Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "Ahh, bugger it." Ceorl spat into the fire. "What difference does it make? Not a one of us is ever going to get home to Forthweg anyway. Who cares if our side kills us, or the other bastards do?"

  Sidroc waited for Werferth to pitch a fit. But the veteran sergeant only sighed. "Odds are you're right. Powers below eat you for saying so out loud, though."

  "Why?" Ceorl sounded genuinely curious.

  "Why? I'll tell you why," Werferth answered. "Because we've got to go on fighting like we're on the edge of winning this war, that's why. Because we'll get ourselves killed quicker if we don't, that's why. Because we still might beat the odds, too, that's why."

  Ceorl dug into the meat and groats he'd cooked up. His mouth full, he said, "Fat chance."

  "No, I think the sergeant's right," Sidroc said.

  Ceorl sneered. "Of course you do. He's arguing with me. If he said the sky was green, you'd figure he was right."

  "Oh, futter yourself," Sidroc said. "I think he's right on account of I think he's right, and on account of the Algarvians. They're sneakier than the Unkerlanters, and they're smarter, too. The war's not over yet, not by a long blaze. If they kill enough stinking Kaunians…"

  "It won't make a counterfeit copper's worth of difference," Ceorl said. "Swemmel's boys will just kill as many of their own people as they need to, to even things out. Haven't we already seen that?"

  "Maybe they'll come up with some other kind of magecraft, then. I don't know," Sidroc said. "What I do know is, one Algarvian is worth two or three Unkerlanters. We've seen that plenty of times. Powers above, one of us is worth two or three of Swemmel's men, too."

  "Of course we are," Ceorl said- had he said anything else, he would have had Werferth arguing with him again, too. "Trouble is, one of us is worth two or three Unkerlanters, and then that fourth or fifth Unkerlanter ups and kicks us in the balls. We've seen that plenty of times, too- tell me we haven't."

  Sidroc grunted. He couldn't tell Ceorl any such thing, and he knew it. He gave the best comeback he could: "They've got to run out of soldiers sooner or later."

  "Sooner would be better," Sergeant Werferth said.

  Neither Ceorl nor Sidroc wanted to quarrel with that. Not far away, a sentry called out a challenge in Algarvian. All three men by the fire grabbed for their sticks, not that those had been very far away. The answer came back in Algarvian, too. Neither Sidroc, Werferth, nor Ceorl relaxed. For one thing, the Unkerlanters sometimes found soldiers who could speak the language of their enemies. For another, Algarvians who didn't know the men of Plegmund's Brigade went right on taking them for Unkerlanters.

  Not this time, though, not even when the sentry let out a happy yelp in Forthwegian- "Behemoths!" -that the redheads could easily have taken for Unkerlanter. Sidroc and his comrades exclaimed in delight. Behemoths with Algarvians aboard them had been too rare since so many died trying to smash their way through the Durrwangen bulge.

  "I wonder who's going short so the beasts can come here," Werferth said.

  "I don't, Sergeant," Sidroc answered. "I don't even care. All I know is, for once we're not going to go short."

  "That's right, by the powers above," Ceorl said. Not for the first time, having Ceorl agree with him made Sidroc wonder if he was wrong.

  On snowshoes, the behemoths' strides were surprisingly quiet. The white surcoats the beasts wore- the equivalent of the soldiers' snow smocks- helped muffle the clank and clatter of their chainmail. But they drew the men of Plegmund's Brigade and their Algarvian officers just the same.

  And the Algarvians who crewed the behemoths retained the cheerful arrogance of earlier days. They waved to the Forthwegians as if to younger brothers. "You boys come along with us," one of them called, "and we'll do a proper job of smashing up the Unkerlanters."

  "That's right," said a redhead on a different behemoth. "They haven't got a chance of standing up against us once we get rolling. You know that."

  Sidroc knew nothing of the sort. What he knew was that, had the war been going just the way the Algarvians wanted, Plegmund's Brigade would never have come to the front line at all. It would have stayed in Grelz hunting irregulars, as it had started out doing. Well, now it was back in Grelz after a year and more of some of the most desperate fighting in the war, and it was facing the full weight of King Swemmel's army.

  But, and especially after Ceorl's gloom, that Algarvian good cheer hit Sidroc like a strong slug of spirits. Mezentio's men had gone forward against the Unkerlanters. Why shouldn't they go forward against them again?

  Algarvian footsoldiers came up with the behemoths. Some of them- new men, by their trim uniforms and unhaggard faces- gave the troopers of Plegmund's Brigade suspicious stares. "Are these fellows really on our side?" one of them asked, as if the bearded men in long tunics couldn't possibly be expected to understand his language.

  "Aye, we are," Sidroc said. "And we'll stay that way as long as you don't ask idiot questions like that." The redhead glared at him. Sidroc was no older, but he'd seen things the Algarvian hadn't yet imagined. He looked through the newcomer as if he didn't exist. A couple of Mezentio's veterans talked to their countryman and calmed him down.

  Somewhere not far away, the Algarvians had gathered together a good many egg-tossers, too. They all started flinging death at the Unkerlanters at once. "They'd never lay on so much just for us," Ceorl grumbled. "Put their own people into the fight, though, and they care a lot more."

  That was probably true. Sidroc shook his head. No, that was certainly true. "Nothing we can do about it but make the most of it now," he said.

  Whistles shrilled. The Algarvian behemoths lumbered forward, straight through the hole the egg-tossers had torn in the Unkerlanter line. Footsoldiers- Algarvians and the men of Plegmund's Brigade together- accompanied the behemoths.

  Maybe the men who rode those behemoths knew what they were talking about. King Swemmel's soldiers seemed astonished to find Algarvians attacking. Whenever the Unkerlanters were astonished, they had trouble. Some of them fought, stubborn as always. But a good many fled, and a good many surrendered.

  "Forward!" Algarvian officers shouted, again and again. "Keep up with the behemoths!"

  Sidroc did his best. Despite the snow on the ground, sweat streamed down his face. His legs ached. But he was advancing again. He blazed at an Unkerlanter before the fellow could blaze at an Algarvian behemoth. The Unkerlanter went down. Sidroc whooped with glee.

  A couple of days later, Swemmel's soldiers tried to rally at the outskirts of what was either a large village or a small town. They had egg-tossers in the place. Eggs flew through the air, kicking up fans of snow- and a few Algarvian soldiers- when they burst. The counterattack slowed and threatened to stall. Sidroc cursed. "Just when things looked like they were starting to go our way-"

  "Aye," Werferth agreed mournfully. "Maybe that whoreson of a Ceorl was right. This is how it works for the redheads these days. They don't- we don't- have enough to smash the Unkerlanters flat when we're supposed to."

  But he was wrong. The Algarvians had always been good at making their egg-tossers keep up with advancing soldiers. Now more eggs burst in and around the Unkerlanter-held town than came out of it. One by one, the Unkerlanter egg-tossers fell silent, suppressed by the eggs flung at them. Lately, Algarvian dragons had seemed almost as scarce in the air as Algarvian behemoths were on the ground. But a wing of them stooped on the town like kestrels. With eggs and flame, they left it a smoking ruin. Only then did officers blow their whistles and shout, "Forward!"

  Behemoths advanced with the footsoldiers, tossing still more eggs on the enemy. Even before the Algarvians and the men of Plegmund's Brigade got into the village, white flags started flying. Unkerlanter soldiers stumbled toward them, hands high.

  "I'll be a son of a whore," Sidroc said in something approaching awe. "Haven't seen anything like this in I don't know when."

  "Forward!" an Algarvian officer not far away shouted. "Keep moving! Don't waste a heartbeat! Push
'em hard! We'll take Herborn back yet!"

  Three or four days before; Sidroc would have thought him a madman. Then, like everyone else, he'd been wondering how far the Algarvians would have to retreat before finally finding a line they could hold. Now… Now, for the time being at least, they had the bit between their teeth again. He trudged on past burning peasant huts and Unkerlanter corpses. He didn't know how far he and his comrades could go, but he was interested again in finding out.

  ***

  An enormous wolf with fangs dripping blood had a long, sly face that looked a lot like King Swemmel's. So no Forthwegian could miss the point, the artist who'd painted the wolf on the broadsheet had thoughtfully labeled it UNKERLANT. A stalwart Algarvian shepherd with a stout spear stood between that fearsome wolf and a flock of sheep altogether too precious and sweet to be believable. They too had a label: DERLAVAIAN CIVILIZATION.

  Ealstan studied the broadsheet with a connoisseur's appraising eye. In four and a half years of war, he'd seen a lot of them. At last, with the grudged respect one gave a clever foe, he nodded. This was one of Algarve's better efforts. Few Forthwegians loved their cousins to the west. The broadsheet might prompt his countrymen to think of the redheads as their protectors.

  But so what? Ealstan thought, and his face twisted into a grin almost as fearsome as the Swemmel-wolf's. So what, by the powers above? If the Unkerlanters keep pounding Mezentio's men, what Forthweg thinks about them won't matter. The Algarvians are losing. That was sweet as honey to him. Ever since the Algarvians overwhelmed the Forthwegian army- and so many others afterwards- he'd wondered if they could lose, and feared they couldn't.

  Still wearing that grin, he turned away from the broadsheet and walked down the street. A news-sheet vendor on a corner shouted, "Read about the Algarvian counterattack in the Kingdom of Grelz! Herborn threatened! Swemmel flees to Cottbus with his tail between his legs! Heroes of Plegmund's Brigade!"

  Ealstan strode past him as if he didn't exist. He wondered how many times he'd done that, in Gromheort and now in Eoforwic. Too many- he knew that. He pretended news-sheet vendors didn't exist whenever the Algarvians moved forward. And whenever he thought of Plegmund's Brigade, he hoped his cousin was dead: horribly dead and a long time dying, with any luck at all.

  PYBBA'S POTTERTY! screeched a sign ever so much larger and gaudier than any broadsheet the Algarvians had ever put up. This wasn't the enormous warehouse down by the Twegen River, but the home of Pybba's kilns and his offices. The only pots and plates the magnate sold here were the ones that came out of the kilns too badly botched to go to the warehouse or to any shop, no matter how shoddy. OUR MISTAKES- CHEAP! another sign proclaimed. Pybba did a brisk business with them. Pybba, as far as Ealstan could tell, did a brisk business with everything.

  He was prowling through the offices when Ealstan came in. "You're late," he growled, though Ealstan was no such thing. "What took you so long?"

  "I was looking at a new broadsheet," Ealstan answered.

  "Wasting time," Pybba said. "Sit your arse down in front of the books. That's what you're supposed to be doing, not leering at Algarvian tripe. I bet it had naked women on it. The redheads are shameless buggers."

  A couple of men who'd beaten Ealstan into the pottery works laughed. Pybba was reliably loud and reliably vulgar. Ealstan perched on a tall stool and got to work. His boss' legitimate books were quite complex enough. The others…

  Before long, Pybba let out a roar from inside his sanctum: "Ealstan! Get your arse in here this minute, curse you, and see if you can't bring your brains with it."

  More snickers came from Ealstan's coworkers as he got down from the stool. They weren't without sympathy; before long, Pybba would be bellowing at somebody else, and everyone knew it. "What is it?" Ealstan asked, standing in the doorway.

  "Shut the cursed door," the pottery magnate rumbled. Ealstan did. Pybba's voice suddenly dropped: "Which broadsheet were you talking about? The one with the wolf?"

  "Aye." Ealstan nodded. "Is there another one?"

  "After the Kaunians burst that egg? You'd best believe there is, boy. It shows a monster peeking out from behind a mask that looks a little like you."

  "A Kaunian monster," Ealstan said. This time, Pybba nodded. Ealstan's lip curled. "That's disgusting."

  "It's a pretty fair broadsheet," Pybba answered. "Maybe not quite as strong as the one with the wolf, but close. Who's got any use for Kaunians, anyhow?"

  He certainly didn't; Ealstan knew as much. Picking his words with care, Ealstan observed, "If the Algarvians hate the blonds, they've probably got something going for them."

  "Fat chance," Pybba said. "All right. I just wanted to find out if you knew something I didn't. You don't." He raised his voice to an angry yell: "So get your miserable carcass back to work!"

  Part of the reason for that yell was to make sure nobody outside wondered what Pybba and Ealstan were talking about in their quiet conversation. The rest was because Pybba was fed up with Ealstan. Ealstan knew that too well. He'd tried again and again to get his boss to pay some attention to the Kaunians in Eoforwic and in Forthweg generally. Who in all the kingdom had better reason to hate the occupiers and work against them? Nobody Ealstan could see. But Pybba didn't care. Despising Kaunians himself, he refused to see them as allies.

  He wants a Forthwegian kingdom when the Algarvians get thrown out, Ealstan realized as he went back to the ledgers. Not a Kingdom of Forthweg, the way it was before the war, but a Forthwegian kingdom, without Kaunians. The Algarvians, as far as he's concerned, are solving the Kaunian problem for him.

  That thought was chillier than Forthwegian winters commonly got. For a moment, Ealstan was tempted to throw his job in Pybba's face and find other work. But he'd already seen that Pybba could make it hard for him to find bookkeeping work.

  And Vanai wouldn't want him to quit. He'd already seen that, too. She would want him to keep doing everything he could to drive Mezentio's men out of Forthweg. Whatever happened after that, it would be better than having the Algarvians running the kingdom. He didn't like that line of reasoning- loving his wife as he did, he wanted nothing less than full equality for all Kaunians- but he couldn't find any holes in it.

  From somewhere in the vast pottery works came a large, almost musical crash, as of a good many crocks and chamber pots and dishes meeting an untimely demise. One of the fellows who worked near Ealstan- his job was writing catchy slogans for the wares Pybba produced- grinned and said, "Get out the red ink, my friend. There go some of the profits."

  Pybba heard the crash, too. Pybba, by all the signs, heard everything. He flew out of his inner sanctum like an egg flying out of a tosser. "Powers above, that's coming out of somebody's pay!" he roared. "Just let me get my mitts on the butterfingered bunghole who buggered that up. Probably greased his hand so he could play with himself, the son of a whore!" And he rushed off to find out exactly what had gone wrong and who was to blame for it.

  "So calm." Ealstan rolled his eyes. "So restrained."

  The slogan writer- his name was Baldred- chuckled. "Never a dull moment around this place. Of course, sometimes you wish there were."

  "Why would you want that?" Ealstan wondered. "I've got so I like having my hair set on fire about three times a day. Hardly seems like I'm doing anything unless somebody's screaming at me to do more."

  "Oh, it's not so bad as that," Baldred said. He was about halfway between Ealstan's age and Pybba's- in his mid-thirties- with white hairs in his beard still so few that he ostentatiously plucked them out whenever he found them. "As long as you do the work of four men, he'll pay you for two. What more could you want?"

  "That's about the size of it," Ealstan agreed. He thought Baldred worked on Pybba's unofficial business as well as that pertaining to pottery, but he wasn't sure. Because he wasn't sure, he never mentioned it to the slogan-writer. Every now and again, he wondered whether Baldred wondered about him.

  Pybba stomped back into the offices, a stormcloud on his face.
But no cringing employee followed him to pick up whatever pay he was owed and then leave forever. Irked at Pybba, Ealstan kept at his work and didn't ask the obvious question. Baldred did: "What happened?"

  "Fornicating stray dog came round a corner going one way at the same time as one of our boys came round it going the other," Pybba said. "Aye, he tripped over the stinking thing. Powers below eat him, what else could he do? Three or four people saw it, and the poor bastard's got a scraped knee on one leg and a dog bite on the other one."

  "Ah," Baldred said wisely. "No wonder you didn't fire him, then."

  The pottery magnate's scowl grew more fearsome yet; he'd doubtless roared out of the office intending to do exactly that. "You tend to your knitting," he rumbled, "or I'll bloody well fire you. Not a thing to say I can't do that."

  Baldred got very busy very fast. Pybba eyed him long enough to make sure he was busy, then went into his own office and slammed the door behind him, hard enough to make little waves in Ealstan's inkwell. "Charming as always," Ealstan murmured.

  "But of course." Baldred shrugged. "I'm not going to worry about it. Before too long, he'll pitch a fit at somebody else instead. Tell me I'm wrong."

  "Can't do it." Ealstan got back to work, too.

  A few minutes later, the outer door opened. Ealstan looked up, still expecting the potter who'd had the unfortunate encounter with the stray dog. What he expected was not what he got. What he got was an Algarvian colonel with spiky waxed mustaches. Ealstan wondered if he ought to run or if he ought to scream for Pybba to run. Before he could do either, the redhead swept off his hat, bowed, and spoke in pretty good Forthwegian: "I require to see the gentleman Pybba, if you would be so kind."

  "Aye, I'll get him for you," Ealstan answered. "May I ask why?"