Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “But where will the new things come from?” Pekka repeated as her husband held the door open so she could go outside.

  He closed the door, then trotted a couple of steps to catch up with her as they walked across the campus of Kajaani City College. “From the mages who aren’t men under fifty,” he answered. “From the old men like your colleagues, and from women, too. We aren’t Algarvians, after all, to think women worthless outside the bedroom.”

  “Will it be enough?” Pekka asked.

  “How can I know that?” Leino said, all too reasonably. “It had better be enough—that’s all I can tell you.”

  Two students, both young men, strode across their path. One of them looked back at Pekka. It meant nothing; it was no more than the way almost any man would eye an attractive woman. All of a sudden, though, Pekka hated him. Why wasn’t he going into the army instead of Leino?

  Because he doesn’t know anything much. The thought echoed inside her head. She glanced over toward her husband. How unfair to have to go off and leave his family behind because he’d spent years learning to master a complex, difficult art. Knowledge was supposed to bring rewards, not penalties. Pekka reached out and squeezed Leino’s hand as hard as she could. He squeezed back, nodding as if she’d said something he understood perfectly well.

  A good-sized crowd had gathered at the caravan stop in the center of the campus, waiting to go back to their homes in town. A news-sheet vendor cried out headlines: “Algarvians send dragons by the score over Sulingen again! Town in flames! Thousands said to be dead!”

  “If it weren’t for the Strait of Valmiera, that could be us,” Pekka said.

  Leino shrugged. “We have trouble fighting Gyongyos and Algarve at the same time. Mezentio won’t have an easy time warring on us and Lagoas and Unkerlant. He’d better not, anyhow, or we’re all ruined.”

  “That’s so.” But then Pekka remembered how she’d thought the whole world was falling apart when the Algarvians made their sorcerous attack on Yliharma. “But we have scruples Mezentio’s thrown over the side, too.” And she clung to Leino, afraid of what would happen if he went to war against a kingdom whose mages didn’t blink at slaughtering hundreds, thousands—for all she knew, tens of thousands—to get what they wanted.

  “It’ll be all right,” Leino said, though he had no more certain way of knowing that than Pekka did.

  She was about to tell him as much when the ley-line caravan came gliding up. Only a couple of people got off, one of them a grizzled night watchman who’d been patrolling the City College campus longer than Pekka had been alive. But even the Kuusamans, most of the time an orderly folk, jostled and elbowed one another as they swarmed onto the cars.

  Pekka found herself with a seat. Leino stood by her, hanging on to the overhead railing. The caravan slid away toward the center of town and then toward the residential districts farther east. The fellow sitting beside Pekka got up and got off. She moved over by the window. Leino sat down beside her till the caravan got to the stop closest to their home.

  They held hands all the way up the little hill that led up to their house, and to Elimaki and Olavin’s beside it. Pekka smiled at Uto’s excited squeal when Leino knocked on the front door. Elimaki was smiling when she opened the door, too—smiling in relief, unless Pekka missed her guess. Since Uto often made her feel that way, she could hardly blame her sister for being glad to hand back her son.

  Uto came hurtling out. Leino grabbed him and tossed him in the air. “What did you do today?” his father asked.

  “Nothing,” Uto replied, which, if it meant anything, meant nothing Aunt Elimaki caught me at, anyhow.

  “You look tired,” Elimaki told Pekka.

  “No, that’s not it.” Pekka shook her head. “But Leino”—she touched her husband on the arm—“has been called into the service of the Seven Princes.”

  “Oh!” Elimaki’s hand leaped up to her mouth. She knew what that meant, or might mean. Aye, Olavin had gone into the service, too, but he probably wouldn’t get anywhere near real fighting, not when he was as skilled at casting accounts as he was. The same didn’t hold for Leino. Pekka’s sister stepped forward and hugged him. “Powers above keep you safe.”

  “From your mouth to their ears,” Leino said. Like everyone else, he surely knew the abstract powers had no ears. That didn’t keep him—or a lot of other people—from talking as if they did.

  Uto came out onto the front porch in time to hear what was going on. He had a gift for that. One day, he might make a fine spy. “Papa’s going to go off and kill a bunch of stinking Gongs?” he exclaimed. “Hurray!”

  He capered about. Above his head, his mother and father and aunt exchanged wry looks. “If only it were so simple,” Pekka said sadly. “If only anything were so simple.”

  Leino ruffled Uto’s coarse black hair. “Come on, you bloodthirsty little savage,” he said, his tone belying the harsh words. “Let’s go home and have some supper.”

  “What’s supper going to be?” Uto’s tone implied that, if he didn’t care for what was offered, he might not feel like going home.

  But when Pekka said, “I’ve got some nice crabs in the rest crate,” her son started capering again. He liked the soft, sweet flesh that lurked inside crabs’ shells. He liked cracking the shells to get at the meat even better.

  As usual with crabs, he made a hideous mess of himself during supper. Odds were he liked that best of all. Afterwards, Pekka heated water on the stove to add to the cold she ran into a basin. Uto didn’t particularly like getting a bath, not least because Pekka spanked his bare wet bottom if he splashed too outrageously.

  He played for a while after the bath. Then Leino read him a hunting story. After that, with only a token protest, he tucked his stuffed leviathan under his chin and went to sleep.

  Pekka walked into the kitchen and came back with an old bottle of Jelgavan brandy and a couple of glasses. She poured drinks for herself and Leino. “What I’d really like to do is get so drunk I won’t be worth anything for the next two days,” she said. “Ilmarinen would do it—and then on the third day he’d come up with something nobody else would think of in the next hundred years.”

  “He’s something, all right,” Leino agreed. “But I don’t want to talk about him, not tonight.”

  Pekka cocked her head to one side and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Oh?” she said, her voice arch. “What do you want to do tonight?”

  “This,” he said, and took her in his arms. After they’d kissed and caressed each other for a while, Pekka thought he would lead her back to the bedchamber. Instead, he pulled her tunic off over her head and lowered his lips to her breasts.

  “Oh,” she said softly, and pressed his head against her. But caution reasserted itself. “What if Uto walks in and catches us?”

  “Then he does, that’s all,” Leino answered. “We’ll send him back to bed again with a warm backside, and then we’ll get back to what we were doing.”

  Most nights, Pekka would have kept on arguing a good deal longer. Not tonight. She usually had a good healthy yen for her husband. Tonight, the way she stroked him, the way she took him in her mouth, the way she lay down in front of the fireplace and arched her hips so he could go into her felt as much like desperation as like passion. The mewling noises she made deep in her throat as her own pleasure overflowed came far louder and wilder than usual.

  Sweat slicked Leino’s hair. It had very little to do with the fire only a few feet away. He grinned down at her. “I ought to get called into the service of the Seven Princes more often.”

  She poked him in the ribs, which made him grunt and twist away and pull out of her. She felt him go with a stab of regret. How many more chances would they have before the war swept them apart? Would they ever have more chances after the war swept them apart?

  To her dismay, tears dripped from the corners of her eyes and spilled down onto the rug. Leino brushed them away. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Everythi
ng will be all right.”

  “It had better be,” Pekka said fiercely. She clutched him to her. Presently, she felt him stir against her flank. That was what she’d been waiting for. She rolled him onto his back and rode astride him—she knew that was easier for his second round, and knew how much she wanted one. It wouldn’t solve anything—she knew as much, even while she threw back her head and gasped as if she’d run a long way. For now, though, she didn’t have to think about all the things that might happen later. And that wasn’t so bad.

  The distant mutter ahead was the surf rolling up onto the rocky beaches of southern Valmiera. Cornelu glanced at the Lagoans his leviathan had borne across the Strait of Valmiera from Setubal. He spoke two words in their tongue: “Good luck.”

  One of them said, “Thanks.” The other just nodded. They both let go of the leviathan’s harness and struck out for the shore a few hundred yards away. Cornelu wondered if he’d ever see either one again. He doubted it. The Lagoans were brave, but they weren’t showing much in the way of sense, not here.

  Or maybe he had it wrong. He recognized the possibility. A lot was going on here, in the ocean, on the shore, and in the air above the little Valmieran village called Dukstas. Lagoan dragons flew overhead, dropping eggs all over the surrounding countryside and, with luck, keeping Algarvian footsoldiers from coming forward. Along with the saboteurs and spies who rode leviathans, Lagoan ships had brought along several regiments of soldiers. They were going up onto the beach even as Cornelu watched. For the first time, Lagoas was bringing the war home to the occupiers of Valmiera.

  “But what do they expect?” Cornelu asked his leviathan, as if it knew and could answer. “Will a few regiments throw all the Algarvians out of this kingdom? Will the Valmierans rise up and fight the occupiers? Will it be a great victory? Or are they only throwing their men away to no purpose?”

  Columns of smoke rose into the sky from Dukstas. King Vitor’s thrust here had caught whatever Algarvian garrison the seaside hamlet held by surprise. For the moment, it belonged to the Lagoans. But now that they had it, what would they do with it?

  “They do not think these things through,” Cornelu said. Now that the leviathan had served him well for a while, he talked to it almost as he would have to Eforiel. “Will they storm on to Priekule, chasing Mezentio’s men before them as they go? I have my doubts.”

  Maybe the Lagoans didn’t have any doubts, because more and more men paddled ashore in small boats. Cornelu supposed the Lagoans had chosen to attack Dukstas because a ley line ran close by the beach. Even if naval vessels couldn’t come right up to the shore, they could let soldiers off close by. And they certainly had taken the Algarvians by surprise.

  Even so, Mezentio’s men were fighting back. Eggs splashed into the water around the Lagoan warships. One of them burst alarmingly close to Cornelu. The shock wave buffeted him and the leviathan. The beast, which felt it far more acutely than a man would, quivered in pain. A burst too near a leviathan could kill, as Comelu knew too well.

  But Mezentio’s men didn’t even know he and his leviathan were there. They were after the ships, which they could see. The naval vessels fought back with eggs of their own, and with heavy sticks. Those set more fires on the shore. Despite everything the navy could do, despite the dragons, an Algarvian egg struck home. A ship staggered in the water, staggered and fell off the ley line. Whether any more eggs hit it or not, it wouldn’t be going home to Setubal.

  Comelu looked up into the sky. Dragons wheeled and twisted there now. The Lagoans weren’t having it all their own way, as they had when the attack on Dukstas began. The Algarvians were flying in beasts of their own from the interior of Valmiera. If they flew in enough of them—if they had enough of them to fly in—the ships here would be in a lot of trouble. One of the lessons of this war was that ships needed dragons to ward them from other dragons.

  An older lesson, one dating from the Six Years’ War, was that ships needed leviathans to ward them from other ships and leviathans. How long would the Algarvians take to start moving patrol craft from ports along the Strait of Valmiera to attack the Lagoan interlopers? Not long—Cornelu was sure of that.

  He urged his leviathan away from the little Lagoan fleet. If—no, when—Mezentio’s sailors moved to the attack, he wanted to be ready to give them an unpleasant surprise. He knew the ley line along which the ships would be coming. As for leviathans . . . He grinned. With the beast he rode, he was willing and more than willing to take on any Algarvian leviathan around. He hadn’t thought he would feel that way about any beast save Eforiel, but he’d turned out to be wrong.

  An Algarvian dragon dove on one of the Lagoan ships. Comelu could see the eggs slung under the dragon’s belly. Beams from heavy sticks reached up for it. One of them found it before the dragonflier let the eggs drop. Burning and tumbling, the dragon fell into the sea. The ship kept gliding along the ley line.

  “Up, my friend,” Cornelu told his leviathan, and it rose in the water. He, of course, rose with it. Taking advantage of that, he peered inland. He couldn’t see so much as he would have liked; smoke from the fires already burning in the seaside village obscured his view. But he could see that the Lagoan soldiers seemed to be making for some specific place in back of Dukstas, not fanning out all over the countryside. Maybe that meant they really did know what they were doing. He hoped so, for their sake.

  Nobody’d bothered to tell him what they were doing, though. He sighed. That was nothing out of the ordinary.

  And, sure enough, here came an Algarvian ship from the east, the first, no doubt, of many to assail the Lagoan fleet. Cornelu’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage smile. The Algarvians had come too fast. They were intrepid, sometimes intrepid to a fault. Having got the order to attack the Lagoans, they’d piled into their patrol craft and charged out of whatever harbor housed it, eager to be first on the scene and make King Vitor’s men pay.

  “And here they are, out ahead of everyone,” Cornelu murmured, “and the next thought of leviathans they have will be their first.”

  He’d sunk a ley-line cruiser. He had no trouble sneaking up on this smaller enemy ship: Mezentio’s men, their eyes on the target ahead, paid no attention to anything but the Lagoan ships on their ley line. The rest of the ocean? They worried about it not at all.

  Cornelu secured an egg to the side of the Algarvian vessel, then urged his leviathan away from it. When the egg burst, the leviathan gave a startled jerk, then swam away harder than ever. After a while, it had to surface to breathe. Cornelu looked back toward the ship he’d attacked.

  There wasn’t much to see, not any more. That egg could have put paid to another cruiser. It was ever so much more than enough to wreck a patrol craft. Only a few bits of flotsam floated on the water; only a few men struggled in it. If they kept their heads, they might be able to swim to shore. Most of their countrymen, though, had gone down and would never rise again.

  Another Algarvian ship had been perhaps a mile behind the first one. Seeing it come to grief, Mezentio’s men frantically brought their vessel to a stop. Eggs from the Lagoan ships began landing near it, and quickly scored a couple of hits. Cornelu cheered. The Algarvian vessel reversed its course and limped away from the fight.

  But more Algarvian ships were coming from the west, and more and more Algarvian dragons were overhead. A Lagoan ship caught fire and settled back to the surface of the sea, unable to ride on the ley line any more. Another ship, hit by several eggs, rolled over onto its side and sank.

  When Cornelu glanced at the sun, he was surprised to see how far into the northwest it had slid. The fighting on land and sea around Dukstas had been going on for most of the day. The question was, how much longer could the Lagoans keep it up in the face of the superior forces Algarve was marshaling against them?

  Though Cornelu hopefully peered south, he spied no new ships coming up from the direction of Setubal. Whatever he and his comrades were supposed to be doing, they were supposed to be doing
it by themselves.

  Soldiers started trotting back toward the beach and piling into the boats from which they’d gone forth to kill and burn. Oars flashing, they pulled out toward the ships that had brought them to Valmiera. But not so many of those ships were left, and some of the survivors were under attack. Cornelu cursed to see the punishment the soldiers took. It wasn’t as if they were Sibians, but they were fighting the Algarvians.

  Sailors let down nets and rope ladders to help the ones who made it out to the ley-line ships come aboard. As soon as all the soldiers had been taken up, the ships glided east along their ley line till it crossed one leading south toward Lagoas. Cornelu urged his leviathan south, too, to cover their retreat.

  No Algarvian warships pursued them, which surprised him—Mezentio’s men were not usually inclined toward half measures. But dragons from the mainland of Derlavai dogged the fleet almost all the way back to Setubal. Cornelu wondered how many men whp’d landed at Dukstas would see their homes again. He would have been astonished if even half were that lucky.

  The leviathan didn’t bring him to the Lagoan capital till after sunrise the next day. Exhausted almost beyond bearing, he staggered to the Sibian barracks and fell asleep without even wrapping the blanket on his cot around himself.

  No one woke him. When he climbed out of the cot, the sun had crawled across the sky. Instead of barley mush, he ate fried prawns and washed them down with ale. Then he went out to learn what he could, not in the harbor but in the taverns next door to it.

  He’d expected to find the sailors furious at such a botched assault on the Algarvians. Instead, they seemed happy enough. That puzzled him, but not for long. He had to buy only a couple of mugs before a Lagoan told him what he wanted to learn. “Aye,” the fellow said, “we did what we came for, we did, and no mistake.”