Rulers of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  With a flick of its tail, the leviathan dove below the surface. Magecraft, grease, and a rubber suit protected Cornelu from the chill of the sea. More magecraft let him breathe underwater. Without that spell, leviathan-riding would have been impossible. His mount could stay submerged far longer than he could.

  Veterinary mages kept promising a spell to let leviathans breathe underwater, too. That would have changed warfare on the sea. Despite endless promises, though, the spell had yet to make an appearance. Cornelu didn’t expect it during this war or, indeed, during his lifetime.

  One stretch of ocean looked very much like another. Cornelu thanked the powers above that the day was clear: he had no trouble guiding his leviathan north, toward the coast of Valmiera. Along with him, the beasts carried two eggs hung under its belly. The Algarvians thought they could ship more or less safely in the waters off Valmiera. His job was to show them they were wrong.

  Every so often, he glanced up at the sky. Ever since Mezentio’s men seized Valmiera, their dragons and the Lagoans’ had clashed above the strait that separated the island from the mainland. Now one side seized the upper hand, now the other. He’d had too many Algarvian dragonfliers attack him to want to let another one see him before he spied the enemy dragon.

  Each time he looked today, the sky was empty. The Lagoans said a lot of Algarvian dragons had flown out of Valmiera lately, headed west. Maybe they were right, though Cornelu had trouble trusting them a great deal further than he trusted Mezentio’s men. If they were, the war in Unkerlant was making the Algarvians forget about everything else.

  Toward evening, the Derlavaian mainland rose up out of the sea ahead of Cornelu. He tapped his leviathan in a particular way. As it had been trained to do, it lifted its head out of the sea, standing on its tail with powerful beats of its flukes. Cornelu rose with the leviathan’s head, and could see much farther than he could while closer to the surface.

  Seeing farther, however, didn’t mean seeing more here. No Algarvian freighters or warships glided along the ley lines. No Valmieran fishing boats used the ley lines, either, nor did any sailboats scud along without the power bigger vessels drew from the earth’s grid of sorcerous energy.

  Cornelu cursed under his breath. He’d sunk an Algarvian ley-line cruiser, along with other, smaller craft. He wanted more. With the Algarvians holding down his kingdom with a hand of iron, he hungered for more. The Sibian exiles fighting out of Lagoas were among the fiercest, most determined foes the Algarvians had.

  But what a man wanted and what he got were not always, or even very often, one and the same. Cornelu had learned that painful lesson all too well. For this foray, he carried not one but two crystals. Making sure he’d chosen the one attuned to the Lagoan Admiralty, he murmured the activating charm he’d learned by rote and spoke into it: “Off the coast of Valmiera. No vessels visible. Proceeding with second plan.” He’d also learned the phrases by rote. Lagoan was related to Sibian, but not too closely: its grammar was simplified, and it had borrowed far more words from Kuusaman and classical Kaunian than had his native tongue.

  In the crystal, he saw the image of a Lagoan naval officer. Lagoan uniforms were darker, more somber, than the seagreen he’d worn while serving Sibiu. The Lagoan said, “Good luck with second plan. Good hunting with first.” He’d evidently been briefed that Sibiu spoke his language imperfectly. After a small flare of light, the crystal returned to blankness.

  The leviathan twisted in the water to catch a squid. Cornelu didn’t let the motion disturb him as he replaced the first crystal in its oiled-leather case and drew out the second one from its.

  Again, he murmured an activation charm. He spoke this one with much more confidence. It was in Algarvian, and Algarvian and Sibian were as closely related to each other as a couple of brothers, closer even than Valmieran and Jelgavan. He didn’t know how the Lagoans had come by an Algarvian crystal: taken it from a captured dragonflier, perhaps, or brought it back from the land of the Ice People, from which Mezentio’s men had been expelled.

  However they’d got it, he had it now. He didn’t speak into it, as he had into the one attuned to the Admiralty. All he did was listen, to see what emanations it would pick up from other Algarvian crystals aboard nearby ships or on the mainland.

  For a while, he heard nothing. He cursed again, this time not under his breath. He hated the idea of going back to Setubal without having accomplished anything. He’d done it before, but he still hated it. It seemed a waste of an important part of his life.

  And then, faint in the distance, he caught one Algarvian talking to another: “—cursed son of a whore slipped through our fingers again. Do you suppose his sister really is tipping him?”

  “Not a chance—you think she’s not watched?” the second Algarvian replied. “No, somebody slipped up, that’s all, and won’t admit it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.” But the first Algarvian didn’t sound convinced. Along with the crystals, Cornelu had along a slate and a grease pencil. He scribbled notes on the conversation. He had no idea what it meant. Someone back in Setubal might.

  After sunset, sea and sky and land went dark. As the Lagoans doused lamps to keep Algarvian dragons from finding targets, so Mezentio’s men made sure Valmiera offered nothing to beasts flying up from the south. Cornelu found himself yawning. He didn’t want to sleep; he’d have to orient himself again when he woke, for his leviathan would surely go wandering after food.

  A fish leaped out of the sea and splashed back into the water. The tiny creatures on which fish fed glowed in alarm for a moment, then faded. Cornelu yawned again. He wondered why people and other animals slept. What earthly good did it do? Nothing he could see.

  His captured Algarvian crystal started picking up emanations again. A couple of Mezentio’s soldiers—Cornelu gradually realized they were brothers or close cousins—were comparing notes about their Valmieran girlfriends. They went into richly obscene detail. After listening for a while, Cornelu wasn’t sleepy anymore. He didn’t take notes on this conversation; he doubted the Lagoan officers who eventually got his slate would be amused.

  “Oh, aye, she aims her toes right at the ceiling, she does,” one of the Algarvians said. The other one laughed. Cornelu started to laugh, too, but choked on his own mirth. Back in Tirgoviste town, some Algarvian whorehounds like these two had seduced his wife. He wondered if Costache would present him with a bastard to go with his own daughter if he ever got back there again. Then he wondered how he would ever get back to Tirgoviste—or why he would want to.

  Along with frustrated lust, frustrated fury made sure he wouldn’t fall asleep right away. At last, to his relief, the two Algarvians shut up. He lay atop his leviathan’s back, rocking gently on the waves. The leviathan might have been dozing, or so he thought till it chased town and caught a good-sized tunny. He liked tunny’s flesh himself, but baked in a pie with cheese, not raw and wriggling.

  Maybe the chase changed the emanations that reached his crystal. In any case, a new Algarvian voice spoke out of it: “Everything ready with this new shipment? All the ley lines south cleared?”

  “Aye,” another Algarvian answered. “We’ve been leaning on the cursed bandits who make life such a joy. Nothing will go wrong this time.”

  “It had better not,” the first voice said. “We haven’t got any Kaunians to spare. We haven’t got anything to spare, not here we don’t. Everything gets sucked west, over to Unkerlant. If we don’t bring this off now, powers above only know when we’ll get another chance, if we ever do.”

  Cornelu wrote furiously. He wondered if the Lagoans back in Setubal would be able to read his scrawl. It didn’t matter too much, as long as he was there along with the notes. Mezentio’s men were planning murder, somewhere along the southern coast of Valmiera—murder doubtless aimed across the Strait of Valmiera at a Lagoan or Kuusaman coastal city.

  Then a new voice interrupted the Algarvians: “Shut up, you cursed fools. The emanations from your crystals are leaking and
someone—aye, someone—is listening to them.”

  If that wasn’t a mage, Cornelu had never heard one. And the fellow would be doing everything he could to learn who and, even more important, where the eavesdropper was. Quickly, Cornelu murmured the charm that took the crystal down to dormancy again. That would make the Algarvian mage’s work harder for him. Cornelu was tempted to throw the crystal into the sea, too, but refrained.

  He did rouse the leviathan and send it swimming south again, as fast as it would go. The sooner he got away from the Valmieran coast, the tougher the time Mezentio’s minions would have finding him and running him down. He glanced up at the sky again. He would have trouble spotting dragons, but dragonfliers wouldn’t enjoy looking for his leviathan, either.

  After a while, he activated the crystal that linked him to Lagoas. The same officer as before appeared in it. Cornelu spoke rapidly, outlining what he’d learned—who could guess when the Algarvians might start slaying?

  The Lagoan heard him out, then said, “Well, Commander, I daresay you’ve earned your day’s pay.” A Sibian officer would have kissed him on both cheeks, even if he was only an image in a crystal. Somehow, though, he didn’t mind this understated praise, not tonight.

  Skarnu had got out of the habit of sleeping in barns. But, having escaped the latest Algarvian attempt to grab him in Ventspils, he’d gone out into the country again. A farmer risked his own neck by putting up a fugitive from what the redheads called justice.

  “I’ll help with the chores if you like,” he told the man (whose name he deliberately did not learn) the next morning.

  “Will you?” The farmer gave him an appraising look. “You know what you’re doing? You talk like a city man.”

  “Try me,” Skarnu answered. “I feel guilty sitting here eating your food and not helping you get more.”

  “Well, all right.” The farmer chuckled. “We’ll see if you still talk the same way at the end of the day.”

  By the end of that day, Skarnu had tended to a flock of chickens, mucked out a cow barn, weeded a vegetable plot and an herb garden, chopped firewood, and mended a fence. He felt worn to a nub. Farmwork always wore him to the nub. “How did I do?” he asked the man who was putting him up.

  “I’ve seen worse,” the fellow allowed. He glanced at Skarnu out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve done this before a time or two, I do believe.”

  “Who, me?” Skarnu said, as innocently as he could. “I’m just a city man. You said so yourself.”

  “I said you talked like one,” the farmer answered, “and you cursed well do. But I’ll shit a brick if you haven’t spent some time behind a plow.” He waved a hand. “Don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to hear. The less I know, the better, on account of the stinking Algarvians can’t rip it out of me if it’s not there to begin with.”

  Skarnu nodded. He’d learned that lesson as a captain in the Valmieran army. All the stubborn men—and women—who kept up the fight against Algarve in occupied Valmiera had learned it somewhere. The ones who couldn’t learn it were mostly dead now, and too many of their friends with them.

  Supper was black bread and hard cheese and sour cabbage and ale. In Priekule before the war, Skarnu would have turned up his nose at such simple fare. Now, with the relish of hunger, he ate enormously. And, with the relish of exhaustion, he had no trouble falling asleep in the barn.

  Lanternlight in his face woke him in the middle of the night. He started to spring to his feet, grabbing for the knife at his belt. “Easy,” the farmer said from behind the lantern. “It’s not the stinking redheads. It’s a friend.”

  Without letting go of the knife, Skarnu peered at the man with the farmer. Slowly, he nodded. He’d seen that face before, in a tavern where irregulars gathered. “You’re Zarasai,” he said, naming not the man but the southern town from which he’d come.

  “Aye.” “Zarasai” nodded. “And you’re Pavilosta.” That was the village nearest the farm where Skarnu had dwelt with the widow Merkela.

  “What’s so important, it won’t wait till sunup?” Skarnu asked. “Are the Algarvians a jump and a half behind you, hot on my trail again?”

  “No, or they’d better not be,” “Zarasai” answered. “It’s more important than that.”

  More important than my neck? Skarnu thought. What’s more important to me than my neck? “You’d better tell me,” he said.

  And “Zarasai” did: “The Algarvians, powers below eat them, are shipping a caravanload—maybe more than one caravanload; I don’t know for sure—of Kaunians from Forthweg to the shore of the Strait of Valmiera. You know what that means.”

  “Slaughter.” Skarnu’s stomach did a slow lurch. “Slaughter. Life energy. Magic aimed at … Lagoas? Kuusamo?”

  “We don’t know,” answered the other leader of Valinieran resistance. “Against one of them or the other, that’s sure.”

  “What can we do to stop it?” Skarnu asked.

  “I don’t know that, either,” “Zarasai” replied. “That’s why I came for you—you’re the one who managed to get an egg under a ley-line caravan full of Kaunians from Forthweg one of the other times the stinking Algarvians tried this. Maybe you can help us do it again. Powers above, I hope so.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” Skarnu told him. When he’d buried that egg on the ley line not far from Pavilosta, he hadn’t even known the Algarvians would be shipping a caravanload of captives to sacrifice. But the egg had burst regardless of whether he’d known that particular caravan was coming down the ley line. Now his fellows in the shadow fight against King Mezentio thought he could work magic twice when he hadn’t really done it once. I’ll try. I have to try.

  “Come on, then,” the irregular told him. “Let’s get moving. We have no time to waste. If the redheads get them to a captives’ camp, we’ve lost.”

  Skarnu paused only to pull on his boots. “I’m ready,” he said, and bowed to the farmer. “Thanks for putting me up. Now forget you ever saw me.”

  “Saw who?” the farmer said with a dry chuckle. “I never saw nobody.”

  A carriage waited outside the barn. Skarnu climbed up into it, picking bits of straw off himself and yawning again and again. “Zarasai” took the reins. He drove with practiced assurance. Skarnu asked, “Which ley line will the redheads be using?”

  Sounding slightly embarrassed, the other man replied, “We don’t quite know. They’ve been acting busy at three or four different places down along the coast, running a caravan to this one, then another to that one, and so on. They’re getting sneakier than they used to be, the miserable, stinking whoresons.”

  “We’ve caused ‘em enough trouble to make’em realize they have to be sneaky,” Skarnu observed. “It’s a compliment, if you like.” He yawned again, trying to flog his sleepy wits to work. “Whatever they’re doing with this sacrifice, they think it’s important. They’ve never put this much work into trying to fool us before.”

  “Zarasai” grunted. “I’m glad I came for you. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I don’t think anybody’s thought of it like that.” He flicked the reins to make the horse move a little faster. “Doesn’t mean I think you’re wrong, on account of I think you’re right. Powers below eat the Algarvians.”

  “Maybe they already have,” Skarnu said, which kept his companion thoughtfully silent for quite a while.

  Had an Algarvian patrol come across the carriage, it would have gone hard for the two irregulars, who were traveling far past the curfew hour. But Mezentio’s men, and even the Valmierans who helped them run the occupied kingdom, were spread thin. Dawn was making the eastern sky blush when “Zarasai” drove into a village that made Pavilosta look like a city beside it: three or four houses, a tavern, and a blacksmith’s shop. He tied the horse in front of one of the houses and got down from the carriage. Skarnu followed him to the front door.

  It opened even before “Zarasai” knocked. “Come in,” a woman hissed. “Quick. Don’t waste any time. We’ll ge
t the carriage out of sight.”

  Fancier than a farmhouse, the place boasted a parlor. The furniture would have been stylish in the capital just before the Six Years’ War. Maybe it was still stylish here in the middle of nowhere. Skarnu didn’t know about that. He didn’t have much of a chance to wonder, either, for his eye was drawn like iron to a lodestone in the direction of the half dozen crystals on the elaborately carven table in the middle of that parlor.

  “We can talk almost anywhere in the kingdom,” the woman said, not without pride.

  “Good,” Skarnu said. “Just don’t do too much of it, or you’ll have the Algarvians listening in.” The woman nodded. Despite his words, Skarnu was impressed. Down on the farm near Pavilosta, he’d often wondered if his pinpricks meant anything to the Algarvians, and if anyone else in Valmiera was doing anything against them. Seeing with his own eyes how resistance spread across the whole kingdom felt very fine indeed.

  “Zarasai” went back into the kitchen and returned with a couple of steaming mugs of tea. He passed one on to Skarnu, waited till he’d sipped, and then said, “All right—you’re in charge. Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”

  Maybe having served as a captain fitted Skarnu to the role thrust on him. Having wrecked the one caravan didn’t, as he knew too well. Doing his best to think like a soldier, he said, “Have you got a map with ley lines marked? I want to see the possibilities.”

  “Aye,” the woman said matter-of-factly, and pulled one from the bureau drawer.

  Skarnu studied it. “If they’re after Setubal again, they’ll send the captives to the camp by Dukstas, the one they used before when the Lagoans raided them.”

  The irregular from Zarasai nodded. “We figure that one’s the most likely. They’d dearly love to serve Setubal as they served Yliharma. All these other camps are smaller and farther east. Setubal’s the best target they’ve got. I don’t see that they’d want to hit Kuusamo again and leave Lagoas untouched.”