Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “And that was?” Cornelu asked in his halting Lagoan.

  “Didn’t you know?” The sailor stared at him with something approaching pity. “They was building a captives’ camp back o’ that town, they was. Would have served us the way they served Yliharma, they would. Won’t be able to do that now, they won’t. Let a lot o’ poor cursed Kaunians run free, we did.”

  “Ah,” Cornelu said slowly once he made sense of the Lagoan’s dialect, which took a little while. “So that was the game.”

  “That was the game, sure was,” the sailor agreed. “Cost us some, it did, but Setubal won’t come crashing down around our ears, it won’t.”

  “No, it won’t.” Cornelu raised a finger to the busy fellow behind the bar and bought the Lagoan sailor another mug of ale—and one for himself as well. The sailor gulped his. Cornelu sipped more thoughtfully.

  How many more times would the Lagoans have to strike across the Strait of Valmiera to keep the Algarvians from using massacre to power magic against their capital? That had an obvious answer—as many as they have to. Cornelu nodded. Seen only as a raid, the strike against Dukstas had been expensive. Seen as protection for Setubal, it was cheap indeed. He had trouble imagining Lagoas staying in the fight with its greatest city ruined. And Lagoas has to stay in the fight, he thought. If she doesn’t, Algarve likely wins. However much he disliked that, he saw no way around it.

  Most of the time, Talsu was convinced, the Algarvians would have been far happier had Skrunda had no news sheets at all. Every once in a while, though, the redheads found them useful. When enemy dragons dropped eggs on the town, the news sheets had screamed and brayed about it for days. Now they were screaming and braying again.

  “Lagoan pirates try to invade mainland of Derlavai!” a hawker shouted, waving a sheet. “Enemy beaten back with heavy loss! Generals say they’re welcome to try again! Read it here! Read it here!”

  Talsu gave him a copper, as much to make him shut up as for any other reason. The news sheet didn’t tell him much more than the hawker had. It just said the same things over and over, each time shriller than the last. When he’d finished that story and the ones about the great Algarvian victories in southern Unkerlant, he crumpled up the sheet and tossed it into the gutter. Then he wiped the ink from the cheap printing job off the palms of his hands and onto his trousers. His mother would complain when she saw the dark smudges there, but that would be later. For now, he wanted to get his hands somewhere close to clean.

  More hawkers with stacks of news sheets cried out the headlines as Talsu strode through the market square. As far as he could tell, they used the same words as had the ragged fellow from whom he’d bought a sheet. He wondered if hawkers all over Jelgava were selling the exact same stories with the exact same words. He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

  When he walked past the grocery store Gailisa’s father ran, he looked in the window hoping to get a glimpse of her. No such luck: her father ambled out from behind the counter to put jars of candied figs on the shelves. Talsu was heartily glad Gailisa favored her mother; had she been plump and doughy and hairy, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her.

  Her father saw him through the window and waved. Talsu waved back, more from duty than from affection. He looked forward to marrying Gailisa—he certainly looked forward to some of the concomitants of marrying Gailisa—but he didn’t particularly look forward to being yoked to the rest of her family as well.

  He got round a corner before her father could come out and start yattering at him. Hurrying like that, though, gave him a painful stitch in the side. It wouldn’t have before the Algarvian soldier stabbed him; he knew as much only too well. But he couldn’t make that not have happened.

  His own father had a copy of the news sheet open on the counter behind which he worked. Traku was cutting and sewing a tunic while he read. His hands knew what to do, so well that he had to glance at his work only every now and then. He looked up from the news sheet when Talsu came in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

  “Were you expecting somebody else?” Talsu asked. “King Donalitu, maybe?”

  He wouldn’t have made such jokes before Donalitu fled the Algarvians, not unless he felt like spending some time in one of the king’s dungeons. The redheads encouraged jokes about the king. For jokes about themselves, though, they had dungeons of their own. Talsu’s father, knowing that, lowered his voice as he answered, “No, I thought you’d be one of Mezentio’s officers, ready to gloat about this.” He tapped the news sheet with a forefinger.

  “I’ve seen it,” Talsu said. “Even if I hadn’t seen it, I’d have heard about it. The whole town’s heard about it by now, the way the hawkers keep bellowing like so many branded steers.”

  Traku chuckled. “They do go on.”

  “And on, and on,” Talsu agreed. “They’ll be putting up copies for broadsheets any minute now. If there’s one thing the Algarvians are good at, it’s bragging about themselves.” They were also good, all too good, at war, or they wouldn’t have occupied Skrunda and the rest of Jelgava. Talsu didn’t like thinking about that, and so he didn’t.

  His father said, “You know what they’re telling us here, don’t you?” He tapped the news sheet again. “They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’ll just have to save ourselves.”

  Talsu shook his head. “That’s not what they mean. They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’d bloody well get used to King Mainardo.” He still wasn’t talking very loud, but he spoke with great vehemence: “Get used to going hungry, get used to short-weight coins, get used to Algarvians lording it over us forever.”

  “That’s what’ll happen if we don’t do something about it, all right.” Traku glanced down at the news sheet. “I think we’re saying the same thing with different words.”

  “Maybe.” Talsu rubbed his side. How long would the livid scar there go on paining him? For the rest of his days? He didn’t like to think about that, either. “But I never dreamt, when the redheads came in, they’d make me wish we had our own king and nobles back again.”

  “Who did? Who could have?” his father said. “But you have to be careful where you say that. If you aren’t, you’ll disappear and you won’t have the chance to say it any more.”

  “I know.” Talsu pointed to the tunic his father was working on. “Are you going to use the Algarvian sorcery to finish that one?”

  “Aye.” Traku grimaced. He couldn’t get in trouble for praising the redheads, not with things as they were in Skrunda—in all Jelgava—these days, but that didn’t mean he was happy about doing it. “It’s better than the magecraft I had before, no two ways about it. The magic is good. The Algarvians . . .” He grimaced again, grimaced and shook his head.

  Thinking about the Algarvians always made Talsu think about the one who’d stabbed him. Thinking about that redhead made him think about Gailisa, which was much more enjoyable. And from Gailisa his thoughts didn’t have to go far to reach her father. He said, “Maybe it’s time you talked with the grocer.”

  Changing the subject didn’t bother his father. “Think so, do you?” Traku said. “If I had to guess, I’d say Gailisa has thought so for quite a while. What do I do when her old man asks me what took you so bloody long?”

  Ears burning, Talsu answered, “Tell him anything you want. Do you think it’ll matter?”

  Traku laughed, though Talsu didn’t think it was very funny. “No, I don’t suppose the stalling will queer this match, the way it would some I could think of. Not much likelihood Gailisa will turn you down, is there?”

  “I hope not,” Talsu said, blushing some more.

  “If she did, it’d be a scandal worse than any we’ve seen in Skrunda since I was younger than you are now,” Traku said. “I guess you may have heard the story of the fellow who got married to three different girls on the same day.”

  “A time or two,” Talsu said, which was somewhere around a hundredth of the truth. He grinned at his fa
ther. “Must have been one tired bridegroom by the time he got done that night.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Traku said with a grin of his own. “Of course, they do say he was a young man, a very young man, so he had some chance of bringing it off.” Before Talsu could answer that with another lewd sally, his father went up the stairs. He returned a moment later with a jar of apricot brandy and a couple of glasses. After filling them both, he gave Talsu one and raised the other. “Here’s to grandchildren.”

  “To grandchildren,” Talsu echoed, and drank. The brandy glided down his throat and burst in his stomach like an egg. He hadn’t thought much about having children of his own, though he certainly had thought about the process by which children came into the world.

  Traku hadn’t brought the brandy down unnoticed. Ausra came halfway down the stairs and asked, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “That my sister is a snoop?” Talsu returned. “Aye, what else could it mean?” Ausra stuck out her tongue at him. He went on, “We haven’t done any talking yet. But we’re going to do some talking.”

  “It’s about time,” Ausra said, echoing Traku. “I’ve wanted Gailisa for a sister-in-law for a long time now. I figure getting her is the only good I’ll ever have from you as a brother.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she hurried back upstairs again.

  But she didn’t stay there for very long. After a moment, she and her mother came down, both of them carrying glasses. Traku poured brandy for them, half a glass for Ausra, a whole one for Laitsina.

  Talsu’s mother kissed him. “Do you know what the best thing about having grandchildren is?”

  Begetting them, Talsu thought, but that surely wasn’t what Laitsina had in mind. He shrugged and said, “Tell me. You’re going to anyhow.”

  “I certainly am, and I ought to box your ears for impudence.” But Laitsina, who’d gone through a lot of the brandy in a hurry, was smiling and a little red-faced. “The best thing about grandchildren,” she declared with oracular wisdom, “is that you can give them back to their mother and father when they get to be a nuisance.”

  “That’s so,” Traku agreed. “Can’t do it with your own children. You’re stuck with them.” He looked from Talsu to Ausra and back again. Then he looked at his own glass, and seemed surprised to discover it empty. The jar of brandy stood close by on the counter. He remedied the misfortune he’d found.

  The whole family was getting merry when the front door to the tailor’s shop opened. They all looked up in surprise, as if they’d been caught doing something shameful. The Algarvian officer standing in the doorway twiddled with one spike of his waxed mustachios. “Seeing happy people is good,” he said in fair Jelgavan. “Why am I seeing happy people?”

  “A coming betrothal,” Traku answered. He didn’t offer the redhead any brandy.

  Affecting not to notice that, the Algarvian said, “It is good. I hope there is being much joy from it.”

  “Thanks,” Talsu said grudgingly. If that Algarvian trooper hadn’t stabbed him, his chances with Gailisa might not have been so good. Even that, though, didn’t endear any of King Mezentio’s men to him. More grudgingly still, he went on, “What do you want?”

  “Here.” The redhead displayed a tunic. “I am wanting a warm lining sewn into this. I am going from here to another place to fight. I will be needing a warm lining. I will be needing all the warm I can be getting.”

  “For Unkerlant, you’ll need more than a warm lining,” Talsu said, and the Algarvian winced, as if he hadn’t wanted to hear his destination named. Too bad, Talsu thought. That’s where you’re going, and with any luck you won’t come back.

  “I can do it,” Traku said, “but my son’s right: you’ll need more than that. I saw as much last winter.” That made the Algarvian look unhappier yet. Traku added, “Would you be interested in a nice, thick cloak, now?”

  “A cloak?” The Algarvian sighed. “Aye, I had better be having a cloak, is it not so?”

  “It certainly is so,” Traku said. “And I have just the thing you’ll want.” To a redhead going off to Unkerlant, he would show sample after sample. Like Talsu, he surely hoped the Algarvian would meet his end there. And profit—profit counted, too.

  Skarnu wished he had more connections, better connections. He’d managed to keep the fight against Algarve alive in his little part of Valmiera, and he knew others were doing the same across the kingdom. But he didn’t know how well they were doing, how much annoyance they were causing the occupiers.

  “Not enough,” Merkela said when he raised the subject over supper one evening. “Not even close to enough.”

  She would have said the same thing if the Valmierans had been on the point of driving King Mezentio’s men from the kingdom, tails between their legs. Had she known how to do it, she would gladly have gone to Algarve herself, to bring the war home to the redheads. She would have tried to kill Mezentio in his palace and wouldn’t have cared at all if she died, so long as she brought him down. Skarnu was sure of that.

  Raunu set down a rib bone from which he’d gnawed all the meat; they’d killed a pig the day before. He said, “The more we tie them up here, the less they have to throw at the Unkerlanters. And if they don’t beat the Unkerlanters, they don’t win the war.”

  He’d been only a sergeant, but no general could have summed things up better. So Skarnu thought, at any rate. Merkela tossed her head; to her, Unkerlant was too far away, too foreign, to seem either real or important.

  But Vatsyunas and Pernavai both nodded. Having come from Forthweg, the escaped Kaunians knew in their bellies the importance and reality of Unkerlant. “He speaketh sooth,” Vatsyunas said, still sounding antiquated as he learned Valmieran after a lifetime of classical Kaunian.

  “Aye,” the former dentist’s wife said softly. That was one word that had changed little down through the centuries.

  “How much more could we be doing, though?” Skarnu persisted.

  “How badly do you want to get yourself killed, and everybody who’s in this with you?” Raunu asked. “If you try and get greedy, that’s what’ll happen.” Merkela glared at the veteran sergeant. He ignored her, which wasn’t easy. Skarnu feared he was right. Whenever the Algarvians grew provoked enough to go after irregulars, they could muster enough force to put them down.

  Vatsyunas said, “An you tell me what the game requireth, so shall I right gladly undertake it, though I lay down my life in the doing. For I have seen horrors, and long to requite them.”

  “Aye,” Pernavai said again.

  Neither of them sounded as fierce as Merkela, but she eyed them with nothing but respect. Her hatred for the redheads was personal. So was theirs, but they’d also seen Kaunianity in Forthweg wrecked. They never talked about going home. As best Skarnu could tell, they didn’t think they would have any home to which to return.

  Vatsyunas said, “Is’t true, the tale borne hither from Pavilosta, that Lagoas did smite the Algarvians exceedingly down by the shore of the salt sea?”

  Skarnu shrugged. “There was a fight. That’s all I know. The Lagoans couldn’t have done all that well, or they’d have kept a grip on the mainland.” He still wanted to look down his nose at the islanders. If they’d done more earlier in the war, maybe Valmiera wouldn’t have fallen. And their kingdom still held out, where his had given up two years before. He resented them for being able to shelter behind the Strait of Valmiera. How would they have done against swarms of Algarvian behemoths? None too bloody well, or he missed his guess.

  But Pernavai said, “Methinks you mistake their purpose. For is’t not more likely they came for to hinder the slaughter of more of my kinsfolk than intending invasion of your land?”

  Now Vatsyunas spoke up in support of his wife: “Aye, that’s also my conception of the quarter whence bloweth the wind. For surely the redheaded savages would have drained mine energies of vitality and the aforesaid of my lady’s as well, to hurl a stroke thaumaturgic ’gainst the isle across the se
a.”

  Slowly, Skarnu nodded. Across the table from him, Raunu was nodding, too. Skarnu clicked his tongue between his teeth. The western Kaunians’ suggestion made more sense than anything he’d come up with for himself. He and his comrades had managed to sabotage one ley-line caravan bringing Kaunians from Forthweg toward the shore of the Strait of Valmiera. If others had got through, if the Algarvians were on the point of serving Setubal as they’d served Yliharma . . .

  Merkela spoke up after unusual silence: “People need to know.”

  “People in these parts do know,” Skarnu said. “A lot of the folks who made it off that caravan are still free. People didn’t turn ’em back to the Algarvians, any more than we did. And all the Kaunians out of Forthweg have tales to tell.”

  Merkela shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. People all over Valmiera—people all over the world—need to know what the Algarvians are doing. The more reasons they have to hate the redheads, the harder they’ll fight them.”

  Vatsyunas and Pernavai leaned toward each other and whispered back and forth in classical Kaunian, too soft and fast for Skarnu to catch more than a couple of words. Then Vatsyunas asked a blunt, bleak question: “Why think you this news will be of any great import to them that hear it? After all, ’tis nobbut the overthrow of so many already despised Kaunians. Powers above, ’tis likelier a matter for rejoicing than otherwise.” He picked up his mug of ale and gulped it dry.

  “We’re Kaunians, too!” Skarnu exclaimed. He’d felt it like a beam through the heart when the Column of Victory was felled in Priekule. If that didn’t make him a proper Kaunian, what could?

  But Pernavai and Vatsyunas looked at each other and didn’t say anything. Skarnu felt a slow flush rise from his neck to his cheeks and ears and on to the very top of his head. Till the war, no one had rubbed his nose in his Kaunianity every day of the year; he’d been one among many, not one among a few. No one had hated him for what he was. Thinking about that made him shake his head, as if trying to fend off invisible gnats.

  “We have to let people know,” Merkela repeated. Once she got an idea, she disliked letting go.