Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “No, not enough dragons, either,” Major Scoufas said gravely. He bowed to Sabrino. “Your coming will make a difference there, of course.”

  How big a difference? Sabrino wondered, returning the bow. But thinking about dragons naturally led him to his next question: “How are you fixed for cinnabar?”

  Scoufas shrugged again. “Not very well. Such is life, these days. The Unkerlanters have plenty. Their dragons can flame farther than ours, thanks to all the quicksilver they give them. We fly better than they do, though, which takes away some of their advantage.”

  “All right.” It wasn’t all right—it wasn’t even close to all right—but Sabrino couldn’t do anything about it. “Let’s get my dragons seen to, let’s get my men settled, and then you’ll show me the map.”

  “Everything shall be just as you say, of course,” Scoufas replied with another bow.

  The Yaninan dragon handlers did seem capable enough. They fed the newly come Algarvian dragons chunks of meat rubbed in ground brimstone, and they gave them some meat rubbed in cinnabar—about as much, or rather as little, as their Algarvian opposite numbers would have had available. The Yaninans had huts waiting and ready for Sabrino’s dragonfliers. Sabrino could think of major generals who would be sleeping rougher than he was.

  But when he got a look at the map, he forgot about everything else. “Powers above!” he burst out. “If they push hard—no, when they push hard—how in blazes do you propose to stop them?”

  “I am not a major of footsoldiers,” Scoufas said, which wasn’t an answer. “We shall do everything in our power, I assure you,” he added, which wasn’t an answer, either. Then that rather nasty glint came back to his eyes. “Of course, you Algarvians have had a certain amount of trouble stopping the Unkerlanters, too.”

  Sabrino would have resented that more if it hadn’t been true. From the freezing Narrow Sea in the south to the warm Garelian Ocean in the north, the Algarvians were stretched too thin against their bigger foe. This, though—what passed for the Yaninan line looked like a wool tunic after an army of moths had found it in a closet.

  Scoufas added, “You Algarvians often say Yaninans can’t fight. Then you go to war with your great plenty of all the tools. The Unkerlanters—they too have a great plenty of all the tools. And what have we? Bodies. With bodies, Colonel, we do what we can.”

  Sometimes what those bodies did was run away as fast as they could go, sometimes even throwing away their sticks to flee the faster. Sabrino knew that. Scoufas doubtless knew it, too, even if he didn’t feel like owning up to it. Like a lot of Yaninan officers, he had pride and to spare. And he needed it, for it was about the only thing of which he had plenty.

  “My men and I will do what we can for you, Major,” Sabrino said.

  The Yaninan shrugged another pessimistic shrug. “If your wing were not battered and used up, your superiors would never have sent it here,” he said. “We know we get your leavings.” He waited for Sabrino to argue. Sabrino didn’t. He couldn’t. That was also true. When he didn’t, Scoufas raised an elegantly arched eyebrow and asked, “Tell me, if you would be so kind, what you did to get yourself sent among Yaninans?”

  “Do you want to know the truth?” Sabrino asked, and Scoufas dipped his head. Yaninans often did that instead of nodding; Sabrino had seen as much down in the land of the Ice People. He went on, “I told King Mezentio he was wrong about something, and I happened to be right.”

  “Ah,” Scoufas said. “If you had done such a thing with King Tsavellas, it might have proved a fatal error.”

  Who says it isn‘t? Sabrino thought. But he would not say that to a Yaninan. Instead, he said, “I’ve been a colonel a long time. I’ll keep right on being a colonel for a long time to come.” Unless I get killed, of course. He shrugged. / have only my wife to provide for these days, now that Fronesia’s squeezing money out of that footsoldier instead.

  “What did you, ah, say to your king to fall from his good graces?” Scoufas asked.

  Sabrino didn’t intend to answer that, but decided it couldn’t make any difference. “I told him sacrificing Kaunians for the sake of strong sorcery would turn out to be a mistake, and it did.”

  “Well.” Whatever Scoufas had expected, that plainly wasn’t it. “You surprise me, Colonel. I thought all Algarvians killed Kaunians with a smile on their faces, I have not seen any who did not, at any rate, not till now.”

  “Life is full of surprises,” Sabrino said, at which Scoufas dipped his head again.

  Two days later, when Sabrino’s wing flew their first mission alongside Scoufas’ Yaninan dragonfliers, he got another surprise. It wasn’t that the Yaninans performed well enough. He’d looked for that, remembering how well Colonel Broumidis’ men had flown down on the austral continent. What really startled him was how weak the Unkerlanter forces opposite the Yaninans were. His wing came back from smashing up the enemy’s outposts not only without losing a man but also without the feeling of having been in real danger.

  “Maybe I should have said even more rude things to his Majesty,” Sabrino told Captain Orosio once they got back to the dragon farm. “This isn’t war—it’s more like the rest cure they give consumptives.”

  “Swemmel’s whoresons sure fight us a lot harder than they go after these buggers,” Orosio agreed. “Till we got here, I didn’t think the Unkerlanters had a second team. We’ve never seen it before, by the powers above.”

  “Of course,” Sabrino said musingly, “it is all they need against the Yaninans.”

  “Oh, aye—no doubt about that.” His squadron commander didn’t bother hiding his scorn. “Powers above, if Swemmel had a third team, he could get away with using that, too. Hit Tsavellas’ odds and sods with a real army and they’d break like a dropped pot.”

  “Aye, they would, wouldn’t they?” Sabrino looked around, more than a little nervously. He wished Orosio hadn’t put it quite that way.

  Seven

  Bembo swaggered through Eoforwic exactly as he’d swaggered through Gromheort farther east. Thanks to Delminio, his new partner, he’d already made the acquaintance of a good many taverns and eateries and bakeries where a hungry man could get what he needed to sustain himself through a long, hard, wearying shift on the beat. He was sustaining himself so much, he was thinking of letting out the belt that held up his kilt another notch.

  He didn’t enjoy going into the Kaunian quarter when his partner and he drew that duty, but he didn’t shrink from it. And it had compensations patrolling the rest of Eoforwic didn’t offer. As Delminio put it, “The blond women throw themselves at our feet or on their knees or however we want them.” By the smug smile on his face, he’d had no trouble getting at least one exactly how he wanted her.

  “Aye, no doubt about it,” Bembo agreed. He’d had good luck with Kaunian women, too. As an Algarvian constable, one could hardly help having good luck with Kaunian women. “Hardly seems sporting, does it? They’ll do anything, or a lot of ‘em will, on account of they think we can keep ‘em alive if we want to.”

  “Sporting?” Delminio shrugged. “Who cares about sporting? What I care about is getting my ashes hauled.”

  “Sounds right,” Bembo said. Delminio didn’t hate Kaunians the way Oraste, his old partner, had. But Delminio didn’t hesitate in taking advantage of the blonds whenever he saw the chance, either. Since Bembo rarely hesitated himself when he saw that kind of chance, they got along fine.

  After walking on for a few paces, Bembo said, “There are times I wish we hadn’t started sending ‘em west. I don’t know what in blazes it’s got us. The Unkerlanters are doing their own dirty work, and it pretty much cancels ours out.”

  With another shrug, Delminio said, “I don’t worry about stuff like that. If it’s good enough for King Mezentio, I figure it’s good enough for me, too.”

  “You’ve got a sensible way of looking at things,” Bembo said. That was plenty to make Delminio strut and preen as if he’d just been named a duke. Bembo wished
he could take the whole Kaunian business so lightly. He could sometimes, as when he was getting a blond woman to go to bed with him. But he had more trouble shutting down his mind the rest of the time than Delminio seemed to.

  A Kaunian woman came out of a block of flats. As soon as they saw her golden hair shining in the sun, Bembo and Delminio both swung their heads toward her, a motion as automatic as breathing to them. And then, when they noticed she was very pregnant, they both looked away again, too.

  As for her, she looked through them as if they didn’t exist. That was the common reaction among Kaunian women who didn’t care to give themselves to the Algarvians. “Wonder if one of us stuck that baby in her,” Delminio remarked.

  “I doubt it,” Bembo said, as the young woman waddled around a corner. “She doesn’t look like she hates us enough for that.” He fancied himself a connoisseur of such reactions.

  “Mm, you’re probably right,” Delminio said. Either he agreed with Bembo or he didn’t feel like arguing. Odds are he thinks I’m right, Bembo thought. We Algarvians, we’re an argumentative bunch.

  Bells began ringing, not just in the Kaunian quarter but all over Eoforwic. Blonds started running. Delminio started cursing. So did Bembo. “Stinking Unkerlanter dragonfliers,” he snarled. “Over in Gromheort, we didn’t have to worry about this much.”

  “Over in Gromheort, you were a lot farther east,” Delminio pointed out. “Just thank the powers above that our dowsers are getting better at spotting Swemmel’s dragons before the whoresons are right on top of us.”

  “Even if they weren’t, I suppose we could always duck into a cellar with the Kaunians,” Bembo said.

  “Go ahead if you want to,” Delminio said. “Me, I’d sooner take a chance on Unkerlanter eggs. Not long before you got here, a couple of constables went into a cellar full of blonds. They didn’t come out again—not alive, I mean. And of course the cellar was empty by the time anybody found ‘em. They weren’t pretty,” he added in meditative tones, “and we still don’t know just who did for them.”

  “Oh.” Bembo kicked at the slates of the sidewalk. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Delminio agreed. “They don’t go out of their way to talk about it, if you know what I mean.” The clanging of the bells grew more urgent. “But we ought to look for a cellar ourselves right about now, and that means one outside the Kaunian quarter.”

  “Oh,” Bembo said again. “Right.” He pointed to his partner. “Well, lead the way. You’re the one who’s supposed to know what’s where in this town. If you don’t know where the closest handy cellar is, what good are you?”

  Neither of them ran from the Kaunian district. But neither of them dawdled, either. They ducked into a cellar already rapidly filling with Algarvian constables and soldiers and a few trusted Forthwegians just as the first eggs fell on Eoforwic. The floor beneath Bembo’s feet shook. Lanterns swung on their mounting brackets. Shadows swooped and danced. Bembo tried not to think about what would happen if an Unkerlanter egg landed right on top of the cellar.

  Savagely, someone said, “I hope we’re paying the Unkerlanters back ten for one.”

  Someone else spoke in reassuring tones: “Of course we are.”

  Bembo wished he knew where that of course came from. Blind optimism, probably. Had the war been going altogether in Algarve’s direction, the Unkerlanters wouldn’t have been able to drop eggs on Eoforwic. Had the war been going altogether in Algarve’s direction, Unkerlant would long since have been conquered.

  And so Bembo decided there were worse things than huddling in a cellar while dragons painted rock-gray flew overhead. He could have been huddling in a trench, waiting for soldiers in rock-gray tunics to swarm over him. After a while, the dragons above Eoforwic would be gone. In a trench, the danger never went away.

  “We ought to have more dragons and heavy sticks around Eoforwic,” Delminio said. “This is an important place. Do we let the Unkerlanters knock chunks of it flat whenever they please?”

  “If we put more dragons and heavy sticks back here, pal, we wouldn’t have ‘em at the front,” a soldier said. “There’s not enough to go around as is, in case you haven’t noticed. Having Swemmel’s whoresons tear a hole in the line is a bigger worry than anything else, believe you me it is.” That echoed Bembo’s thought too closely for comfort.

  After what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been much above half an hour, the eggs stopped falling on Eoforwic. Bembo could barely hear the bells announcing that the Unkerlanter raiders had flown back toward the west. All through the cellar, people sighed and stretched, getting ready to resume their interrupted lives. Somebody put it pretty well: “We got through another one.”

  “Now let’s go see how many pieces need picking up,” Bembo said to Delminio.

  “There’ll be some,” Delminio predicted. “There always are.” He did his best to sound like a jaded veteran. As far as Bembo was concerned, he succeeded. But then a soldier let out a snort. Delminio gave the fellow a dirty look, but the damage was done.

  When they came out into the fresh air, it didn’t seem so fresh any more. The stink of smoke made Bembo cough. Looking around, he saw several plumes rising into the sky. More bells jangled as crews hurried to try to cope with the fires. “Looks like they hit us a good lick,” he remarked.

  “They’ve done worse,” Delminio said. But his bravado didn’t last. With a sigh, he went on: “They are hitting us harder and more often than they were a year ago. We have to carry on. I don’t know what else we can do.”

  At the edge of the Kaunian quarter, Algarvian constables eyed Bembo and Delminio’s kilts and reddish hair, making sure of who and what they were before waving them on into the district. Bembo looked around in disgust. “Hardly seems like anything fell here.”

  “Swemmel’s whoresons don’t usually hit the Kaunians hard,” Delminio answered. “They know the blonds give us trouble, and they know what we do with those blonds, too, so they don’t see much point to dropping eggs on em.”

  “Stupid, if you ask me,” Bembo said. “If the Unkerlanters know we’re killing Kaunians to give ‘em grief, they ought to do their best to kill ‘em before we get the chance.”

  “Why don’t you write a letter to Marshal Rathar?” Delminio said. Bembo made a horrible face at him. They both laughed.

  Just as they were rounding a corner, another redheaded fellow in constabulary uniform hurried into a block of flats. “Boy, he didn’t waste any time getting back here, did he?” Bembo said.

  Delminio chuckled. “He’s probably got himself a sweet little Kaunian tart stashed in there.” His hands, expressive as any Algarvian’s, shaped an hourglass in the air. “Has to make sure his darling is all right, don’t you know.”

  “Makes sense,” Bembo agreed. “You want to know what I think, though, what doesn’t make sense is getting that stuck on any one blond girl. How long is she likely to last before they ship her west?”

  “You know what your trouble is?” Delminio said. He waited for Bembo to shake his head, then continued, “Your trouble is, you’ve got your head on too straight. A lot of fellows, they screw a girl a few times and then they decide they have to be in love with her. You know what I mean?”

  Bembo nodded. “Oh, sure. I’ve seen that. Powers above, back when I was a kid I’d do it myself. But it’s especially stupid here.”

  “I won’t tell you you’re wrong,” Delminio said. “Back before you got here,

  a couple of constables got caught tipping off their Kaunian girlfriends that roundups were coming, or else hiding them so they wouldn’t get shipped out.”

  “Officers do that kind of stuff all the time,” Bembo said.

  “If these had been officers, they would’ve got away with it,” Delminio said. “But they were just ordinary sods like you and me. The wenches went out on the next ley-line caravan west, and the bigwigs decided those constables had volunteered for the infantry, so they’re somewhere off in Unk
erlant, too—if they’re still breathing they are, I mean.”

  Bembo grunted. “That’s … probably worth knowing,” he said at last. What went through his mind was, You can enjoy yourself with these Kaunian gals, but don’t—by the powers above, don’t!—do anything stupid. He didn’t expect he would. His mother hadn’t raised him to be a fool.

  Delminio had been eyeing him. After a moment, his new partner nodded. “I said you had your head on straight.”

  “You’d best believe it,” Bembo boasted, which made Delminio snort.

  That pregnant Kaunian woman emerged from her cellar and made her way back to the block of flats next door to the one the Algarvian constable with the blond girlfriend had entered. Delminio pointed to her. “What do you suppose she’s thinking right now?”

  “When you get right down to it, that doesn’t make much difference, does it?” Bembo pointed in the direction from which the Unkerlanter dragons had come, the direction in which so many Kaunians were going. Delminio thought it over. He didn’t need to think long. After only a couple of heartbeats, he nodded.

  “How are you this morning, milady?” Bauska asked.

  “Sleepy,” Krasta said around a yawn. “Very sleepy.” She gave the yawn full rein. “Funny—I didn’t get to bed all that late last night, or the night before, either.” She yawned again. If she wanted to go back to bed, who would stop her?

  But her maidservant, annoyingly, persisted: “How are you feeling today?”

  Bauska’s question had a certain eager avidity to it. No matter how tired Krasta felt, she noticed that. “I already told you,” she snapped. “Why don’t you go away and leave me alone?”

  “Aye, milady. Shall I bring you some tea, to help you wake up?” the serving woman asked.

  “No.” Krasta shuddered. “The cup I had yesterday tasted most shockingly bad. I know there’s a war, but the blenders will simply have to do better than that, or they shall hear from me.”