Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “By doing what our commanders order us to do,” Andelot replied. “This is most efficient way we find.” When he spoke Algarvian, he seemed stuck in the present indicative.

  “But what happens when your commanders make a mistake?” Ilmarinen asked. Obeying without question struck him as inhuman. He had a certain amount of trouble--perhaps more than a certain amount--obeying at all. “What happens when a lieutenant like you or a sergeant, say, needs to fix a mistake? How do you do that when you have no initiative?”

  “We have some. We have less than Algarvians, maybe, but we have some. I admit, if we have more, we do better.” Lieutenant Andelot turned and called in Algarvian to another, older, man, who came over and saluted. Returning to a language Ilmarinen could follow, Andelot said, “Here is Sergeant Fariulf. I am sorry, but he speaks Algarvian not. He has initiative. He shows over and over.”

  “Well, good for him,” Ilmarinen said. At first glance, Fariulf was just another peasant in uniform, one badly in need of a shave and a bath. First glances, though, showed only so much. “Ask him how he decides to use it, then.”

  Andelot spoke again in Unkerlanter. Fariulf replied in the same tongue. His eyes were guarded as they flicked first to his superior officer, then to Ilmarinen. Andelot said, “He says, if I do it not, who does? When I need to do, I do.”

  Ilmarinen hardly heard the answer. He was staring at Fariulf. Sometimes-- not always--a mage could feel power. Ilmarinen felt it here. It wasn’t sorcerous power, or not exactly sorcerous power, but it radiated out from the man like heat from a fire. Finding such in an Unkerlanter peasant was the last thing Ilmarinen had expected. He was so startled, he almost remarked on it.

  A second look at Fariulf convinced him that wouldn’t be a good idea. The sergeant would have hidden that power if he could; Ilmarinen sensed as much. Whatever was inside Fariulf--if that was even the man’s true name, which Ilmarinen suddenly doubted--he didn’t want anyone else to know it was there. Andelot didn’t know; Ilmarinen was sure of that.

  The lieutenant had said something. Lost in his own thoughts, Ilmarinen had no idea what it was. “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “I say, how you give better answer about initiative?” Andelot repeated.

  “I doubt you could.” But Ilmarinen was still eyeing the sergeant. And Fariulf, or whatever his real name was, was eyeing him, too. Something like shock showed itself in the Unkerlanter’s eyes. He knew Ilmarinen knew what he was-- or some of what he was, anyhow. That alarmed him.

  Little by little, Ilmarinen realized the fellow might be dangerous if he stayed frightened. This was, after all, the Unkerlanter side of the river. If I have an accident, how hard would anyone try to find out whether it was really accidental? Not very, unless I miss my guess.

  Picking his words with care, the Kuusaman mage said, “I believe the more initiative a man shows, the more he does for himself, the better off he’s likely to be, and the better off the world is likely to be.”

  Andelot translated for Fariulf. Ilmarinen smiled and nodded. He hadn’t even been lying. Now, would the Unkerlanter see as much? Andelot said, “Maybe that so in your kingdom. Believe me, sir, not always so in Unkerlant.”

  Ilmarinen did believe him. In Unkerlant, from everything he’d heard, everything he’d seen, a man who stuck his neck out was asking the axe to come down. The mage wanted to talk more with Sergeant Fariulf, to see if he could learn just what sort of power burned behind the stocky man’s eyes. He would have to be careful. He saw as much. Andelot plainly had no idea what a wonder he had for an underofficer.

  But Fariulf--an Unkerlanter, sure enough--was wary about giving up whatever secrets he possessed. He spoke in his own language. Andelot translated: “Colonel, he asks if you done with him, if he can go back to duties.”

  What Ilmarinen felt like doing was kidnapping Fariulf and dragging him over to the eastern bank of the Albi so he could wring knowledge from him like a man wringing water from a towel. He reluctantly recognized he couldn’t do that. And Fariulf, alerted now, would yield him very little. Ilmarinen gave up, something he didn’t like to do. “I’m done with him, aye. Tell him thanks, and tell him good luck.”

  The sergeant got to his feet and took off. His power, his secrets, went with him. Ilmarinen could feel them leaving. He sighed. Andelot asked, “Is anything else with me, Colonel? I too have duties.”

  Get out of my hair, old man. That was what he meant, even if he was too polite to say so. “No, nothing else, Lieutenant,” Ilmarinen answered. Except for your sergeant, you haven’t got anything very interesting. “I thank you for your time, and for your translating.”

  As Ilmarinen returned and started back toward the ferry, another officer came by. This one, Ilmarinen saw, wore a chest badge along with the rank badges on his collar tabs. Ilmarinen figured out what the badge meant as soon as the fellow looked at him. He felt himself recognized for what he was, just as he’d recognized Fariulf for something out of the ordinary. The newcomer spoke rapidly in Unkerlanter. Andelot exclaimed in surprise, then returned to Algarvian: “This mage say--says--you too are mage. Is so?”

  He couldn’t even lie. The other wizard would know he was doing it. “Aye, I’m a mage,” he replied. “So what?”

  More back-and-forth in Unkerlanter. After a bit, Andelot said, “This other mage says you are no ordinary mage. He says you are strong mage, mighty mage. Is so?”

  Powers below eat you, Ilmarinen thought at the Unkerlanter wizard. It wasn’t so much because the fellow was right, but because, by being right, he’d made sure Ilmarinen couldn’t casually visit this side of the river any more. Getting escorted to things he was supposed to see didn’t strike him as much fun.

  “Is so?” Andelot persisted.

  “Aye, it’s so,” Ilmarinen said with a sigh.

  “You are spy?” the young lieutenant asked--a very Unkerlanter question.

  “I’m an ally,” Ilmarinen answered. “Spies are enemies. How can I possibly be a spy?”

  “How can you be spy?” Andelot echoed. “Easy.” The other mage, who didn’t speak Algarvian, had a good deal to say in Unkerlanter. Andelot didn’t sound very happy about hearing any of it. When Swemmel’s sorcerer finished, the lieutenant said, “You go back to your side of river now. You stay on your side of river now. You not welcome on this side of river now.”

  “And is that how one ally treats another?” Ilmarinen demanded, doing his best to show more indignation than he felt.

  “Do you show us all your secrets?” Andelot returned. Because Unkerlanters had to keep so many secrets so inspectors and impressers wouldn’t drag them away and do something dreadful to them, they were convinced everyone had secrets and guarded them and tried to spy out other people’s.

  “Plenty of your officers on our bank of the Albi, too,” Ilmarinen said. And, odds are, they’re spies, or some of them are, he thought.

  “That is that bank of river. This is this bank of river,” Andelot said, as if that made all the difference in the world. Maybe, to him, it did. He pointed east, toward the riverbank. “You have to go now.”

  Ilmarinen went, protesting all the while. To go quietly would have been out of character for him. Andelot and the mage walked with him. He wondered what the Unkerlanters didn’t want him to see. He wondered if there really was something he shouldn’t see. Curse Swemmel’s whoresons, he thought. When you start dealing with them, you have to start thinking like them.

  Lieutenant and wizard stood watching till he boarded the ferry, till it began to move, till it reached the other side of the river. What don’t they want me to see? Is anything at all there? Can I find out? He was planning ways and means when he realized he’d given himself a new challenge.

  Spring in Skrunda was an enjoyable time most years: warm without being too hot, with just enough rain to keep things green and growing. Talsu enjoyed this spring even more than the past few. Not only were the Algarvian occupiers gone from Jelgava, but the news sheets shouted of the triumphs of allied
armies deep inside Algarve itself. A few Jelgavan regiments were in the fight, too. By the way the news sheets trumpeted what they did, they might have been whipping King Mezentio’s men all by themselves.

  Some people--people who hadn’t seen action themselves--doubtless believed the news sheets. Talsu knew better. He knew what sorts of armies the Kuusamans and Lagoans had. He had a pretty fair notion of what sort of army the Unkerlanters had. In amongst all those fighters, a few regiments of Jelgavans would have been like a fingernail: nice to have, but hardly essential to the body as a whole.

  When he remarked on that to his father, Traku said, “Well, we’ve got to start somewhere, I expect.”

  “I suppose so,” Talsu admitted, “but do we have to cackle so much about it?”

  He made a noise that might have come from a chicken after it laid an egg.

  Traku laughed and then tossed him a pair of linen trousers. “Here--these are ready to go to Mindaugu for summer wear. He’s got himself too much silver to sweat in wool.”

  “I’ll take them,” Talsu said. “I’ll be glad to, in fact--his house is near the grocery where Gailisa’s working.”

  “Don’t dawdle away the whole day there,” his father said. “I would like to get a little more work out of you.”

  “Foosh,” Talsu said. His father laughed. Talsu grabbed the trousers and headed across town with them. When he got to Mindaugu’s, the wealthy wine merchant took them, ducked away to try them on, and came out beaming. He gave Talsu his silver. Talsu looked the coins over, as he’d got into the habit of doing. “Wait a bit. This one’s got Mainardo’s ugly mug on it.”

  Mindaugu made a sour face. “I thought I’d made a clean sweep of those.” He suddenly looked hopeful. “The silver’s still good, you know.” Talsu just clicked his tongue between his teeth. He had right on his side, and he knew it. Muttering, Mindaugu replaced Mainardo’s coin with one that had King Donalitu’s image. Talsu stuck it and the others in his pocket and headed off to the grocery store.

  I won’t spend too much time there, he thought, but a fellow is entitled to see his wife every once in a while, isn’t he? He’d been married for more than a year, but still felt like a man on his honeymoon.

  As he left the wine merchant’s, a couple of utterly ordinary middle-aged men in clothes even more ordinary (a tailor’s son, he noticed such things) who’d been leaning against a wall stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk--and into his path. “You Talsu son of Traku?” one of them asked, his voice mildly friendly.

  “That’s right,” Talsu answered; only afterwards did he wonder what would have happened had he lied. As things were, he just said, “Do I know you?”

  “You know us well enough,” replied the man who hadn’t asked his name. He reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a short stick such as a constable might use. “You know us well enough to come along quietly, don’t you?”

  Ice ran through Talsu. When he first saw the stick, he thought the men were a couple of robbers. He would have given up the silver he’d just got--it wasn’t worth his life. But they knew his name. And they wanted him, not his money. That could only make them King Donalitu’s men. As he bleated, “But I haven’t done anything!” he thought he would rather have dealt with robbers.

  “Quietly, I said.” That was the fellow with the stick.

  “Charge is treason against the Kingdom of Jelgava,” added the other one, the one who’d asked his name.

  “Come along,” they said again, this time together. The one who didn’t have his stick out took Talsu’s arm. The other one fell in behind them so he could blaze Talsu at the first sign of anything untoward.

  Numbly, Talsu went where they took him. If he’d done anything else, something dreadful would have happened to him. He was sure of that. Donalitu’s men had no reputation for restraint. They didn’t lead him in the direction of the constabulary station, which surprised him enough to make him ask, “Where are we going?” He added, “I really haven’t done anything,” not that he thought it would do him any good.

  And it didn’t. “Shut up,” one of them said.

  “You’ll find out where,” the other told him.

  He did, too, when they marched him into the ley-line caravan depot. He wondered how they would keep things quiet and discreet in an ordinary caravan car. But, being servitors of the king, they didn’t have to worry about ordinary cars. They had a special laid on just for them--and him. He would gladly have done without the honor.

  “What about my family?” he howled as the car--which had bars across the windows and sorcerous locks on the door--rolled out of Skrunda, heading southeast.

  “Can’t pin anything on ‘em yet,” one of the men who’d seized him said. That wasn’t what Talsu meant, nor anything close to it, but he didn’t try to make himself any clearer. He’d caught the unmistakable regret in the fellow’s voice.

  The other man said, “You want to confess now and make it easy on everybody?”

  Everybody but me, Talsu thought. Of course, they didn’t care about him. He said, “How can I confess when I haven’t done anything?”

  “Happens all the time,” the fellow answered.

  Talsu believed that. He’d spent time in a dungeon before. “How can you arrest me for treason when the cursed redheads arrested me for treason?” he demanded.

  “Happens all the time,” Donalitu’s bully boy said again. “Some people have treason in their blood.” While Talsu was still spluttering over that, he went on, “Turn out your pockets. Everything that’s in ‘em. You leave anything at all behind, you’ll be sorry--you can bet your arse on that.” He shoved a tray at Talsu.

  Having no choice, Talsu obeyed. King Donalitu’s men examined everything with great care, especially the coins he set on the tray. Talsu let out a silent sigh of relief that he’d got Mindaugu to take back the silverpiece with Mainardo’s Algarvian visage on it. These whoresons could have made a treason case from it without any other evidence. What difference does it make, though? he thought bitterly. They can make a treason case from no evidence at all.

  Late in the afternoon, the ley-line caravan car glided to a halt. “Come on,” one of Talsu’s captors said. The other one murmured the charm that opened the door. The dungeon lay right by the ley line, out in the middle of nowhere. Talsu hadn’t expected anything else. These whoresons wouldn’t want to walk very far once they got out of the car.

  Guards searched Talsu as soon as he got into the dungeon. They found nothing; the fellows who’d seized him had got it all. But they had their jobs, too, and did them. Then they threw him in a cramped little cell that held nothing but a bucket and a straw pallet. He sighed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been through this before.

  I have to be ready for the first interrogation, he thought. They ‘II let me get hungry first--he was hungry already--and they’ll probably wake me up so I’ll be all muzzy. But I have to be ready. They’ll want to break me right then and there. If I break, I’m theirs. I can’t give in.

  He made himself as comfortable as he could, and waited. A cart rattled down the corridors. Suppers, Talsu thought; he knew the sound of that cart. It didn’t stop at his cell. He sighed, disappointed but not surprised.

  After darkness fell, he stretched out on the musty pallet. His growling belly kept him awake for a while, but not for too long. His dreams were nasty and confused.

  The door flew open with a crash. A bright light blazed into his eyes. Two guards grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, you!” one of them shouted. Talsu went. Had he not gone, the guards would have beaten him and then dragged him where they wanted him to go. They might--they probably would-- beat him later. He was willing to put off the evil moment as long as he could.

  But when they took him into the interrogation chamber, he let out a cry of horror and dismay even before they slammed him down onto a hard, backless stool. The Jelgavan major on the other side of the desk greeted him with a smile. “Hello, Talsu son of Traku,” he said. “You
remember me, I see.”

  Talsu shuddered. “I’m not likely to forget you,” he said. The Jelgavan major had interrogated him during his last stretch in the dungeons. Then, he’d been asking questions for King Mainardo and the Algarvians. Now he served Donalitu, as he had before the redheads invaded. Then he’d been a mere captain. Bitterly, Talsu remarked, “I see you got promoted.”

  “I’m good at what I do,” the interrogator said placidly. He wagged a finger at Talsu. “Didn’t I tell you I would still be here, still doing my job, under whoever happened to be ruling the kingdom?”

  “You served the Algarvians with all your heart,” Talsu said. “If that’s not treason, what in blazes do you call it?”

  “Following orders,” the major replied. “I am a useful man, and known to be loyal to the king. Neither of those applies to you.” His tone sharpened. “You are charged with associating with Kugu the silversmith, a known Algarvian agent and collaborator, during the late occupation. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “You idiot!” Talsu howled, too outraged to remember where he was. “I went to Kugu trying to join the underground against the fornicating Algarvians. You know that’s true. You have to--he’s the son of a whore who betrayed me to the redheads.”

  “I’m not referring to that association,” the interrogator told him. “I’m referring to the association you continued to have with him after you were released from your last period of confinement. That’s plainly treason against King Donalitu.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Talsu said. “I had to associate with Kugu then. If I didn’t, you people would have thrown me back into a cell.” He’d also arranged for the silversmith’s untimely demise, but he didn’t even bother bringing that up. He couldn’t prove it, as he’d done it by stealth and sorcery.

  “That is no excuse,” the interrogator said. “You also provided the occupying authorities with the names of certain people you believed to be loyal to King Donalitu. Arrests were made as a result of your actions. Punishments were inflicted. I will have you know, this is a very serious charge.”