“I understand that. I’m not an idiot,” Amatu said testily, though Skarnu might not have agreed with him. The noble went on, “I’ll haunt the caravan depot, if that’s what you need from me. If I could sleep upside down in the rafters like a bat, I’d do that. Are you satisfied?”
“No,” Skarnu said at once, which made Amatu glare at him all over again. He went on, “You and Lauzdonu and a lot of other people we don’t even know will wander through the depot every so often—not often enough to make the Algarvians or their Valmieran hunting dogs notice us. If we see anything—powers above, if we smell anything, because those cars stink—there’s a little eatery where we can go. In the back of that eatery, there’s a crystal. Here’s hoping we don’t have to use it.”
“Aye,” Lauzdonu said. “That would mean trouble for us, and trouble for the poor Kaunians in the caravan car, too.” He had some basic sense of reality.
Amatu? Skarnu wasn’t so sure about him. He might have forgotten what he’d promised a moment before. Now he said, “Hang around in the depot? Oh, very well.” He gave a martyred sigh. “But if I were a woman or Viscount Valnu, I might get arrested for soliciting.”
“No, not like that,” Skarnu said again. “Don’t hang around. Wander through. Pause on a platform when a caravan comes in from the north or east. Wander off again. Buy yourself a mug of ale or a news sheet. Kill time.”
“Beastly lies in the news sheets,” Amatu said.
“Of course there are,” Skarnu agreed. “But knowing how the enemy is lying is military information, too.” That seemed to startle the other noble, who thought for a bit before nodding. Amatu had probably been fine fighting on dragonback—his headlong aggressiveness matched his mount’s. Skarnu’s opinion was that his brainpower also matched his mount’s, but that was nothing he could say.
He decided not to trust Amatu alone in the ley-line caravan depot, at least at first. To his relief, the returned exile seemed glad for company, not irate because Skarnu was coming with him. He probably hasn’t realized why I’m coming along, Skarnu thought. I’m not going to tell him, either.
“Bloody ugly building,” Amatu remarked as they walked up to the red-brick depot. Skarnu agreed with him, but he hadn’t come as an architecture critic. Once they got inside, he studied the board, then pointed. Amatu nodded. “Aye. Platform three,” he said. Skarnu didn’t stomp on his toes to make him shut up, but couldn’t have said why he didn’t. He was more merciful than he’d suspected, that was all.
On the way to platform three, he bought some ale and a news sheet. Amatu refused to buy a news sheet and made a horrible face when he tasted his ale. Skarnu wondered if his comrade were trying to get them both caught, if he were in Algarvian pay. Skarnu didn’t think so, but stupidity and arrogance could be as deadly as treason.
The caravan that stopped at the depot seemed ordinary. It had no passenger cars with wooden shutters nailed over the windows, no baggage cars from which came the stench of crowded, filthy people. “Well, this was a waste of time, wasn’t it?” Amatu said.
“Aye, it was, but we didn’t know ahead of time that it would be,” Skarnu answered in a much lower voice. “That’s why we keep an eye on the depot: because we don’t know ahead of time, I mean.”
Amatu accepted that, even if reluctantly. He was glad to leave the depot, though. Alone, Skarnu would have hung around for a while longer. With Amatu for a comrade, he was delighted to get away unscathed. He let out a silent sigh of relief when they got past the pair of Valmieran constables standing at the entranceway.
Once they reached their street, Amatu started toward their block of flats without the least hesitation. “Wait,” Skarnu murmured, and took him by the arm. “Let’s walk past. Let’s not go inside.”
“Why not?” For a wonder, Amatu kept his voice down.
“I’ve never seen those fellows lounging by the stairway,” Skarnu answered. “Beggars usually have their own turfs. Those fellows are new. Their rags look too clean, and so do they. They’ve never missed a meal. I think they’re constables … . No, curse you, don’t stare at them.”
“Lauzdonu—” Amatu began.
Skarnu had become a better actor than he would have imagined in his carefree days in Priekule. Without seeming to break stride, he contrived to step on Amatu’s foot and make the noble hop and curse. For good measure, he stuck an elbow in the pit of Amatu’s stomach, too. “Shut up, you cursed fool,” he hissed. “They may have him already. Odds are, they do.”
For another wonder, Amatu heeded him and said not another word till they’d turned the corner. Then, in tones more subdued than he usually used, he asked, “What do we do now?”
“We go to that eatery,” Skarnu answered patiently. “We talk on the crystal—just long enough to let people know there’s trouble here. After that, we disappear again. This isn’t my town, you know.”
“Nor mine, powers above be praised for that,” Amatu said. “All right—the eatery.”
No suspiciously well-fed tramps lingered outside. But when Skarnu casually asked after the waiter’s health, the fellow answered that he was fine, and didn’t use the words he was supposed to. Skarnu ordered ale and a plate of smoked beef tongue for himself and Amatu. They ate and drank, paid the scot, and left.
“No good?” Amatu asked.
“No good,” Skarnu agreed. “They’re waiting for people in the underground to come in and show themselves. If we’d done it, we wouldn’t have walked out again.”
“What do we do now?” Amatu asked again.
“Walk around for a while,” Skarnu answered. “They can’t have grabbed everybody in Zarasai. Somebody will give us a hand.” I hope, he thought. Oh, by the powers above, how I hope. Otherwise I’m stuck here with the worst excuse for an underground man the world has ever known, and no way to get free of him.
The bigger of the two Unkerlanter soldiers who’d come east into the Duchy of Grelz was named Gandiluz. The smaller one was Tantris. They were both back with Garivald’s band of irregulars these days. Tantris did most of the talking for them. “Now that the trees are in full leaf again, things favor you,” he declared. “You’ve got to strike the Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets one stinging blow after another.”
“We’ll do what we can, of course,” Garivald answered, “but look around. We’re not a big band.”
Tantris waved that aside, as if of no account. “And you’ve got a mage.”
“Where?” Garivald asked in real perplexity.
“There.” The Unkerlanter regular pointed at Sadoc.
Garivald threw his hands in the air. “Oh, by the powers above!” he howled. “Munderic thought the same bloody thing. Every time Sadoc tried a spell, something would go wrong. Every stinking time. Sometimes it’d be something big, sometimes just something little. But something would always happen.” He turned his furious glare on Sadoc. “Tell’em yourself. Am I right, or am I wrong?”
“Well, aye, you’re right,” Sadoc said. “But that’s only so far. I think I know what I’ve been doing wrong. I’ll be better from here on out.”
“A likely story,” Garivald growled. He turned back to the pair of Unkerlanter regulars. “Are you both daft? Do you want to get the lot of us killed before you can squeeze any kind of proper use out of us?”
“Of course not,” Gandiluz said.
“Shut up,” Tantris told him, and shut up he did. Tantris returned his attention to Garivald. “What we want to do should be as plain as the nose on my face.” He had a formidable Unkerlanter beak. “We want to do the most harm we can to the Algarvians with this band of irregulars. It stands to reason that we can do more using magecraft than we can without it. If we’ve got a mage here, we ought to get what we can out of him.”
“If we had a mage here, that would be a good idea,” Obilot put in. “What we’ve got is Sadoc, so you can forget about it.” Garivald sent her a grateful glance.
“I’m sure he’s not a first-rank mage like the ones they’ve got in Cottb
us … .” Tantris began.
“He’s not even a fifth-rank mage like the worthless drunk they sent to Zossen, my home village,” Garivald said. “What he is is a disaster waiting to happen.”
“I won’t be that bad from now on,” Sadoc insisted. “I truly won’t. I can do just about anything now. I know I can.”
That was one of the more frightening things Garivald had heard. Sadoc scared him almost as much as had the Algarvian officer who’d told him he’d be boiled alive in Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The Algarvian had turned out to be wrong. Garivald was sure Sadoc was wrong, too.
He scowled at the Unkerlanter irregulars who’d encouraged the would-be mage to new dreams of glory. “If you want to get the most out of us, why don’t you just cut our throats and use our life energy against the redheads?”
Tantris didn’t turn a hair. “We’ve thought about that. If we have to, we’ll do it.”
He and Gandiluz were King Swemmel’s only formal representatives within the clearing. The irregulars could have blazed them down and buried them with no one outside the woods the wiser. But they didn’t. They’d been too accustomed for too long to doing what Unkerlanter inspectors and impressers said—when they couldn’t get around it, that is.
Garivald hoped he could get around it here. “You’ve been in Grelz for a few weeks. We’ve been doing this ever since the Algarvians came through.” He hadn’t, not quite, but Swemmel’s men didn’t need to hear that. “Don’t you think we know whether we’ve got a mage here or not?”
“What we think is, you haven’t been using him the right way,” Tantris said, and Gandiluz nodded to show he was part of that we. Tantris went on, “It’s especially important to hit the Algarvians now, to make it hard for them to bring men and beasts to the fighting front southwest of here.”
From behind Tantris, somebody said, “We’ve heard nothing but how this is especially important and that’s especially important and the other thing is especially important, too. When it’s all especially important, none of it’s especially important.”
“Well, this truly is,” Tantris said. “If the Algarvians win the summer’s fight, we’re almost as bad off as we were last year. They might even have another go at Sulingen, curse’em. But if we win it, then they’re the ones who have to worry.”
“How is Sadoc’s magecraft going to make a copper’s worth of difference?” Garivald demanded. “I mean, how would it make any difference if he had any magecraft?”
“He will disguise us as we charge down on the enemy,” Tantris declared. Sadoc nodded. He thought he could do it. But Garivald had seen how Sadoc had thought he could do any number of things he couldn’t do.
Here, Garivald didn’t have to do any complaining. The other irregulars did it for him. The woods were alive with the sound of outrage. Obilot proved most articulate: “If you use us to charge down on the enemy, you use us once. I thought the point of a band of irregulars was stinging the enemy again and again. We’ve done that. We can keep doing it, too—if you leave any of us alive to do it.”
“Saving the kingdom comes first,” Gandiluz said, for once speaking ahead of his comrade. “Saving the band comes only after that.”
Garivald nodded. “Fine. You show me how charging down on a bunch of Grelzers—or even redheads—will save the kingdom, and we’ll do it. Till you show us that, we’ll hit the foe and run away, the way we’ve been doing for almost two years now. That’s what efficiency is all about, isn’t it?”
Tantris gave him a dirty look. “You’re not cooperating. His Majesty will hear of this.”
“I’m doing my best,” Garivald said. “Tell me what you want. Let’s see if we can’t do it without magecraft.”
“A company of Grelzers will march past these woods day after tomorrow,” Tantris said. “You ought to attack them.”
He didn’t say how he knew. That was supposed to make him seem knowledgeable and impressive. But Garivald had a good idea of all the ways he might know. Magic was one. Getting the news from a Grelzer soldier was another, a Grelzer clerk a third. Gossip would work about as well as patriotism (or treason, from a Grelzer point of view). Or, of course, it could have been a trap.
But none of that mattered. A certain amount of common sense did. Garivald waved. “Look at us. It’s been a hard winter. I don’t care if you disguise us as behemoths or butterflies—how likely are we to take out a company of soldiers?”
“Say, that ferocious company of Grelzers, though—Algarve wouldn’t have a chance of winning the war without them,” Obilot said.
Her sarcasm finally got under Tantris’ hide. He snapped, “Be silent, woman,” as if he were her husband back in a peasant village.
She was carrying her stick, of course. She was hardly ever without it. As if by magic, the business end suddenly pointed at Tantris’ belly. “If you want to come here and make me, come right ahead,” she said pleasantly.
Gandiluz started to move to flank her. “Not you,” Garivald told him, also pleasantly. Talking back to the regulars got easier the more he did it. He aimed his stick at Gandiluz’s midriff. Gandiluz stopped moving. He didn’t stop weighing his chances, though. Neither did Tantris. King Swemmel might have sent out petty tyrants, but he hadn’t chosen cowards.
In the confrontation, everyone had forgotten about Sadoc. The peasant who’d struggled so hard to become a mage was dark with fury. “There is a power point in these woods, and I’m going to use it,” he growled, his hands moving in swift passes that certainly looked confident and competent. “Garivald, you’ll pay for mocking me.”
Garivald knew a certain amount of alarm—but less than he had going into combat against the Grelzers. They’d made it plain they knew what they were doing when they tried to kill him; Sadoc hadn’t proved any such thing. “Don’t be a bigger jackass than you can help,” Garivald suggested.
“And you’ll pay for that, too,” Sadoc said. “I can call down lightnings out of a clear blue sky—I can, and I will!” He raised his hands to the heavens and cried out words of power—or they might have been nonsense syllables, for all Garivald knew.
But power gathered in the air. Garivald could feel it. He’d felt it before when Sadoc tried to do this, that, or the other thing. The would-be wizard could prepare for a spell. What came after the preparations, though …
“Sadoc, stop it this instant!” Now Obilot’s voice came sharp as a whipcrack. Garivald wasn’t the only one who felt that building power, then.
As a matter of fact, Gandiluz felt it, too. “You see?” he said to Garivald. “He can be what we need against Algarve.”
“My arse,” Garivald said succinctly.
“No, my arse,” Sadoc said. “You can kiss it, Garivald!” He brought down his hands in a gesture filled with hate—and lightning followed.
Garivald fell to the ground, stunned and blinded by the blue-white stroke. Thunder roared around him. For a couple of heartbeats, he thought he really was dead. But then, like the rest of the irregulars, he staggered to his feet. Sadoc was still upright, looking in astonishment at what he’d done. Like everybody else’s, Garivald’s gaze followed his.
“Oh, you idiot,” Garivald said, astonished at how few shakes his voice held. He blinked, but it would be a while before he stopped seeing the world through green and purple snakes. “You big, clumsy, futtering idiot.”
There stood Tantris. He was shaking, shaking like a leaf. And there beside him lay the charred, smoking ruins of Gandiluz—one Unkerlanter regular who would never report back to King Swemmel again. Sadoc had called down the lightning, all right, but not on the target he’d had in mind.
“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I really am. I aimed to hit you with that, Garivald. I probably shouldn’t have done that either, should I?”
“No, you bloody clot,” Garivald snapped. He rounded on Tantris again. “Well?” he demanded. “Are you going to tell me some more about how Sadoc is the unicorn you’re going to ride to victory, and he’ll gore everything that g
ets in front of you out of the way?”
Tantris was still gaping at the remains of his comrade. The stench of burnt meat filled the clearing. Garivald had to repeat himself to get his attention. When he did, Tantris shuddered. He leaned over and was noisily sick. Garivald nodded to the irregular closest to him. The man gave Tantris a canteen. After he’d rinsed his mouth and spat, he violently shook his head. “I’m not going to tell anybody anything, not for a while,” he answered.
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you got here,” Garivald told him.
But Tantris shook his head. “No. We really do need to do everything we can to keep the redheads from moving supplies through Grelz. However we do it.”
“However we do it—aye,” Garivald said. “Suppose you let us find our way instead of telling us yours.” Tantris looked at Gandiluz’s corpse again. He gulped. He said not another word.
Eleven
No one could have come near the fighting line through the great woods of western Unkerlant without knowing two armies grappled there. The ignorant traveler’s nose would have told him if nothing else did. Istvan was no ignorant traveler, but he smelled the reek of unwashed bodies, the fouler stench of imperfectly covered latrines, and the sharp tang of woodsmoke, too.
And yet, at this season of the year, those stinks were almost afterthoughts in the air. Everything was green and growing. Broad-leafed trees, bare through the winter, had cloaked themselves anew. So had the bushes and ferns that grew under them. Pines and firs and balsams stayed in leaf the year around, but the sap rising in them put out spicy notes Istvan’s nostrils appreciated.
He also appreciated the lull in the fighting. “We’re on the defensive,” he told Captain Frigyes when the new company commander came forward to inspect the redoubt, “and they’re on the defensive, too. Put it all together and it means there’s not a whole lot of action.”
Rulers of the Darkness Page 37
