Lerellim? You—”

  He never got further than that. Valsak nodded to the archer at his left. A bowstring thrummed. The irregular clutched at the arrow that suddenly sprouted in his chest. Still wearing a look of outraged disbelief, he toppled.

  “Does anyone else care to question my loyalty?” Valsak asked quietly. No one did. “Good. I suggest you move on then, and if you want a bit of sport, try a brothel.” The irregulars, outnumbered and outfaced, perforce moved on. Their leader lay where he had fallen.

  One of the farmers came out of the stronghouse, looked from the corpse to Valsak and back again. “I thank you,” he said at last.

  “I did not do it for your sake,” the high captain answered, “but for the Dark Brother’s. You and yours are his, to be used as he sees fit, and not to be despoiled by the first band of armed men that happens by.”

  “I don’t care why you did it. I thank you anyway,” the farmer said. “ ’Twas nobly done.”

  Valsak scowled. In his rude way, and no doubt all ignorant of what he meant, the rustic was saying the same thing the marauder had. Nobility! Valsak knew where his loyalty lay, and that was that. He jerked a thumb at the raider’s body. “Bury this carrion,” he told the farmer, then turned back to his troop. “Ride on!”

  Gersner knew better than to question his commander in front of the men. But when they camped that night, he waited till most of them were in their bedrolls, then asked, “Did you really feel you had to set out on our own? After the war we fought against the cursed High Kings, that may not sit well.”

  “ ‘After’ is the word, Gersner,” Valsak said, as patiently as he could. “Except for mopping-up jobs like this one we’re on, the war is over. This is not enemy territory, to be ravaged to hurt the foe. It belongs to the Dark Brother now.”

  Gersner grunted. “And if he chooses to send it to ruin?”

  “Then his will be done. But it is not done, as you and I know, through a band of small-time bandits who happen to have coats the same color as ours. Or do you think otherwise?”

  “Put that way, no.” Gersner let it drop. He did not seem altogether happy, but Valsak wasted no time fretting over whether subordinates were happy. He wanted them to obey. Gersner had never given him cause to worry there.

  The mountain keep looked strong enough. Before the war was won, it might have held up Valsak and his forces for weeks or even months. Now, with the Western Realm’s heart torn out, he knew he could take it. It would still cost. Valsak had spent lives lavishly to take the citadel of Lerellim. He was not, however, a wasteful man. The need had been great then. Now it was less. And so, while Gersner and the troopers waited behind him and carefully said nothing, he rode forward alone, to parley.

  The sentry above the gate shouted, “Go back, black-coat! My lord Oldivor has taken oath by the Light never to yield to wickedness, or let it set foot here.”

  “They swore that same oath in Lerellim, and the Dark Brother sits on the throne there. What has your precious lord to say to that? Will he speak with me now, or shall I pull his castle down around his ears and then see what he has to say? Now fetch him”—Valsak let some iron come into his voice—“or I will make a point of remembering your face as well.”

  The sentry disappeared fast enough to satisfy even the high captain.

  The man who came to peer down from the gray stone walls at Valsak was tall and fair and, the high captain guessed, badly frightened: had he been in the other’s boots, he would have been. The local lord made a game try at not showing it, though, shouting, “Begone, in the name of the High King!”

  “The High King is dead,” Valsak told him.

  “Aye, you’d say that, wouldn’t you, black-coat, to make us lose heart. Well, your tricks and lies are worthless here.” Several men on the battlements shouted agreement.

  “There are no tricks or lies. Along with others here, I was one of those who killed him. Should you care to share that honor with him, I daresay it can be arranged.”

  Appalled silence fell in the castle. Valsak let it stretch. Fear worked only for the Dark Brother. When Oldivor spoke again, he sounded less bold. “What would you have of me?”

  “Yield up your fortress. You have not yet fought against the Dark Brother’s servants, so no offense exists save failing to leave here when the High King, ah, died. I am high captain of the Dark Brother; I have the power to forgive that small trespass if you make it good now. You and yours may even keep your swords. All you need do is swear your submission to the Dark Brother, and you shall depart in peace. In his name I avow it.”

  “Swear submission to evil, you mean,” the man on the battlements said slowly.

  “The Dark Brother rules now. You will submit to him, sir, whether or not you swear the oath. The choice is doing it before your castle is sacked and you yourself—if you are lucky—slain.” Valsak paused. “Do you need time to consider your decision? I will give it to you, if you like.”

  Oldivor stood suddenly straighter. “I need no time. I will stand by my first oath, and will not be forsworn. If the High King and his line have failed, then one day, with the aid of the elves, a new line will rise up to fight again for freedom.”

  “The elves are dead,” Valsak said. “If you have anyone in your keep with the least skill at magic, you will know I tell no lies.”

  That knocked some of the new-come spirit out of the noble on the walls above the high captain. “So Velethol was right,” he said. Valsak thought he was talking more to himself than to anyone else. But then Oldivor gathered himself again. “I will fight regardless, for my honor’s sake,” he said loudly. He had the backing of his men, if nothing else: they cheered his defiance.

  Valsak shrugged. “You have made your choice. You will regret it.” He rode back to his own line.

  “A waste of time?” Gersner asked.

  “A waste of time.” Valsak turned to the lesser of the two wizards who had seared away the gates of Lerellim’s citadel. “Open the keep for us.”

  The wizard bowed. “It shall be done, High Captain.” He summoned his powers, sent them darting forth. This mountain keep’s gates were not elf-silver, only iron-faced wood. They caught at once, and kept on burning despite the water and sand the defenders poured on them from the murder-holes above. Soon the gateway stood naked for Valsak’s warriors.

  As at the citadel, warriors rushed to fill the breach in the fortifications. “Shall I burn them down, High Captain?” the wizard asked. “They have scant sorcery to ward them.”

  Valsak rubbed his chin. “Burn a couple, but only a couple—enough to drive the others away from the portal,” he said judiciously. “If we take some alive, the Dark Brother’s army will be better for it. These are no cowards we face.”

  The wizard sniffed, but at Valsak’s scowl he said, “It shall be as you wish, of course.” It was also as Valsak guessed: after two men turned to shrieking fireballs, the rest drew back. The high captain’s warriors had no trouble forcing an entrance.

  Once inside the keep, Valsak spied Oldivor not far away, still leading what defense he could make. “Now will you yield?” the high captain shouted. “Your men have fought well enough to satisfy any man’s honor. The Dark Brother would smile to gain the loyalty you show now for a cause that is dead.”

  Afterwards, he realized he should not have mentioned his master’s name. His foe’s haggard face twisted into a terrible grimace. “So long as we live and fight, the cause is not dead!” he shouted. “But you soon will be!” He came rushing toward Valsak, hewing down one of the high captain’s men who stood in his way.

  Valsak soon took his foe’s measure: as a warrior who had slain an elf, he was in scant danger from this petty border lord, who had ferocity but no great skill. Still, the high captain looked to beat him as quickly as he could
. He was not the sort of man to toy with any opponent—who could say when the fellow might get lucky?

  And indeed, luck intervened, but not on Oldivor’s side. When Valsak’s sword struck his, the blow sent the blade spinning out of his sweaty hand. “Take him alive!” Valsak shouted. Three black-coated soldiers sprang on the castle lord’s back and bore him to the ground.

  After that, resistance faded rapidly. Only Oldivor’s will had kept the fortress’s warriors fighting once the gates went down. As they gave in, Valsak’s troops gathered them into a disgruntled crowd in the courtyard.

  “Shall we slaughter them?” Gersner asked. “That will make the next holding we come to think twice about fighting us.”

  “Or make it fight to the death,” Valsak said. “Let’s see first if we can spend fewer of our own troopers than we would on that path.”

  His lieutenant sighed. “As you wish. What then?”

  Valsak strode up to the prisoners. “You, you, you, you, and you.” He beckoned. None of the five men at whom he had pointed came forward willingly. His soldiers shoved them out. Fear on their faces, they eyed the captain, waiting for his decree.

  “You are free,” he told them. “Go on; get out of here. Go where you will.”

  Now both they and his own followers were gaping at him. Gersner, he saw out of the corner of his eye, looked about ready to explode. “What’s the catch?” asked one of the five. “The Dark Brother and his never give anything for free—we know that.” The others nodded.

  “Who does?” Valsak retorted. “Here, though, the price is small. Wherever you go, tell the folk you meet that so long as they raise no insurrection and obey the Dark Brother’s officers, they’ll have no trouble. If they plot and connive and resist, they will suffer what they deserve. Anything else? No? Then leave, before I think twice of my own softness.”

  The five soldiers wasted no time. They ran for the gates. Valsak’s warriors stood aside to let them pass. They might doubt the high captain, but they feared him.

  “What about the rest of us?” a prisoner called. Gersner, who had been talking quietly with the wizard, looked up at the question.

  “You have resisted in arms the Dark Brother, the overlord of all the world,” Valsak said in a voice like ice. “You will serve him henceforth in the mines, fit punishment for your betrayal.” He turned to his lieutenant. “Tell off a section to bind them and guard them on their journey to the mines.”

  “Aye, my lord.” Gersner sounded happier than he had since the beginning of the campaign. Mine slaves seldom lasted long. Gersner chose a junior officer and his small command. They hurried up to begin chaining the captives in long lines.

  Valsak held up a hand. “A moment. I want them first to hear my judgment for their leader.” Oldivor lay before him, trussed up like a chicken. “Let him be brought before the Dark Brother’s throne, to be dealt with as our master thinks proper. That is as it should be, for it was the Dark Brother himself he treacherously opposed here, after twice being offered the opportunity to yield.”

  A sigh ran through all the warriors in the courtyard, from winners and losers alike. The Dark Brother’s revenge might last years, and even then leave its victim alive for more suffering.

  “I betrayed no one, offered treachery to no one!” Oldivor shouted. “I stood by the loyalties I have always held.”

  “They are the wrong ones,” Valsak said, “especially now.”

  “I hold to them, even so. What would you have done, were our positions reversed?”

  “I chose the winning side, so the problem does not arise.” The high captain turned to his warriors. “Take this stubborn blockhead away.”

  Pass by pass, castle by castle, raider band by raider band, Valsak scoured the mountain country clean. With the Dark Brother and his power immanent in the world, the fighting was never hard. But it came, again and again: no matter how hopeless the struggle, few yielded tamely to the new order of things.

  “Strange,” Valsak mused after yet another keep had fallen to his magician and his soldiers. “They know they cannot prevail against us, yet they will try, time after time.” He watched another line of prisoners, many wounded, trudge off into captivity.

  Gersner made a dismissive gesture. “They are fools.”

  “Can they be such fools as that? Truly, I doubt it. I tell you, Gersner, I begin to admire them. They cling to their dead cause, never caring about the cost. The Dark Brother would cherish such steadfastness, would they only direct it toward him.”

  “You’ve wasted enough time, trying to convince them of that,” his lieutenant said.

  Valsak frowned. Gersner’s tongue was running rather free these days. “They, too, are possessions of the Dark Brother, could they be made to see it. Wantonly slaying troops of such potential wastes his substance. I will not do that without exploring other choices first, as I have said, lest I anger him by my omission.”

  “As you have said, sir,” Gersner agreed. The high captain nodded to himself. Yes, that had the proper tone of respect to it.

  The last prisoners limped by. Valsak shook his head. Such a shame that soldiers of such bravery could not—or rather, would not—see sense. When the campaign began, he had thought Oldivor an aberration. Since then, he had seen too many warriors stubborn unto death to believe that any longer.

  Obstinacy, however, sufficed no more than courage. The campaigning season had some weeks left when Valsak told the wizard, “Send word to our master, the Dark Brother, that I have subjected all this country to his rule, and have stamped out the last embers of rebellion that lingered here.”

  The wizard bowed, supple as a snake. “It shall be as you desire.”

  “Come over here a moment, wizard,” Gersner called from beside his tent. “I, too, have a message for you to give to our master.”

  The wizard’s hooded eyes went to Valsak. The high captain nodded permission.

  Valsak set garrisons in some of the fortresses his troops had not damaged too badly. Then, with the balance of the army, he turned back toward Lerellim. “A triumphal procession will be in order, I dare say,” he told Gersner. “We have earned it.”

  “I am sure, my lord, the Dark Brother will reward you as you deserve,” his lieutenant said.

  A day and a half outside what had been the High Kings’ capital and was now the Dark Brother’s, a pair of riders on matched black stallions came up to the approaching army. One of them displayed the Dark Brother’s sigil; the red axe glowed, as if aflame, on a field of jet. “High Captain,” that messenger said, “you are bidden to precede your host, that the Dark Brother may learn from you of your deeds.”

  “I obey,” was all Valsak replied. He turned to Gersner. “I will see you in Lerellim. Care well for the army till then, as if you were high captain.”

  “Rest assured I shall,” Gersner said.

  Valsak urged his horse ahead, trotting with the two riders toward the city. He gratefully sucked in cool, clean air. “A relief to be away from the dust and stinks of the army,” he remarked to one of the messengers.

  “Aye, my lord, it must be,” the fellow agreed. His comrade leaned over to touch the Dark Brother’s sigil to the back of Valsak’s neck. Instantly the high captain lost all control of his limbs. He tumbled to the ground in a heap. The messengers dismounted, picked him up and slung him over his horse’s back like a sack of beans, then took chains from their saddlebags and bound his wrists to his ankles under the beast’s belly.

  His mouth was still his. “What are you doing?” he shouted, trying to show anger rather than fear.

  “Obeying the Dark Brother’s command,” one of the men said stolidly. After that, the terror was there. Valsak knew it would never leave him for whatever was left of his life. He still tried not to show it. If Oldivor could go to his fate still shouting defiance, Valsak’s pride demanded no less of him.

  Unfortunately, he knew more than the fortress commander. That made a bold front harder to maintain before these underlings. Before the
Dark Brother, no front would hold, not for long.

  It was mid-afternoon the next day when the messengers dropped him, still chained, in front of the Dark Brother’s throne. Those terrible yellow eyes pierced him like a spear.

  “I—I am yours, my master,” he stammered.

  “Of course you are mine, worm beneath my feet.” The soundless voice echoed in his skull like the tolling of a great bronze bell. “The world is mine.”

  “But I am yours willingly, my master, as I have always been.” Had he not been telling perfect truth, Valsak would never have dared protest.

  “Are you indeed?” Valsak felt mental hands riffling through his mind. He cried out in torment; who was there to beg the Dark Brother to be gentle? After some while that might have been forever or might have been a heartbeat, the Dark Brother’s voice resounded once more: “Aye, you are. It is not enough.”

  “My master?” Valsak cried in anguish, though his anguish, he saw, was just beginning.

  “Fool!” The Dark Brother flayed him with words. “Do you think I rooted out nobility in my foes only to see it grow among those who are my own? So you admire the doomed rebels you beat for holding so stubbornly to their worthless cause, do you?”

  “They thought they were right.” Now that Valsak realized nothing would save him, he spoke without concealment.

  “And so they opposed me.” Infinite scorn rode the Dark Brother’s voice. “What idiocy would you essay, simply for the sake of doing what you thought was right?”

  “My master, I—” Valsak had to stop then, for the Dark Brother squeezed his mind for truth like a man squeezing an orange for juice. “—I do not know,” was what came out of his mouth, and what, he knew, sealed his fate.

  “Nor do I,” the Dark Brother rumbled, “and I have no wish to be unpleasantly surprised. Gersner will make a good high captain—he thinks only of his own advantage, which lies with me alone. Thus he betrayed you. A mind like that I can understand and use. As for you—” The Dark Brother paused a while in thought. Then he laughed, and his laughter was more wounding even than his speech. “I have it! The very thing!”