Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  Pekka nodded. "And have some tea, Master, have some bergamot tea. It will help soothe you." She nodded to Linna to make sure the serving girl added the tea to Ilmarinen's order. Linna hurried off and brought the tea before anything else. The look she gave Pekka wasn't quite conspiratorial, but it came close.

  As the fragrant leaves steeped, Ilmarinen muttered something under his breath. "What was that?" Fernao asked, though Pekka wished he would have let it ride.

  Ilmarinen repeated himself, a little louder: "Seven Princes and a Princess- Pekka of Naantali."

  "Nonsense," Pekka said, "nonsense or maybe treason, depending on whether Prince Renavall, whose district this is, finds himself in a merciful mood."

  Ilmarinen took a couple of somber sips of tea and shook his head. "I have no trouble disobeying princes. I enjoy disobeying princes, by the powers above. But I obeyed you. Why do you suppose that is?" He sounded puzzled, almost bewildered.

  "Because you know you were making an idiot of yourself?" Pekka suggested.

  "That seldom stops me," Ilmarinen answered.

  "Aye, we have seen as much," Fernao said.

  Ilmarinen turned a baleful eye his way. "I'm not the only one at this table who's doing it," he snapped. "I'm just the only one who's not ashamed to admit it." Fernao turned very red. With his fair skin, the flush was easy to see.

  Something close to desperation in her voice, Pekka said, "Enough!" She hoped she wasn't flushing, too. If she was, she hoped it didn't show. She went on, "Master Ilmarinen, you came in and said we were wasting our time. You said it at the top of your lungs. Suppose you either explain yourself or apologize."

  "Suppose I do neither one." Ilmarinen sounded as if he was enjoying himself again.

  Pekka shrugged. She kept on speaking classical Kaunian: "If you would sooner disrupt the work than join it, you may leave, sir. We have snow on the ground again. Sending you by sleigh to the nearest ley-line caravan depot would be easy- nothing easier, in fact. You could be in Yliharma day after tomorrow. You would not be wasting your time, or ours, there."

  "I am Ilmarinen," he said. "Have you forgotten?" What he meant was, Do you think you can accomplish anything without my brilliance?

  "I remember all too well. You make me remember all too well with your disruptions," Pekka answered. "I am the mage who leads this project. Have you forgotten? If your disruptions cost more than you give, we are better off without you, no matter who you are."

  "Aye," Fernao growled.

  But Pekka waved him to silence. "This is between Master Ilmarinen and me. How now, Master Ilmarinen? Do you follow where I lead here, or do you go your own carefree way somewhere else?"

  She wondered if she'd pushed it too hard, if Ilmarinen would leave in a huff. If he did, could they go forward? He was, unquestionably, the most brilliant living mage in Kuusamo. He was also, as unquestionably, the most difficult. She waited. Ilmarinen said, "I would like a third choice."

  "I know. But those are the two you have," Pekka said.

  "Then I obey," Ilmarinen said. "I even apologize, which is not something you will hear from me every day." In token of obedience, he slipped out of his seat and went to one knee before Pekka, as if she were truly one of the Seven Princes… and he were a woman.

  She snorted. "You overact," she said, now in quick Kuusaman, rather hoping Fernao couldn't follow. "And you know what that posture means."

  "Of course I do," he answered in the same tongue as he sat in the chair again. "But so what? It's fun no matter who's doing it to whom."

  Now Pekka knew she was blushing. Very much to her relief, she saw Fernao hadn't caught all of the byplay. She returned to classical Kaunian: "Enough of that, too. More than enough, Master Ilmarinen. I ask you again: why do you say we are wasting our time here? I expect an answer."

  "You know why. Both of you know why." Ilmarinen pointed to her and to Fernao in turn. "Our experiment brought fresh green grass here in dead of winter. If we can do that, we can go the other way as well."

  "We are not grass," Pekka said. "And we have no notion from which summer the grass came hither."

  Ilmarinen waved his hand. "That is a detail. One reason we don't know is because we haven't tried to find out. That's why I say we're wasting time."

  Fernao spoke up: "You were the one who showed similarity and contagion have an inverse relationship, not a direct one. If the relationship is not direct, what works in one direction will fail in the other. Calculations to that effect are very plain, would you not agree?"

  "Without experiment, I agree to nothing," Ilmarinen said. "Calculation springs from experiment, not the other way round. Without the experiment of Mistress Pekka here, the landscape would have a good many fewer holes in it, Master Siuntio would still be alive, and you would be back in Lagoas where you belong."

  "That will be quite enough of that," Pekka snapped. To her surprise, Ilmarinen inclined his head in- another apology? She had trouble believing that, but she didn't know what else it could be. Then Fernao started to say something. He and Pekka got on very well- sometimes, she feared, almost too well- most of the time, but now she pointed her index finger at him as if it were a stick, since she was sure he was about to aim a barb at Ilmarinen. "Do not even start," she said sternly. "We have had too much quarreling among ourselves as is. Do you understand me?"

  "Aye." After a moment's hesitation, Fernao added, "Mistress Pekka." He looked as apologetic as Ilmarinen had.

  For a heartbeat or two, Pekka simply accepted that and was glad of it. Then she stared down at her own hands in something very much like wonder. By the powers above, she thought, a little- more than a little- dazed. I'm leading them. I really am.

  ***

  Grelz boiled and bubbled like a pot of cabbage soup too long on the fire. Grelzer soldiers trudged west, to try to help Algarve and keep the land a kingdom. Unkerlanter soldiers battled their way east, to try to make it into a duchy once more. And the peasants who made up the bulk of the population were caught in the middle, as peasants all too often were during wartime.

  Some of them, those who would soon have lived under puppet King Raniero than fierce King Swemmel, fled east ahead of the oncoming Unkerlanter army and the retreating Algarvians and Grelzers. In the mud time, the roads would have been bad without them. With them clogging those roads, the redheads and their Grelzer hounds had an even harder time getting men and beasts and supplies to the front.

  With so many strangers on the move, Garivald's band of irregulars could operate far more freely than they had before. Most of the time, a stranger's appearance in a peasant village brought gossip and speculation. Having lived his whole life up till the war in Zossen, a village much like any other, Garivald understood that in his bones. But things were different now. With strangers everywhere, what difference did one more make?

  "Our army's still moving," Garivald told Tantris as reports from the outside world trickled into the woods where the irregulars denned. "Not easy to press forward in the mud time. I ought to know."

  "Marshal Rathar's no ordinary soldier," the Unkerlanter regular replied. "He can make men do things they couldn't manage most of the time."

  "The ground's starting to freeze every now and then," Garivald said. "That'll make things easier- at least till the first big blizzard."

  "Easier for both sides," Tantris said. "When it's mud, we've got the edge on the redheads."

  "Oh, aye, no doubt," Garivald agreed. "We can move a little, and the stinking Algarvians can hardly move at all."

  He'd intended that for sarcasm, but Tantris took him literally and nodded. "If you can get any kind of advantage, no matter how small, you grab it with both hands," he said. "That's how you win."

  For once, Obilot agreed with him. "We have the best chance to hurt the Algarvians now," she told Garivald inside the tent the two of them had started sharing. "The real army is getting close. Mezentio's whoresons will be careless of us. They'll have bigger things, worse things, on their minds."

  "Aye."
Garivald knew he sounded abstracted. He couldn't help it. If the army wasn't so far away from here, it was even closer to Zossen… Zossen, where his wife and son and daughter lived. One of these days, he would have to go back, which meant that one of these days there would be no place for Obilot in his life.

  He reached for her. She came to him, a smile on her face. They made love under a couple of blankets; it was cold in the tent, and getting colder. At the moment when she stiffened and shuddered and her arms tightened around him, she whispered his name with a kind of wonder in her voice he'd never heard from anyone else. He missed his wife and children, but he would miss her, too, if this ever had to end.

  Afterwards, he asked her, "Do you think about what life will be like once the army takes back all of Grelz?"

  "When there's no more need for irregulars, you mean?" she asked, and he nodded. She shrugged. "No, not very much. What's the point? I haven't got anything to go back to. Everything I had once upon a time, the redheads smashed."

  Garivald still didn't know what she'd had. He supposed she'd been a wife, as Annore was his wife back in Zossen. Maybe she'd been a mother, too. And maybe it wasn't just her family that didn't exist anymore. Maybe it was her whole village. The Algarvians had never been shy about giving out lessons like that.

  "Curse them," he muttered.

  "We'll do worse than curse them," Obilot answered, "or maybe better. We'll hurt them instead." She spoke of that with a savage relish at least as passionate as anything she'd said while she lay in his arms.

  And she left the woods the next morning to go spy out the roads and the nearby villages. Both the Algarvians and the Grelzers paid less attention to women than they did to men. In a way, that made sense, for more women were less dangerous than most men. But Obilot was different from most women.

  When she came back the next day, excitement glowed on her face. "We can hurt them," she said. "We can hurt them badly. They're mustering at Pirmasens for a strike against the head of the column of regulars moving east."

  That made Tantris' eyes glow. "Aye, that's what we'll do," he said. "That's what we're for."

  "How many of them are mustering at Pirmasens?" Garivald asked.

  "I don't know exactly," Obilot replied. "A couple of regiments, anyhow. Algarvians and Grelzers both."

  He stared. "Powers above!" he exclaimed. "What can we do against a couple of regiments of real soldiers? They'd squash us like bugs."

  But Obilot shook her head. "We can't fight them, no. But there are only two bridges over the streams south of Pirmasens. If we can knock those into the water, the redheads and the traitors can't get where they're going."

  "That's right." Sadoc nodded. The peasant who made such a disastrous mage went on, "I'm from those parts. They'd have to spend a while building bridges if we take out the ones that are standing."

  Tantris nodded, too. Tantris, in fact, all but licked his chops. "If this isn't the sort of thing a band of irregulars can do, what is?" he asked Garivald. He still didn't try giving orders, though. Maybe he'd really learned.

  "We can try it, aye," Garivald said. "A good thing you managed to get us a few eggs- they'll help." Tantris actually had been worth something there. Back in the days when Munderic led the band, he'd had connections among disaffected Grelzer soldiers that got eggs for the irregulars. Garivald hadn't been able to match that. But Tantris, being a regular, had sources of supply farther west, and they'd come through.

  Sadoc said, "I want to get out there and fight. I want to make the Algarvians and the traitors pay. That's all I've ever wanted."

  It wasn't any such thing. Once upon a time- not very long before- he'd wanted to slay Garivald with sorcery. All he'd managed to do was kill Tantris' comrade instead. He was far more dangerous to the foe with a stick in his hand than with a spell. Maybe he'd really learned, too.

  Garivald scratched his chin. "If we're going to wreck the bridges, we'll have to move by night. We can't let anybody catch us hauling eggs by daylight. Anyone sees us doing that, we're dead men."

  Tantris stirred but didn't speak. Garivald could guess what he was thinking: that wrecking the bridges counted for more than losing a few irregulars. That was probably how real soldiers had to think. If not thinking that way meant Garivald wasn't a real soldier, he wouldn't lose any sleep over it. And he saw the rest of the band nodding their heads in agreement with him. They wanted to make the Algarvians and their puppets suffer. They didn't want to do any dying themselves.

  Some of them would, no matter what they wanted. Garivald was pretty sure of that, even as he got the irregulars moving a little past midnight. He hoped they weren't dwelling on it. But if they wrecked those bridges south of Pirmasens, the enemy would have a good idea of where they were- and would stand between them and the shelter of the woods. Getting back wouldn't be so easy.

  Getting to the bridges was another matter. Nights were long now, long and cold and dark: plenty of time for marching, plenty of darkness for concealment. Clouds overhead threatened snow. Garivald hoped they would hold off. That'd be just what we need, he thought: a bunch of tracks saying, Here we are- come blaze us!

  They carried four eggs, two for each bridge, with each egg yoked between two men with carrying poles and rope. Every so often, new pairs would take them; they weren't light, and Garivald didn't want anyone exhausted. He also sent out scouts well ahead of the main body of irregulars: here of all times, he couldn't afford to be surprised.

  Tantris came up to him and remarked, "I've seen real officers who didn't arrange their men half so well."

  "Have you?" Garivald said, and the regular nodded. Garivald let out a thoughtful grunt. "No wonder the Algarvians drove us so hard during the first days of the war, then."

  "You may make fine songs, but your mouth will be the death of you one day," Tantris said. Garivald didn't answer. He just kept trudging along. When the time came to take one egg's carrying poles on his shoulders for a while, he did it without hesitation. A real officer probably wouldn't have, but he wasn't one, so he didn't care.

  He sent a runner up to the scouts with orders to swing wide around Pirmasens. The glow from the campfires there was plenty to warn him away from the place. The runner came back with word that the scouts had already swung wide on their own. Garivald wondered if regular soldiers would have. He didn't ask Tantris.

  When they got to the first bridge, they planted an egg at each end. The second bridge lay a few hundred yards upstream. When they got there, Sadoc murmured, "I feel a power point. All I have to do is say the word, and-"

  "No!" Garivald hissed frantically. To his vast relief, Tantris said the same thing in the same tone of voice. Sadoc muttered something else, but the louder mutter of the rain-swollen river swept it away.

  Tantris went off by himself into the darkness. The eggs were his; he knew the spell that would make them burst, and he jealously guarded the knowledge. Garivald made out only one word from him- "Now!" -and then four nearly simultaneous roars shattered the night and shattered the bridges. Chunks of wood rained down on the irregulars. Someone let out a yowl of pain. Nobody would cross the river by either of those ways for a good long while.

  But then, even before Garivald could order the irregulars back toward the woods, challenges rang out and beams began to flicker in the night. The Grelzers had had patrols on the move- he'd just been lucky enough to miss them. Now… Now there were a lot of shouts of "Raniero!" and a lot of men rushing down from Pirmasens to join the hunt for the bridge-wreckers. Garivald's mouth went dry. Some Grelzer soldiers would sooner surrender than fight. Some were very good men indeed. My luck to run into that kind again, he thought. And they can pin us against the river. We can't use those stinking bridges, either.

  The Grelzers plainly intended to do just that. Garivald had no idea how to stop them. If Tantris did, he kept it as secret as the bursting spell. Another thought ran through Garivald's mind. We're going to die here. We're all going to die here. A beam zipped past him. For a moment, the air smelle
d of thunderstorms.

  No sooner had that crossed his mind than lightning smote the Grelzers, not once but again and again. Each crash of cloven air dwarfed the roars that had come from the bursting eggs. No snow. No rain. Only bolt after bolt of lightning, peal after peal of thunder.

  Through those peals, Garivald heard someone laughing like a man possessed. Sadoc, he realized. Awe- or perhaps the aftereffects of lightning- made the hair prickle up on his arms and at the nape of his neck. He's found himself at last. And then, as the Grelzer soldiers fled howling in fear, Well, for sure he picked the right time.

  ***

  As the ley-line caravan glided to a stop on the eastern outskirts of Eoforwic, Vanai squeezed Ealstan's hand in excitement. "Oh, I can hardly wait!" she exclaimed.

  He was grinning, too. They both got to their feet and descended from the caravan car. They both popped open umbrellas; it was drizzling. The misty rain hid all but the nearest houses. There weren't so many, anyhow; the city faded away into meadows and orchards and farmland- exactly the sort of landscape Vanai wanted now.

  Along with her umbrella, she clutched a wickerwork basket. Ealstan had one just like it. Vanai jumped in the air from sheer high spirits. "Mushrooms!" she squealed, as if it were a magic word. And so, for her, it was.

  "Aye." Ealstan nodded. They walked away from the caravan stop. Their shoes got muddy. Neither of them cared. They both had on old pairs. They weren't the only ones who'd got off at this stop, either. Half a carload of eager Forthwegians scattered to pursue their kingdom's favorite fall sport.

  "You don't know what this means to me," Vanai said once the other mushroom hunters were out of earshot.

  "Maybe a little," Ealstan said. "I remember how excited you were after you found the sorcery last year, just to be able to go to a park and look for mushrooms there. This has to be even better."