Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  Talsu didn't want to think he was that desperate. But the bowls of mush his captors doled out didn't come close to keeping him fed. His body was consuming itself. He didn't want to take off his tunic: his cell was anything but warm. But when he ran a hand along his ribs, he found them easier to feel every day as the flesh melted off him. More and more, he found himself wondering what the roaches tasted like and whether he could get them down without heaving them up again a moment later.

  One day, the door to his cell came open at an hour when it usually stayed closed. Three guards stood outside, all of them with their sticks pointed at him. "Come along with us," one of them said.

  "Why?" Talsu asked. Moving at all seemed more trouble than it was worth.

  But the guard strode in and backhanded him across the face. "Because I say so, you stinking turd," he said. "You don't ask questions here, curse you. We ask questions." He slapped Talsu again. "Now come along."

  Tasting blood from a split lip, Talsu came. He feared he knew where they were going. After they'd taken two turns, he knew he was right. The Jelgavan constabulary captain hadn't grilled him for a while. He wondered what sort of torments he would have to go through this time, and whether he would be able to endure them without starting to name names for the Algarvians' hound.

  He was still half a corridor away from the captain's office when his nose twitched. His head came up. It had been a long time since he'd smelled roast mutton rather than the usual prison stinks. Spit flooded into his mouth. He muttered under his breath, being careful not to say anything loud enough to draw the notice- and anger- of the guards. He'd only thought he knew how hungry he was.

  "Here he is, sir." The guards shoved him into the office.

  "Talsu son of Traku!" the constabulary captain exclaimed, as if greeting an old friend. "How are you today? Sit down, why don't you?"

  Astonishingly, a chair waited for Talsu in front of the captain's desk. He hadn't noticed it till the captain invited him to sit. He hadn't noticed it because all his attention focused on the desk itself, and on the lovely leg of mutton sitting there along with olives and white bread and butter and green beans cooked with little bits of bacon and a big carafe of wine red as blood.

  "How are you today?" the constabulary captain asked again as Talsu, like a man in a dream, took his seat.

  "Hungry," Talsu murmured. He could hardly talk- powers above, he could hardly think- staring at all that wonderful food. "So hungry."

  "Isn't that interesting?" the Jelgavan in Algarvian service replied. "And here I was just sitting down to supper." He gestured to the guard who'd slapped Talsu around. "Pour this fellow some wine, will you? And some for me, too, while you're at it."

  Sure enough, two glasses stood by that carafe. The guard filled them both. Talsu waited till he saw the constabulary captain drink before raising his own glass to his lips. He realized that might not help. If the wine was drugged, the captain might already have taken an antidote. But Talsu couldn't resist the temptation. He took a long pull at the glass.

  "Ahh," he said when he set it down. He might almost have been sighing with longing for Gailisa, his wife. He smacked his lips, savoring the sweetness of the grape cut with the juices of lemon and lime and orange in the usual Jelgavan fashion.

  Slowly, deliberately, the constabulary captain cut a slice from the leg of mutton and set the meat on his plate. He took a bite, chewed with appetite, and swallowed. Then he looked up. His blue eyes, mild and frank, met Talsu's. "Would you… like to join me for supper?" he asked.

  "Aye!" The word was out of Talsu's mouth before he could call it back. He wished he hadn't said it, but the constable would have known he was thinking it even so.

  "Pour him some more wine," the captain said. As the guard obeyed, the officer helped himself to green beans, ate an olive and spat the pit into the wastepaper basket, and tore off a chunk of that lovely white loaf and spread butter over it. He smiled at Talsu. "It's all very good."

  Talsu didn't dare speak. He also didn't dare hurl himself at the food on the constabulary captain's desk without permission. No matter how hungry he was, he feared what the guards would do to him. But he had permission to drink the wine. After the stale, musty water he'd been getting, how fine it tasted!

  Half starved as he was, it mounted straight to his head. Back in Skrunda, a couple of glasses of wine wouldn't have mattered much. Back in Skrunda, though, he would have had enough to eat; he wouldn't have poured them down on an empty, an ever so empty, stomach.

  "Now then," the constabulary captain said, "suppose you tell me the names of the others who conspired with you against King Mainardo back in Skrunda." He took another bite of pink, juicy mutton. "If you want us to cooperate with you, after all, you have to cooperate with us, my friend." He swallowed the bite. He'd never missed a meal. Constabulary captains never did.

  "Cooperate." Talsu could hear how his own voice slurred. Instead of naming names, he said what was uppermost in his mind: "Feed me!"

  "All in good time, my friend; all in good time." The constable took a bit of bread. Butter left his lips greasy, shiny, till he gently blotted them on a snowy linen napkin. At his gesture, the guard put an identical napkin on Talsu's lap. Then the fellow poured Talsu's wineglass full once more.

  "I don't want…" But Talsu couldn't say that. He couldn't come close to saying that. He did want the wine. He wanted it with all his soul. Even it made him feel less empty inside. He drank quickly, fearful lest the guard snatch the glass from his hand. When the glass was empty again, he stared owlishly at the food.

  "It's very good," the constabulary captain remarked. "Tell us a few names. What's so hard about that? Once you've done it, you can eat your fill."

  "Feed me first," Talsu whispered. It wasn't bargaining. At least, he didn't think of it as bargaining. It was much more like pleading.

  The captain nodded to the guard. But it wasn't the sort of nod Talsu had hoped for. The guard slapped him again, hard enough to make his head ring. He dropped the wineglass. It fell on the floor and broke. "You don't tell us what to do," the captain said in a voice like iron. "We tell you what to do. Have you got that?" The guard belted him again.

  Through swollen lips now bleeding freely, Talsu mumbled, "Aye."

  "Well, good." The interrogator's tone softened. "I try to give you something you might want, and what thanks do I get? What cooperation do I get? I must say, you've disappointed me, Talsu son of Traku."

  "I'm sure you don't disappoint the Algarvians," Talsu said. He hurt already. He didn't think they'd make him hurt too much worse.

  They were about to do their best. The guards who'd brought him from the cell growled and raised their arms to strike. But the constabulary captain raised his arm, too, hand open, palm out. "Wait," he said, and the guards stopped. His gaze swung back to Talsu. "I do my duty. I serve my king, whoever he may be. I served King Donalitu. Now I serve King Mainardo. Should King Donalitu return- which I do not expect- I would serve him again. And he would want my services, for I am good at what I do."

  "I don't understand," Talsu muttered. His notion of duty was loyalty to the kingdom. His interrogator seemed to think it meant going on with his job no matter whom it benefited: that the work was an end in itself, not a means to serving Jelgava. Talsu wished he thought the captain a hypocrite. Unfortunately, he was convinced the man meant every word he said.

  "You don't need to understand," the constabulary captain told him. "All you need to do is give me the names of others in Skrunda who are not favorably inclined to the present authorities."

  "I've told you before- Kugu the silversmith is the only one who ever said anything like that to me," Talsu answered. "I'll gladly denounce him."

  "That, I fear, is not an adequate offer." The interrogator cut a bite of mutton and offered it to Talsu on the tip of his knife. "Here. Maybe this will make you change your mind."

  Talsu leaned forward. He more than half expected the officer to withdraw the meat as he did so, but the man he
ld it steady. He took the bite off the knife. It was as good as he'd thought it would be. He chewed it as long as he could, and then a little longer than that, but at last he had to swallow.

  When he did, the constabulary captain handed him an olive. He ate it with the same loving care he'd given the mutton. To show his thanks, he didn't spit the pit back at the interrogator, but down on the floor by his chair. "Now," the officer said, with the air of a man getting down to business, "do you suppose you can come up with any more names for me? It would be a shame to make me eat this whole lovely supper by myself."

  Talsu's belly screamed for food- screamed all the louder now that it had a tiny bit inside it. Wine made his tongue freer, as the constabulary captain must have planned. But the wine didn't make his tongue run along the ley line for which the interrogator had hoped. He said, "When the Algarvians ship you west to cut your throat, do you think they'll care what you did for them?"

  That blaze got home. Just for a moment, Talsu saw fury in the constable's eyes, fury and- fear? Whatever it was didn't stay there long. The interrogator nodded to the guards. "You may as well go ahead, boys. It seems I've kept you waiting too long already."

  The guards did go ahead, and with a will. They had to manhandle Talsu back to his cell: by the time they'd finished, he couldn't put one foot in front of the other. When they let go of him, he lay on the floor while the door slammed shut behind him. Only later did he find the strength to crawl to his cot.

  A cockroach scuttled over him, and then another. He lacked the energy to try to mash them or to catch them. Maybe I should have made up some names, he thought. They hadn't beat him up so badly the time before.

  But then they'd own you, the way they own Kugu. That was doubtless true. The way he hurt now, he had a hard time caring.

  ***

  Durrwangen was less battered than Sulingen had been. That was about as much as Marshal Rathar would say for the city. Down in Sulingen, the Algarvians had fought till they couldn't fight anymore. Here, they'd pulled out just before his armies surrounded them. That meant some buildings remained intact.

  He made his headquarters in one of those. It had been a bank. By the time he took possession of it, though, the vaults were empty. Someone, Algarvian or Unkerlanter, was richer than he had been… if he'd lived to enjoy his wealth.

  Along with General Vatran, Rathar studied a map tacked to the wall. Vatran was in high spirits, as high as Rathar had ever seen him show. "We've got the whoresons," Vatran boomed. "By the powers above, they're on the run now. I never thought I'd see the day, but I believe I do."

  "It could be," Rathar said. "Aye, it could be." That was as large a display of high spirits as he would allow himself. No, not quite: when he reached out and touched the map, he might have been caressing the soft, warm flesh of his beloved.

  And he had reason to caress that map. Three Unkerlanter columns pushed out from Durrwangen, one to the east, one to the northeast toward the border of the Duchy of Grelz, and one due north. The Algarvians weren't managing much more than a rear-guard fight against any of them.

  "Did I hear right?" Vatran asked. "Did the redheads cashier the general who pulled their soldiers out of here without orders?"

  "That's what captives say," Rather answered. "I'd be amazed if they were wrong."

  Vatran's chuckle was wheezy. "Oh, aye, lord Marshal, so would I." His bushy white eyebrows flew upwards. "If one of our generals had done such a thing… If one of our generals had done such a thing, he'd count himself lucky to get cashiered. He'd count himself lucky just to lose his head, he would. Sure as sure, King Swemmel'd be pouring the water into a great big pot and stoking the fire underneath it."

  Rathar nodded. A good many officers who'd failed to meet King Swemmel's exacting requirements were no longer among those present. Rathar had come close to seeing the inside of a stew pot a couple of times himself.

  But when he looked at the map, he made a discontented noise. "That was a stupid order: the one to hold Durrwangen at all costs, I mean. The redhead may have paid with his job, but he saved an army the Algarvians will be able to use against us somewhere else."

  "Would you have disobeyed?" Vatran's voice was sly.

  "Don't ask me things like that," Rathar said irritably. "I'm not an Algarvian, and I'm cursed glad I'm not, too."

  But he kept worrying at the question, as he might have at a bit of gristle stuck between two back teeth. Mezentio gave his officers more freedom to use their judgment than did Swemmel, who trusted no one's judgment but his own. Not even the Algarvians, though, tolerated direct disobedience: the man who'd retreat from Durrwangen had got the sack. And yet… Rathar studied the map one more time, trying to remember how things had been a few weeks before. He couldn't make himself believe that redhead had been wrong.

  A commotion in the street outside the plundered bank distracted him- or rather, he let it distract him, not something he usually did. Vatran, now, Vatran liked excitement. "Let's see what's going on," he said, and Rathar followed him out.

  Men and women pointed and hooted at three men led up the street by soldiers carrying sticks. "You're going to get it!" somebody shouted at the glum-looking men. Somebody else added, "Aye, and you'll deserve it, too!"

  "Oh. Is this all?" Vatran looked and sounded disappointed.

  "Aye. Collaborators." The word left a sour, nasty taste in Rathar's mouth. He'd seen and heard of too many men and women willing- even eager- to go along with the Algarvian invaders. Things weren't so bad here as they were over in Grelz, but they were bad enough. But when the Unkerlanters retook a town, people sometimes settled scores with enemies by calling them collaborators. He'd seen and heard of too much of that, too.

  None of these men was crying out that he'd been wrongly accused. Even the guilty often did that. The silence here said these fellows had no hope of being believed, which meant they must have been in bed with the redheads.

  Vatran must have been thinking along similar lines, for he said, "Good riddance to bad rubbish. We might as well get back to work."

  "Fair enough." No one ever had to urge Rathar back to work twice.

  When they returned, Vatran pointed to the map and said, "The more I look at it, the worse the trouble Mezentio's men are in."

  "Here's hoping you're right." Rathar tapped the pins that showed how far the columns advancing out of Durrwangen had got. "What we have to do is, we have to make sure we push the Algarvians back as far as we can before the spring thaw gets this far south. Then we'll be properly set up for the battles this summer."

  For two summers in a row, King Swemmel had wanted to hit the Algarvians before they hit him. The first year, he'd flat-out failed; King Mezentio beat him to the punch. The second year, Vatran had launched an attack against the redheads south of Aspang- right into the teeth of their own building force. Attack all too soon became retreat.

  This coming summer… Rathar dared look ahead to the battles of this coming summer with something approaching optimism.

  And then Vatran said, "The other thing I wonder is what new sorceries the Algarvian mages will come up with."

  That sank Rathar's optimism as if it were an egg bursting on a fishing boat. With an angry grunt, the marshal answered, "Those whoresons'll fight the war to the very last Kaunian. There will be a reckoning for that. By the powers above, there will be."

  Vatran grunted, too. "Oh, there's a reckoning, all right. Every time they slaughter their Kaunian captives to power magecraft against us, we have to reckon how many of our own peasants we've got to kill to block their sorcery and to make matching magics of our own."

  "Aye." A lot of kingdoms, Rathar suspected, would have folded up and yielded when the Algarvians started aiming murder-powered magecraft at them. He'd been horrified himself; no one had fought wars like that for centuries. The Twinkings War had been as savage a struggle as any in the world, but neither Swemmel nor Kyot had started massacring people for the sake of potent sorcery.

  But Swemmel hadn't hesitated her
e, not for a heartbeat. As soon as he'd learned what the Algarvians were doing, he'd ordered his own archmage to match Mezentio's men murder for murder. He'd come right out and said that he didn't care if he ended up with only one subject… so long as no Algarvians were left by then.

  In a way, Marshal Rathar had to admire such ruthless determination. Without it, the Algarvians probably would have taken Cottbus, and who could guess whether Unkerlant would have been able to continue the fight without its capital? Cottbus had held, Sulingen had held, and now Rathar's men were moving forward.

  In another way, though, Swemmel's complete indifference to what happened to his kingdom as long as he held the throne chilled the marshal to the marrow. If Rathar failed, he might end up in a camp with his throat slit to fuel the magic backing the attack some other marshal would make.

  Before he could go on with that gloomy thought, a dowser rushed into the headquarters and cried, "Dragons! Dragons heading this way out of the north!"

  "How many?" Rathar rapped out. "How soon?"

  "I don't know, lord Marshal," the man answered. "They're throwing out those cursed strips of paper again." Dowsers had a sorcerous gift- sometimes the only sorcerous gift they had- for sensing motion: water through ground, ships on water, dragons through the air. But Algarvian dragonfliers had taken to throwing out bits of paper as they flew. The motion of those scraps helped mask the motion of the dragons themselves.

  "Won't be long," Vatran predicted gloomily. Rathar could only nod, because he thought the general was right. Vatran went on, "Well, what'll it be when they do get here? Will they go after the ley lines again, or will they try and drop those eggs on our heads? Place your bets, folks."

  "If they have any sense, they'll go after the ley lines," Rathar replied. "If their eggs can smash up the depot or hit a line itself and overload it with energy, that really hurts us. But if they knock headquarters flat, so what? Swemmel chooses a couple of new generals, and the war goes on the same as it would have."