Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  He shook his head. “Getting caught in the open when eggs start falling is the last thing you want to do. I saw what happens then in the army—and the first time the dragons came over Skrunda, during the promenade in the square.” He swatted Gailisa lightly on the backside. “Come on. Let’s get moving.”

  “I was,” she said. Talsu chuckled. He hadn’t had to swat her. He’d just liked doing it.

  He would have pounded on his mother and father’s door, and on his sister’s, to get them moving, but they all met in the hallway—Traku had been coming down the hall to make sure he and Gailisa were awake. After some confusion, they hurried downstairs. They huddled between the counter and the wall just as the first eggs started bursting all over Skrunda.

  “Here’s hoping they come down on the Algarvians’ heads,” Talsu said.

  “Powers above, make it so!” his mother said. But Laitsina added, “Here’s hoping not too many come down on ordinary people like us.”

  “They do aim as well as they can,” Talsu said. That was true. But dragonfliers, high in the air and aboard bad-tempered beasts that tried to do what they wanted, not what the fliers wanted, couldn’t aim any too well. That was also true, but Talsu didn’t mention it. It was one more thing he didn’t care to think about.

  An egg burst down the street, close enough to make the floor shake under Talsu. The front window in the tailor’s shop rattled in its frame, but didn’t break.

  “They’re coming over more often than they used to,” Talsu’s sister said.

  “Ausra’s right,” Laitsina said as another egg burst, this one a little farther away. “They’re sending more dragons each time, too.”

  “It’s these Habakkuk things, unless I miss my guess,” Talsu said. “They can carry a lot of dragons.”

  “The Algarvians don’t like ‘em, that’s for sure,” Traku agreed. “They spend a lot of space in the news sheets screaming about ‘em.”

  “Anything the Algarvians scream about can’t be all bad.” Talsu spoke with great conviction. No one in his family disagreed. Not many Jelgavans in Skrunda would have disagreed—only those few who’d ended up in bed with the redheads.

  “I hope they have a couple of squads of soldiers right where the arch from the Kaunian Empire used to be,” Traku said. “And I hope an egg comes down right on those buggers.”

  “That would be good,” Talsu agreed. “That would be very good.” He’d watched when the Algarvian mages toppled that arch. The redheads hadn’t cared for what it said about their ancestors. They probably didn’t care for what a lot of modern Jelgavans had to say about the descendants of their ancestors, either.

  “At least we get a little warning when the Lagoans and Kuusamans come over now,” Gailisa said, as the shop shook again.

  “They’ve got dowsers here now, I suppose,” Talsu said. “They aren’t doing it for us, though. They’re doing it for themselves.”

  Before she could answer, several eggs landed close together, and all of them close to the tailor’s shop. The window blew in. Fragments of glass clattered off the front of the counter. More fragments clattered off the wall behind it. “Who’s going to pay for that?” Traku growled. “I am, that’s who. Curse ‘em all.”

  All things considered, Talsu thought they were fairly lucky. Had those eggs burst a little closer, the shards of glass might have sliced right through the counter—and through the people behind it, too. He didn’t say that. His father hadn’t seen real war face-to-face, and didn’t know everything it could do. As far as Talsu was concerned, Traku didn’t know how lucky he was.

  And then an egg did burst close by, close enough to slam the counter back against the people huddling behind it. Everyone shrieked. It didn’t quite go over onto them, and it didn’t quite crush them against the wall, but it came much too close to doing both. Talsu felt not the least shame in yelling along with the rest of his family. For a dreadful moment, he thought that yell would be the last cry that ever passed his lips.

  When he realized he would live a little longer, he said, “We’re going to have to remodel the shop.”

  “Right this minute, son, that’s the least of my worries,” Traku said.

  Gailisa pointed to the wall above the counter. “What’s that funny light?”

  Talsu looked up, too. It should have been dark; Skrunda left lights out at night to make it harder for Lagoan and Kuusaman dragons to find the town. Not hard enough, Talsu thought. But that orange, flickering glow was easy enough to recognize once you got over not expecting to see it there. “Fire!” he said.

  It got brighter fearfully fast, too. “It’s close,” Gailisa said, and then, “We can’t stay here.”

  “You’re right.” Talsu scrambled to his feet. Eggs were still falling, but that didn’t matter. The eggs might miss. If he and his family stayed where they were, they would burn. He hauled Gailisa up, too, then reached for his sister. “We’ve got to get out while we still can.”

  “But—” his mother wailed.

  “He’s right, Laitsina,” Traku said. “Come on. As long as we get out in one piece, we can worry about everything else later.” He got up, and after a moment his wife did, too.

  By then, Talsu was already at the front door. It didn’t want to open; the blasts of sorcerous energy left it jammed in the frame. But the window beside it was bare of glass. Talsu helped Gailisa through the emptiness there. Ausra went through by herself. Laitsina started to balk. Traku slapped her on the behind, hard. She squawked and scrambled out into the street.

  Talsu gaped. He’d never imagined his father hitting his mother. “Go out there, son, or I’ll give you the same,” Traku growled. “You’re the one who said we’ve got to get out, and you’re right.”

  “Aye, Father,” Talsu said, as he might have to a sergeant giving him orders in combat. Out through the glassless frame he went. His father followed.

  The shop across the street was burning. So was the one two doors down—and, even as Traku watched, the shop next door caught fire. “Where are the water brigades?” a neighbor asked.

  “Probably busy somewhere else,” Talsu said. “This can’t be the only blaze burning.” Water brigades were splendid for fighting the occasional fire that broke out during peacetime. If half a dozen, or a dozen, or two dozen, fires broke out all at once, they were going to be hopelessly overmatched.

  “But my shop will burn if the water brigades don’t come,” the neighbor said.

  “Our shop will burn, too,” Laitsina said. She was clutching Traku’s hand very hard. She wasn’t angry about what he’d done to get her moving. If she wasn’t, Talsu supposed he didn’t have any business being angry, either.

  “Sweetheart, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Traku said. “Not one fornicating thing.” An egg bursting a couple of streets away punctuated his words. Shaking his head, he went on, “We’re alive. That’s all that matters right now.”

  Gailisa said, “Here’s hoping the Algarvians here in Skrunda caught it as hard as we have.”

  “Aye, by the powers above,” Talsu said.

  A woman who lived a few doors away said, “It’s a terrible thing when the people you want to win the war are dropping eggs on your head.”

  Everyone nodded. Talsu had been thinking the same thing. He hadn’t dared say it, though. If he said anything too harsh about the redheads and it got back to them, what might happen to him? He could go back to the dungeon, and he knew it.

  He made himself think about what was going on here and now, not what might happen later. “We’d better get moving, before the fire catches us,” he said.

  No one argued with him. He rather wished someone had. He also wished he could have gone back into the shop, gone back upstairs for … what? Everything that truly counted was here in the street with him. Only then did he notice his feet hurt, and that he was barefoot. He wondered how much glass he’d stepped in, and how badly cut his feet were. He shrugged. He could worry about that later, too.

  Gailisa gaspe
d and clutched at his arm. The corpse the firelight showed wasn’t pretty. Blood—it looked black—puddled in the gutter by the body. Talsu said, “We’re lucky,” and meant it.

  Traku looked back over his shoulder. “There goes the shop,” he said quietly. Laitsina started to cry. Talsu felt like crying, too. He’d thought he would grow old himself as a tailor in that shop. But he still counted himself lucky, for he still had a chance to grow old.

  Half the time, Vanai hoped Unkerlanter dragons would smash the Kaunian district in Eoforwic to rubble. That way, the Algarvians wouldn’t get the chance to use her life energy for their own needs. But then she would shake her head and wrap her arms around her swollen belly. Not just her life was involved here—she would have her baby soon. And she fiercely wanted the baby to live. What happened to her didn’t seem nearly so important as what happened to it.

  The Algarvians hadn’t staged another roundup in her part of the Kaunian quarter, though they’d swept through other parts of it. Whenever cries and screams rose elsewhere in the district, Vanai felt a horrid sense of relief—it was happening, aye, but not to her. Afterwards, she always hated herself for that relief, but she could never stifle it at the time.

  She looked out the window of her flat, then shrank back again. A couple of Algarvian constables strolled along the street. They twirled their bludgeons as they passed. If they didn’t own the world, they weren’t about to admit it. She muttered a curse under her breath, even though she’d already seen that curses wouldn’t bite on Algarvians. That hardly surprised her. They cursed themselves, doing what they did to the Kaunians … didn’t they?

  One of the redheads was uncommonly plump. Vanai took a long look at him, though she was careful enough not to get close enough to the glass to let him have a good look at her. She nodded. She’d seen him before, back in Oyngestun. She and her grandfather had almost been sent west, but he’d spoken up on their behalf, and two others had gone instead.

  Now he was here. What did that mean? Nothing good—she was sure of it. Were any Kaunians at all left alive in and around Gromheort? Maybe the Algarvians didn’t need constables there anymore. Vanai didn’t want to think that was true, but it made an unpleasant amount of sense.

  Along with his partner, the plump constable strolled around the corner and disappeared. Vanai let out a sigh of relief, though she didn’t know why. How was she in less danger now than she had been while the constables remained in sight? In no way she could see. But she did feel better, regardless of whether she had any rational reason to do so.

  “My grandfather would not approve of such irrationality,” she said. More and more these days, she’d fallen into the habit of talking aloud to the baby. She seldom had anyone else to talk to. Not many Kaunians were left in this block of flats, not after the latest roundup.

  I suppose seeing that constable made my grandfather come into my mind, Vanai thought. Normally, Brivibas didn’t enter her thoughts very often. When he did, she usually tried to force him out of them again. He would have disapproved of much more than a momentary lapse of irrationality. Her hands went to her belly once more. Having a child by a Forthwegian would have topped his list. She was sure of that. Bnvibas would have thundered on and on about diluting Kaunianity.

  “But don’t you see, my grandfather?” Vanai said, as if he stood beside her. “The Algarvians have done more to dilute Kaunianity in Forthweg than the Forthwegians could have done if they’d made half our maidens marry their young men.”

  Her grandfather would have said something stuffy about that being beside the point. She didn’t think it was. Back before the war—that magical phrase—perhaps one in ten of King Penda’s subjects had been of Kaunian blood. How many Kaunians would be left alive by the time the war ended? Any at all? Even if there were some scattered handful, would they have any weight in Forthweg—assuming a Kingdom of Forthweg ever existed again? Penda had had to notice a tenth of his subjects. Would he have to notice a thirtieth, or a fiftieth, or whatever remnant of blonds was left?

  Vanai laughed bitterly. Not being noticed by King Penda—if Penda ever came back from exile—was, at the moment, the least of her worries, and of the Forthwegian Kaunians’ worries, too. Surviving till he returned—if he returned—took pride of place there.

  The baby kicked inside her, strongly enough to make her hand move on her belly. She nodded to herself. The baby kicked hard these days. Once or twice, it had kicked in just the wrong place and made one of her legs go weak beneath her for a moment. She counted herself lucky that she hadn’t fallen.

  Patting her swollen stomach, she said, “And you ought to count yourself lucky that I didn’t fall, too.” The baby rewarded her with another kick and a wriggle. It wasn’t listening to her. She sighed. No one did, these days. The only person who’d ever really listened to her, as long as she could remember, was Ealstan.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. She’d known terror after the Algarvians captured her. She’d expected that. What she hadn’t expected was the most crushing loneliness she’d ever known. She’d got used to having someone with whom she could talk, someone to whom she really mattered, someone to whom she wasn’t just a research assistant or a convenience (or, occasionally, an inconvenience).

  She hadn’t realized how important, how marvelous that was, till she didn’t have it any more. She wiped the tears on her sleeve. Before she got pregnant, they would have embarrassed her. Now she almost took them for granted. They came more easily these days. She didn’t know why that was so, but she knew that it was so.

  Even back in the days of the Kaunian Empire, people had noticed the same thing. A couple of quotations from the days of the Empire flashed through her mind. Her mouth twisted. That she knew such things was her grandfather’s doing. And what had it got her? A flat in the Kaunian district, a wait till the Algarvians caught her and took her away.

  For that matter, what had Brivibas’ erudition got him? First, the attentions of Major Spinello, who’d had plenty of attentions to give Vanai, too, curse him. And last, a makeshift noose in an Algarvian gaol cell after he got recognized in spite of his sorcerous disguise as a Forthwegian.

  “So much for scholarship,” she said, though she did wonder how her grandfather had been recognized. Had the magic worn off, as hers had done? She found that hard to believe: Brivibas was nothing if not careful and precise. Had someone known his voice in spite of the way he looked? That seemed more plausible. But who could have?

  Major Spinello might have. Vanai shuddered. Spinello had gone off to the west to fight the Unkerlanters. She hoped he was dead, horribly dead. But even if he wasn’t, he was there, in the west, not in Gromheort. Who else? That plump constable? Would he have had any special reason to remember and recognize Brivibas? Vanai could only shrug. How could she know what had happened in Oyngestun after she left with Ealstan?

  The baby wiggled and twisted inside her. The sensation was like none she’d ever known. She wondered how she could put it into words for someone who hadn’t known it. After a moment, she shook her head. She didn’t think there were any such words.

  “Oh, stop,” she said, when the baby seemed to be trying to learn to dance inside a space that didn’t have room for fancy steps. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be back at my own flat, not here.”

  She was sure the baby made the masking spell she’d devised fade away faster than it would have otherwise. She wondered how long the spell would hold if she tried it now, with the baby so much bigger. She’d probably have to renew it every half hour, maybe even more.

  “I could,” she said. “I would. But…” Anyone who looked like a Forthwegian caught inside the Kaunian quarter would be blazed, no questions asked. “If it weren’t for that, I really could,” Vanai repeated. She had the dark brown strand of yarn and the yellow one. She even had a Forthwegian-style woman’s tunic. She’d found it going through a now-empty flat in the building. She sometimes wore it when the weather got warm. She’d always despised those baggy tunics, but they were
a lot more comfortable for a pregnant woman than any trousers.

  Here came that Algarvian constable and his partner, back along the street. They were both talking and gesturing animatedly, as Algarvians did. The plump constable laughed at something the other one said. How can you do that? How can you laugh?’Vanai wondered. You must know what goes on here. How can you not care?

  Bells began to clang then, not just in the Kaunian quarter but all over Eoforwic. The two Algarvian constables stopped laughing. The plump one shouted a phrase Vanai didn’t understand—one she judged unlikely ever to have appeared in polite literature—and shook his fist at the sky. Then he and his partner stopped strolling along and started hurrying away from the Kaunian quarter.

  Blonds on the street started hurrying, too: hurrying toward those blocks of flats that had cellars. From the gossip at the feeding stations the Algarvians maintained, Vanai had heard that her own people had killed a couple of constables rash enough to go down into a cellar with them. She didn’t know if that was true—it sounded almost too good to be true—but she hoped so.

  There wasn’t quite the desperate dash and scramble there would have been a few months before. For one thing, the redheads’ dowsing techniques had improved, which gave people a little more time to take shelter. And, for another, Unkerlanter dragons over Eoforwic were no longer a horrid surprise. They’d come often enough by now to let folk know what to expect.

  One of the things to expect was disaster, if you had the misfortune to be on the upper story of a building that a bursting egg leveled. Vanai started for the door, intending to go downstairs into a cellar herself. As pregnant as she was, she couldn’t go anywhere very fast, and so was grateful for the extra warning time the Algarvian dowsers gave. Not that they’re doing it for the likes of me, she thought.

  With a hand on the latch, though, she checked herself. She’d seen those constables leave the Kaunian quarter. She suspected the pair she’d seen hadn’t been the only ones getting out, either. How likely was it that the guards around the edge of the district were all staying at their posts? Not very, unless she missed her guess.