Rulers of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Forward!” Garivald called softly, and the irregulars loped into the sleeping village. Dogs began to bark. A little white one ran yapping at Garivald and made as if to bite his ankle. He blazed it. It let out a low wail of pain, then fell silent. He kicked its body aside and ran on.

  A couple of villagers and a couple of Grelzer soldiers came out to see what the fuss was about. In the dim light, none of the irregulars tried to figure out who was who. They just started blazing. It wasn’t a battle. It wasn’t anything like a battle. In a very few minutes, Lohr was theirs.

  The survivors they captured from the squad of Grelzers made Garivald sad. They could as easily have fought on his side as for the Algarvian puppet king of Grelz. But they’d made the other choice—the wrong choice, as it turned out—and they would have to pay for it. Tantris was looking at him, as if wondering whether he had the stomach to give the order.

  He did, saying, “Blaze the traitors.” A moment later, he added, “Blaze the firstman, too. He’s been in bed with the Algarvians ever since they got here.” None of that took long, either. Before the sun had risen, the irregulars were on their way back to their forest fastness.

  Tantris came up to him, saying, “Very neat. You see what you can do.”

  Garivald nodded. “I also see you weren’t joggling my elbow, the way you did when you tried to use Sadoc for more than he could give.”

  “Do I have to tell you again that everything you say will be remembered?” Tantris asked.

  “Do you care to remember that I told you the truth?” Garivald answered. He stepped up his pace. Tantris didn’t try to stay with him.

  He caught up with Obilot just as the sun came red over the horizon. Her eyes, he thought, shone brighter than it did. “We did well there, even if they were only Grelzers,” she said.

  “Aye.” Garivald nodded. Her words weren’t much different from what Tantris had given him, but warmed him far more. He could have done without the regular’s approval; at times, he would gladly have done without the regular altogether. But what Obilot thought mattered to him. All at once, hardly thinking what he was doing, he reached out and took her hand.

  She blinked. Garivald waited to see what would happen next. If she decided she didn’t like that, she was liable to do something much more emphatic than just telling him so. But she let his hand stay in hers. All she said was, “Took you long enough.”

  “I wanted to be sure,” he answered, though he’d been anything but. Then he took his hand away, not wanting to push too hard.

  The band got back under the trees without having lost a man—or a woman, either. Garivald left sentries behind to warn of a Grelzer counterattack if one came. The rest of the irregulars returned to the clearing for as much of a celebration as they could manage, though a lot of them wanted nothing but sleep.

  Garivald caught Obilot’s eye again. He wandered into the woods. If she followed, she did. If she didn’t … He shrugged. Pushing Obilot when she didn’t care to be pushed was a good way to end up dead.

  But she did follow. When they found a tiny clearing far enough from the main one, they paused and looked at each other. “Are you sure?” Garivald asked. He’d been away from his wife and family for more than a year. Obilot nodded. He thought she had no family left alive, though he wasn’t sure. He took her in his arms. None of what they said to each other after that had anything to do with words.

  Flying over the plains of southern Unkerlant, Count Sabrino felt a strong sense of having done all this before. By the way things looked, the war against Unkerlant, the war the Algarvians had thought they would win in the first campaigning season, would go on forever.

  His mouth twisted. Appearances were liable to be deceiving, but not in the way for which his countrymen would have hoped. If they’d broken through to Cottbus, if they’d broken past Sulingen, maybe even if they’d torn the heart from the Unkerlanter defenses in the Durrwangen bulge …

  But they hadn’t. They hadn’t done any of those things. And how many Algarvian behemoths lay rotting on the battlefields of the Durrwangen salient? Sabrino couldn’t have said, not to the closest hundred, not even to the closest five hundred, not to save his own life. But he knew the answer just the same. Too many.

  These days, the Algarvians had to hold on tightly to the behemoths they had left. If they incautiously threw them away, they’d have none at all. Oh, that wasn’t quite true—but it came all too close. And it would be at least another year, more likely two or three, before new beasts came off the breeding farms in anything like adequate numbers.

  Meanwhile … Meanwhile, the Unkerlanters still had behemoths and to spare. And they handled them better than they had when the war was new. Why not? Sabrino thought bitterly. They’ve spent the past two years learning from us.

  They had behemoths. More came from their breeding farms in a steady stream. How many breeding farms did they have, there in the far west beyond the reach of any Algarvian dragon? Those same two words formed again in Sabrino’s mind. Too many. They had footsoldiers in endless profusion, too. And they had mages willing to be as ruthless as—maybe more ruthless than—any who served King Mezentio.

  No wonder, then, that Sabrino was flying a good deal north and east of Durrwangen these days. The Unkerlanters were the ones moving forward now, his own countrymen the ones who tried to slow them, tried to stop them, tried to turn them back. He wished they would have had more luck at it.

  The Algarvians did have a counterattack going in now, a blow at the flank of an advancing Unkerlanter column. Sabrino knew a certain somber pride as he watched the footsoldiers down there far below crumple up the Unkerlanters. They were still better versed in the art of war than King Swemmel’s men. Where they gained anything close to local equality, they could still drive the foe before them.

  He spoke into his crystal: “Forward! If we take out their egg-tossers, our boys may be able to pin the Unkerlanters against the river and do a proper job of chewing them up.”

  Captain Orosio said, “Can’t hurt to try. Sooner or later, we’ve got to stop these bastards. Might as well be now.”

  “That’s right. We’ve got the edge here. We’d better take advantage of it.” Sabrino said nothing of conquest. He said nothing of driving the enemy back to Durrwangen, let alone to Sulingen or Cottbus. His horizons had contracted. A local victory, an advance here instead of a retreat, would do well enough for now.

  He spotted the egg-tossers in what had been a field of rye but was now overgrown and full of weeds. The dragonfliers of his wing behind him, he dove on them. For a few splendid minutes, everything went the way it had back in the first days of the war. One after another, the Algarvians released their eggs and then rose into the sky once more. Looking over his shoulder, Sabrino saw the bursts of sorcerous energy send the enemy egg-tossers and their crews flying in ruin.

  “That’s the way to do it,” he said. The enemy would have a harder time hurting the Algarvian soldiers on the ground. He and his wing flew on toward the west, gaining height. There was the river, sure enough. He spoke into the crystal again: “We’ll turn around and flame the crews we might have missed with our eggs. Then back to the dragon farm and we’ll get ourselves some rest.”

  Rest. He laughed. He had trouble remembering what the word meant. He patted the scaly side of his dragon’s neck. The vicious, stupid beast had trouble remembering, too. Of course, it had trouble remembering everything.

  No sooner had that thought struck him than he spied the Unkerlanter dragons winging their way up out of the south, straight for his wing. They were very fast and flew in good formation—some of Swemmel’s top dragonfliers, mounted on prime beasts. It was an honor of sorts, though one Sabrino could have done without. He shouted into the crystal, warning his men.

  The Unkerlanters had the advantage of numbers and the advantage of height, as well as the advantage of fresh dragons. All Sabrino and his men had left to them was the advantage of skill. Up till now, it had always sufficed to let them hurt the f
oe worse than he hurt them, to bring most of them back safe to whichever dragon farm they were using that day.

  “One more time, by the powers above,” Sabrino said, and swung his dragon toward the closest Unkerlanter. However weary it was, it still hated its own kind; its scream of rage proved as much.

  Sabrino blazed one of King Swemmel’s dragonfliers off the back of his mount. The dragon, without control, went wild and struck out at the beast closest to it, which was also painted Unkerlanter rock-gray. Sabrino whooped. He’d just made life harder for the foe.

  And then his own dragon twisted and convulsed beneath him, bellowing in the agony he’d inflicted on so many of his enemies. While he’d been dealing with the foe in front of him, he’d let an Unkerlanter dragon get close enough to his rear to flame. In any sort of even fight, it would have been a rookie mistake. Outnumbered as his countrymen were, it had to happen every so often. So he told himself, at any rate. Excuses aside, though, it was liable to kill him.

  His dragon, he saw at once, wouldn’t be able to stay in the air. He looked back. Sure enough, its right wing was badly burned. The only consolation he could draw was that it didn’t plummet to earth at once, which would have put an immediate end to his career, too.

  He tried to urge it back toward the east, toward the Algarvian lines. But, lost in its private wilderness of pain, the dragon paid no attention to the increasingly frantic signals he gave it with the goad. It flew straight for the river. The water is cold, it must have thought. It will feel good on my hurt wing.

  “No, you miserable, stupid, stinking thing!” Sabrino howled. “You’ll drown, and you’ll drown me, too.” He pounded at it with the goad.

  Maybe he did a little good. Instead of coming down in the water, the dragon landed on the riverbank. Sabrino unfastened his harness and leaped off its back as it waded into the stream. Only then did he realize it had come down on the western side of the river, putting that stream and several miles of enemyheld country between himself and his countrymen.

  Fast as he could, he got out of the furs and leather he wore to ward himself against the chill of the upper air. Drawn by the dragon, Unkerlanter soldiers were trotting toward him. They would finish him off if they got the chance. He didn’t want to give it to them. Clad only in his drawers and clutching his stick, he plunged into the river.

  He struck out for the eastern bank, swimming as strongly as he could. Even in late summer, the water was bitterly cold. The Unkerlanters shouted and started blazing. Puffs of steam rose from the river not far from Sabrino; their beams were plenty to boil it here and there. But they didn’t get close enough to the water’s edge to blaze with any great accuracy. For a while, Sabrino simply accepted that. He wasn’t about to look back to see what was going on.

  But then he didn’t have to. His wounded dragon’s bellows of pain and rage told him everything he wanted to know. Swemmel’s soldiers would have to stalk it and kill it before they could worry too much about him. And, although it couldn’t fly, it remained deadly dangerous on the ground. Sabrino thought he could safely concentrate on his swimming.

  He was worn when he splashed up onto the eastern bank. He lay there for a couple of minutes, gathering his strength. I’m getting too old for these games, he thought. But he wasn’t so old that he felt like dying. Once he got his wind back, he climbed to his feet and started east. Somehow or other, he would have to get through the Unkerlanter line and back to his own.

  First things first. He dove behind some bushes. A squad’s worth of Unkerlanters were trotting toward the river. They were pointing at the dragon, and didn’t see him. He supposed they were going to have some fun blazing at it. They couldn’t do it much harm, not from this side of the stream. Of course, it couldn’t flame them over here, either. Once they’d gone past him, Sabrino scurried east again.

  He found the Unkerlanter in the bushes by almost stumbling over him. The fellow was squatting, his tunic hiked up, his stick beside him on the ground. He stared at Sabrino in the same horror and astonishment as Sabrino felt on coming across him. Then he grabbed for his stick. Sabrino blazed first. The Unkerlanter let out a moan and toppled.

  Sabrino put on his rock-gray tunic and his boots, which were too big. He didn’t look anything like an Unkerlanter, but he wouldn’t stand out so much at long range wearing the tunic. The man he’d killed had some flat barley cakes in his belt pouch. Sabrino wolfed them down.

  Should I lie low till nightfall? he wondered. In the end, he didn’t dare. His dragon would draw more Unkerlanters, the same way amber drew feathers and bits of paper. The farther away from it he got, the better. And every step put him one step closer to his countrymen. One step closer to the Unkerlanters’ main line, too, he thought. But he kept moving.

  It almost cost him his life. A couple of Unkerlanters spotted him and started running after him. He blazed one of them, then ran like blazes himself. But the other soldier seemed to take two strides for every one of his. I’m much too old for this, Sabrino thought, heart thudding fit to burst.

  The Unkerlanter kept blazing as he ran. He couldn’t aim very well doing that; he charred lines in the grass and shrubs all around Sabrino. But then his beam caught the Algarvian dragonflier high in the back of the left shoulder. With a howl of pain, Sabrino fell forward on his face. With a howl of triumph, Swemmel’s soldier dashed up to finish him off—and took a beam right in the chest. Wearing a look of absurd, indignant surprise, he crumpled.

  “Never try to trick an old fox,” Sabrino panted. Right at the moment, he felt like the oldest fox in the world. He robbed this Unkerlanter, too, and then cut the dead man’s tunic into strips to bandage his wound. It hurt, but he didn’t think it too serious. He also stuffed cloth into the toes of the boots he’d stolen to make them fit better.

  Now he did hide till midnight. The Unkerlanter had an entrenching tool on his belt. Sabrino dug himself a scrape—awkwardly and painfully, with only one arm working well—and waited for darkness.

  It came sooner than it would have at the height of the fighting for the Durrwangen bulge. Fall was on the way, and then another savage Unkerlanter winter. When night arrived, he scurried forward. He favored his left side, which had stiffened up. Every time he heard an Unkerlanter voice, he froze.

  The front, fortunately, was fluid hereabouts. The Unkerlanters and his own men had foxholes and outposts, not solid trench lines. A determined—no, a desperate—man could sneak between them.

  Dawn was painting the east red when someone called out a nervous challenge: “Halt! Who comes?”

  Sabrino almost wept. The challenge was in Algarvian. “A friend,” he said. “A dragonflier blazed down behind the enemy’s line.”

  Silence. Then: “Advance and be recognized. Hands high.” Because of the wound, Sabrino’s left hand didn’t want to go high. He raised it despite the pain. Moving forward as if surrendering, he let his own side capture him.

  “Here you go, Constable.” A baker offered Bembo a slice of cheese pie. “Try this and tell me what you think.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Bembo never minded taking free food and drink from the shops and taverns on his beat. He’d done it in Tricarico, and he did it here in Gromheort, too. He took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Not bad,” he said, and took another bite to prove it. “What all’s in it?”

  “Two kinds of cheese,” the baker began. He spoke good Algarvian.

  “Aye, I know that,” Bembo said impatiently. “What livens it up?”

  “Well, there’s garlic and onions and leeks,” the baker said, and Bembo nodded each time. Then the Forthwegian looked sly and set a finger by the side of his nose. “And there’s a mystery ingredient. I don’t know whether I ought to tell you or not.”

  By then, Bembo was finishing the slice of pie. “You’d better,” he said, his mouth full. “You’ll be sorry if you don’t.” Had the whoreson given him mouse turds, or something like that? Surely not—if he had, he wouldn’t have told Bembo at all.

  �
�All right, I’ll talk,” the baker said, as if he were a captive Bembo was belaboring. “It’s dried chanterelle mushrooms.”

  “You’re kidding.” Bembo’s stomach did a slow lurch. Like all Algarvians, he thought mushrooms disgusting. Forthwegians, on the other hand, were wild for them, and put them in everything but tea. Bembo’s hand fell to the leather grip of his bludgeon. “I ought to loosen your teeth for you, feeding me those miserable things.”

  “Why?” the Forthwegian asked in what sounded like honest bewilderment. “You just said you liked the pie.”

  Bembo could hardly deny that. He did his best: “I liked it in spite of the mushrooms, not because of them.”

  “How do you know? Be honest, Constable. How do you know?” The baker speared a mushroom out of the pie with the point of the knife he’d used to slice it. He offered it to Bembo. “How can you really know till you try?”

  “I’d sooner eat a snail,” Bembo said, which was true—he liked snails fine, especially in butter and garlic. The Forthwegian baker made a horrible face. Bembo laughed at that, and wagged a finger at the fellow. “You see? I’m not the only one.” But the mushroom remained on the end of the knife, a mute challenge to his manhood. He scowled, but then he ate it.

  The little boy’s way of handling such an unfortunate situation would have been to gulp the mushroom down without tasting it. Bembo was tempted to do just that, but made himself chew slowly and deliberately before swallowing. “Well?” the baker demanded. “What do you think?”

  “I think you Forthwegians get too worked up over the cursed things, that’s what,” Bembo answered. “Not a whole lot of taste any which way.”

  “These are just the dried ones,” the baker said. “When the fall rains come and the fresh mushrooms start growing, then …” He sighed, as Bembo might have sighed over the charms of a beautiful woman. Bembo was convinced he could have a lot more fun with a beautiful woman than any Forthwegian could with a mushroom.