Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Count Sabrino had strolled through a good many Algarvian camps in Unkerlant the first summer of the war there, when things were going well. The stroll he was making through this encampment on the austral continent put him in mind of those. The encampment was smaller, but filled with the same sense of quiet confidence he’d known before.

  In Unkerlant, that confidence was dead, buried by a resistance far stronger and more ferocious than the Algarvians had imagined when they started on the—bad—roads west. Here in the land of the Ice People, it still lived. The Algarvian force here was tiny compared to the armies that had gone into Unkerlant, but it wasn’t facing the whole of Swemmel’s vast kingdom, either.

  Algarvian soldiers sat on stones or on the grass, tending to their boots or packs or sticks as if they were so many craftsmen practicing their trades. Behemoth crews tinkered with their animals’ armors or fiddled with their egg-tossers to make them fling a little farther. It was all very businesslike.

  Even the wounded, who were tended by mages and surgeons, did their best to make light of their injuries. In best Algarvian style, one cracked a joke so funny, it made the fellow sewing up his leg pause to laugh out loud. Sabrino had seen the same sort of thing in Unkerlant. It had made him proud then. Here, it left him sad.

  At last, he found his way to the tent of Brigadier Zerbino, the officer King Mezentio had appointed to command the Algarvian forces in the land of the Ice People. Zerbino, a big, bluff fellow who was marquis of a small domain in southern Algarve, greeted him with a bear hug and a flagon of wine. “We smashed them!” he declared. “Positively smashed them!”

  “So we did, sir,” Sabrino agreed; Zerbino held the higher military and social ranks. “Now we can keep the cinnabar going across the Narrow Sea.”

  “Oh, aye,” Zerbino said, swigging from his own flagon. “And we can drive the cursed Lagoans right off the austral continent. Traitors to the Algarvic race, that’s what they are. Might as well be Kaunians.” He swigged again. “I’ve sent messages by crystal, asking the king for more . . . more of everything, by the powers above. Enough to let us finish the job.”

  “Is that a fact, sir?” Sabrino said tonelessly, hoping that tonelessness disguised the alarm he felt.

  It didn’t, or not well enough. “What’s biting you, Colonel?” Zerbino demanded. “It’s something besides these cursed mosquitoes, I’ll lay. Don’t you want to lick the lousy Lagoans right out of their boots?”

  “On the austral continent, sir, everything bites you in the summertime,” Sabrino answered. His joke did not go over so well as the wounded trooper’s had. After a moment, he went on, “I’d sooner lick Unkerlant. If we do that, we can settle Lagoas later.”

  “King Mezentio doesn’t think the same way, not at all he doesn’t,” Zerbino said. “We came down here to help the Yaninans. Best way to do it is to give the Lagoans a good boot in the arse, and that’s what we’re doing.”

  “But, sir—” Sabrino began.

  “But me no buts.” The marquis made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “Just have your dragons ready to go after the Lagoans whenever I give the word. You can do that, can’t you? If you can’t, you’d better give me the reason why right now.”

  “I can do that, sir,” Sabrino agreed. Having been doing it for a good deal longer than Zerbino had been on the austral continent, he spoke with some asperity.

  If the marquis noticed, he affected not to. “That’s fine, that’s fine,” he said. “Finish your wine and I’ll fill you up again. This isn’t the sort of country you want to face sober, after all.”

  Before the Algarvian buildup sent supplies flooding across the Narrow Sea, Sabrino had been drinking camel’s milk, sometimes fermented, sometimes not, and boiled water. He said, “Thank you, sir. I don’t mind if I do. Good to see wine again. Even better to taste it.”

  “Enjoy it,” Zerbino said. “We’ll slaughter all the Lagoans and drive them out of this miserable place, and then we won’t have to worry any more about cinnabar going across the Narrow Sea.”

  He made it sound so easy. Sabrino wondered where he’d fought before coming to the austral continent. Valmiera, most likely, he thought. Zerbino couldn’t have seen much duty in Unkerlant, or he wouldn’t have been able to keep that particular brand of optimism. Whenever Sabrino thought of Unkerlant, he wished he were back there, in the bigger, harder fight. “This is a sideshow,” he said once more. “The real war’s against King Swemmel.”

  “Aye, and we’re winning it,” Brigadier Zerbino answered after his large larynx worked to get down a swallow of wine. “We’re bloody well winning it. We drive them in the south, the same as we drove them all along the frontier last summer.”

  Algarve wasn’t driving all along the frontier in Unkerlant this campaigning season. Sabrino understood why: King Mezentio didn’t have the men to do it. Had Zerbino come to the same conclusion? He gave no sign of it. Sabrino upended his goblet to pour the last of the wine down his throat. “I thank you for the hospitality, sir,” he said. “My dragons will be ready for whatever you may need from us.”

  “I know that,” Zerbino said. “You’ve even got the Yaninan dragons flying as if the men on them know what they’re doing. That’s not easy. Allies!” He let out a loud, disdainful sniff.

  “That’s more Colonel Broumidis’ doing than mine, sir,” Sabrino said. “He’s a good officer, and nobody anywhere would say anything else. Some of his junior men handle themselves well, too. When they get good leaders, the Yaninans can fight.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by me, not with what I’ve seen of their footsoldiers.” Zerbino sniffed again, even more noisily than before. How many goblets of wine had he had before Sabrino came to see him? No way to tell. He bowed, and straightened readily enough. “You are dismissed.”

  With a salute, Sabrino left the new commandant’s tent. As he walked back toward the makeshift dragon farm, he had to fight hard to keep from muttering curses under his breath. King Mezentio had decided not just to keep the Lagoans from making trouble for the cinnabar shipments from the austral continent but to conquer it, to the degree that men from Derlavai could conquer the land of the Ice People. Wasteful, Sabrino thought, but the word didn’t pass his lips. King Swemmel would have called the plan inefficient—and, as far as Sabrino was concerned, the half-mad King of Unkerlant would have been right.

  Colonel Broumidis came up to Sabrino as he returned to the dragons. As always, Sabrino had trouble fathoming the expression on Broumidis’ face. The Yaninan’s large, dark eyes held depths that made a mockery of the confident way Algarvians viewed the world. Doing his best to hide his unease, Sabrino asked, “And what can I do for you today, Colonel?”

  “I do not know if there is anything you can do for me, Colonel,” Broumidis replied. Something sparked in those usually fathomless eyes. “In any case, I should be the one asking you what I can do. This is Algarve’s war now, with Yanina playing the part of the poor relation, as usual. Or am I wrong?”

  Policy demanded that Sabrino insist Broumidis was indeed mistaken. Right this minute, he couldn’t stomach policy. He rested his hand on Broumidis’ shoulder for a moment in silent sympathy.

  The Yaninan officer said, “You are a good chap—is that the right word?” He didn’t wait to hear whether that was the right word, but went on, “If more Algarvians were like you, I should not mind so much being subordinated to them. As things are, however . . .”

  He didn’t go on. Sabrino understood what he was saying, though. Yaninans didn’t take kindly to being subordinated to their own countrymen, let alone to foreigners. “It can’t be helped, my dear Colonel,” he said. “If only—” He stopped much more abruptly than Broumidis had.

  “If only we Yaninans could have beaten the Lagoans on our own—that is what you meant, is it not?” Broumidis asked, and Sabrino could but miserably nod. Broumidis sighed. “I wish it had been so. If you think I enjoy being a joke to my allies, you may think again. Actually, Colonel, I do not believ
e you believe such a thing yourself, though I would not say the same for a good many of your countrymen.”

  “You are a gentleman,” Sabrino answered, uneasily remembering how many unkind things he’d had to say about the Yaninans’ fighting abilities.

  Before Colonel Broumidis could politely deny any such thing, an Algarvian dragonflier came running toward him and Sabrino, shouting, “Crystal says the Lagoans and Kuusamans are flying this way.”

  Broumidis bowed to Sabrino. “We can take up this discussion another time. For now, we have business.” He ran back toward the dragons he commanded, shouting orders in his own throaty language.

  Sabrino started shouting orders, too. He already had dragons in the air; now that both sides had good-size forces of dragonfliers, he always took that precaution. He still wished he’d also taken it before the Lagoans wrecked his earlier dragon farm, though wishes there did no good. If he could prevent another such disaster and make the enemy pay, that would do.

  His wing, full of veteran fliers and of dragons trained as well as they could be, wasted no time getting into the air. He noted with approval that Broumidis’ Yaninans were not behind them. In a good army, Broumidis might have gained marshal’s rank. Even as a colonel in a bad army, he made the men he led far better than they would have been without him.

  And here came the Lagoans and Kuusamans, half the dragons gaudy in red and yellow, the other half hard to see because their paint blended in with sky and landscape. Zerbino and his reinforcements had driven the Lagoans back from their latest advance on Heshbon, but hadn’t broken their spirits.

  Lagoans flew dragons much as Algarvians did: aggressively, thinking the best thing they could do was close with their opponents. The Kuusamans fought in a different style. They were precise and elegant in the air, looking for any chance to cause trouble and causing plenty when they found one.

  Their combined force slightly outnumbered the one Sabrino led. They were on the point of gaining the upper hand when Colonel Broumidis, careless of tactics, hurled all the Yaninan dragons against them and threw them into momentary confusion. Sabrino shouted himself hoarse, then shouted into his crystal: “All right, Broumidis—get out now. You’ve done your job, and more than done it.”

  “I am so sorry, my dear Colonel, but I cannot understand a word you say,” the Yaninan answered. A moment later, his dragon, assailed by three at once, plummeted to the ground. Sabrino cursed loudly and foully, which did no good at all. His dragons and the remaining Yaninans drove the Lagoans and Kuusamans back toward their own army—and he had the dreadful feeling that did no good, either.

  Ealstan was happier when Ethelhelm brought his band back to Eoforwic. The musician was a friend, or as close to a friend as he had in the occupied Forthwegian capital. More than ever, he wished Vanai could meet the band leader. But Vanai couldn’t come out of the flat, and Ethelhelm was far too prominent and easily recognized to let him visit without drawing notice.

  “Did you bring back enough from your swing around the kingdom to make reckoning it up for you worth my while?” Ealstan asked him.

  “Oh, aye, I expect we did,” Ethelhelm answered. His flat argued that he’d been bringing back plenty from all his swings around the kingdom. It had so many things Ealstan’s lacked. . . . But Ealstan couldn’t dwell on that, for the musician was continuing, “But you’d better not call Forthweg a kingdom, you know.”

  “Why not?” Ealstan asked, taken by surprise. “What else are we?”

  “A province of Algarve,” Ethelhelm said. “And if you don’t believe me, you can ask the redheads.”

  Forthweg had been provinces of other kingdoms before. For the hundred years leading up to the Six Years’ War, both Algarve and Unkerlant had done their best to make the Forthwegians forget they’d ever been a kingdom. Both had failed. During the chaos after the war, Forthweg wasted no time regaining its freedom.

  When Ealstan made a detailed suggestion about where the Algarvians could put their opinion and what they could do with it once it got there, Ethelhelm laughed, but not for long. “You want to be careful where you say that kind of thing, you know,” he remarked. “Some people would make you regret it.”

  “You should talk,” Ealstan retorted. “The songs you sing, it’s a wonder Mezentio’s men haven’t found a deep, dark dungeon cell for you.”

  “It’s no wonder at all,” the band leader answered. “I’ve paid off so bloody many of them, I’m probably supporting a couple of regiments in Unkerlant by myself.” He grimaced. “I have to stay rich. If I can’t keep paying the whoresons off, they’ll start listening to the words again.”

  “Oh.” Ealstan didn’t know why he sounded startled. His father had paid off the Algarvians, too, to keep them from noticing Leofsig. “Well, by your books, you can keep on paying them for quite a while.”

  “Good,” Ethelhelm said. “I intend to. I have to, as a matter of fact.” He made another horrible face. “And I’ll tell you something else, too—not everything they want from me is money.”

  “Is that so?” Ealstan could tease Ethelhelm: “You have a couple of redheaded women fighting over who gets to make you her pet?”

  “Powers above be praised, I’m spared that,” Ethelhelm answered with another laugh. “But I might enjoy myself if they were.” He and Ealstan both laughed this time, conspiratorially. Algarvian women had a reputation for looseness, just as Algarvian men had a name for corruption. What people said about Algarvian men turned out to be largely true, which made thinking about redheaded women more intriguing. But Ethelhelm sobered. “No, I won’t enjoy this, if I end up having to do it: they want the band to perform for Plegmund’s Brigade.”

  “Oh,” Ealstan said again—this time a sound of pain and sympathy, not surprise. “What are you going to do?”

  “Talk it over with the boys some more first,” the band leader replied. “It’s just what we want, right?—giving shows for a brigade full of traitors. But if it’s the only way we can stay out of trouble with the Algarvians, we may have to.”

  At not quite eighteen, some things looked very clear to Ealstan. “If you do play, how are you any different from the fellows who carry sticks for King Mezentio?”

  Ethelhelm’s lips tightened. “I wish you hadn’t asked it quite that way.” Now that the words were out of his mouth, Ealstan also wished he hadn’t asked it quite that way. He didn’t want to lose Ethelhelm as a client or as a friend. But he didn’t want to lose his respect for him, either. After a pause, the musician went on, “I don’t know what to tell you about that. There’s some truth to it. But if we don’t play for the Brigade, the Algarvians are liable to shut us up. Is that better?”

  He meant it seriously. This time, Ealstan thought before he answered. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I just don’t know. We have to make some compromises with the Algarvians if we want to live.”

  “Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” the band leader agreed.

  Ealstan waved around the flat. The wave encompassed thick carpets, fine furnishing, books, paintings, drums and viols and flutes. “The other thing you have to ask yourself is, how much is all this worth to you?”

  Ethelhelm gave him an odd look. “I never thought I’d see my conscience sitting in a chair talking to me. What do you think I’ve been asking myself ever since the Algarvians came to me? It’s not an easy question.”

  “Why not?” It was easy for Ealstan.

  Now Ethelhelm did look exasperated. “Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because I’ve worked a long, long time, and I’ve worked really hard all that time, to get where I am. And now I have to throw it away by making the redheads angry? That’s why it’s not easy.”

  Ealstan hadn’t spent a long time working toward anything. The only thing he had that he couldn’t bear to give up was Vanai, and he’d already given up everything else for her. He got to his feet. “I think I’d better go.”

  “Aye, I think maybe you’d better,” Ethelhelm replied. “I haven’t told them w
e would yet, you know. I just haven’t told them we wouldn’t, either.”

  With a nod, Ealstan left. As usual, he noted the stairwell didn’t stink of cabbage or of anything worse. As much as all the fine furnishings in Ethelhelm’s flat, that reminded him of what the band leader had to lose.

  Heat smote when he left the block of flats. Summer in Eoforwic, like summer in most of Forthweg, was the savage season of the year, the sun beating down from high, high in the sky. Tempers could fray. His almost had, and so had Ethelhelm’s. He sighed, seeing himself in Ethelhelm’s place, listening to himself telling the Algarvians they had no business raising Plegmund’s Brigade, let alone expecting him to play for it.

  But he was his father’s son, too. After a moment, he laughed at himself—easy enough for a man with nothing to lose. Ethelhelm had rather more than that. Ealstan had already known as much. This whole block of flats told him as much. Ethelhelm didn’t want to lose it, either. Ealstan hadn’t known that, but he did now. He wondered how the bandleader would get around it, and if Ethelhelm could. For Ethelhelm’s sake and his own, he hoped so.

  He passed a recruiting broadsheet for Plegmund’s Brigade, and another, and another. The Algarvians made sure there were plenty about. Had Sidroc finally joined it, as he’d kept saying he would, or had he found better sense somewhere? For his cousin’s sake, Ealstan hoped that last was true.

  He walked by another one of those ubiquitous broadsheets. This one, though, had ALGARVE’S DOGS scrawled across it in bold strokes of charcoal. Seeing that made Ealstan smile. In spite of Plegmund’s Brigade, not all, or even most, of his countrymen had any use for their occupiers.

  He saw several more defaced broadsheets on his way back toward his own block of flats. They all had different slogans on them: either they’d been written by different hands or by one fellow with a lot on his mind. One of the slogans read, STOP KILLING KAUNIANS! Ealstan almost burst into tears when he spied it. He sometimes wondered if he were the only Forthwegian who cared. Being reminded he wasn’t felt good.