Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  But their job was fighting and killing and dying. They started dying as soon as enough of them were in the clearing to make it worthwhile for the irregulars to begin to blaze. One of Garivald’s beams knocked a man over. Exulting, he swung his captured Algarvian stick toward another Algarvian puppet.

  Like the redheads he’d helped ambush between Lohr and Pirmasens, the men of Plegmund’s Brigade fought back hard—better than he thought the irregulars could have done. The Forthwegians blazed into the woods. Those who could drew back toward the mouth of the clearing. Their comrades who hadn’t yet come into the clearing went off the path and into the forest, moving forward to fight the Unkerlanters.

  Sadoc shouted, “The north! The north!” That was the second direction to which he’d pointed. Garivald had plenty of other things to worry about; he paid the hapless mage little attention.

  He slipped around past Obilot, looking for another good place from which to blaze at the retreating men of Plegmund’s Brigade. Then she scuttled past him, no doubt after the same thing. He smiled, and so did she; it might almost have been a figure dance in a village square.

  A beam slamming into a tree trunk not far from his head reminded him this was no amusement, but a game either side might lose. And if he lost, he’d never have the chance to play the game again.

  Crashing noises and yells from out of the north made Garivald’s head whip around. He couldn’t understand most of the yells—they weren’t in Unkerlanter. But one word came through with perfect clarity: “Plegmund!”

  “Powers above!” Garivald blurted. “They’ve got us in a trap, not the other way round.” He looked through the trees for an avenue of escape.

  Obilot clapped a hand to her forehead. “That great clod-poll of a Sadoc was right,” she said, sounding disgusted with the world, with Sadoc, and with herself. “He’s wrong so often, we didn’t believe him this time, but he was right.”

  “Break clear!” Munderic shouted, his voice cutting through the Forthwegians’ unintelligible cries. “Break clear! You know where to gather. The whoresons outfoxed us this time, but our turn’ll come round again, see if it doesn’t.”

  Garivald hadn’t traveled through the woods enough to be sure of finding his way back to the irregulars’ encampment. Perhaps sensing as much, Obilot said, “Stick close to me. I’ll get you back. Now let’s step lively, before these buggers get a clear blaze at us. I don’t know about the redheads, but they’re sure nastier customers than Grelzer soldiers. That’s clear.”

  “Aye.” Garivald nodded. “Seems they really mean it when they come after us, all right. Well, now we know.” Obilot started off toward the west. He followed, moving as fast and as quietly as he could.

  He had to blaze only once, and he dropped his Forthwegian before the bearded man could shout. Then the sounds of fighting and the foreign shouts from Plegmund’s Brigade faded behind him. “I think we got away,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “We really have to do better.” Obilot didn’t sound happy. “Now we have to see how many of us got away, and how much we’ll be able to do for a while. Curse the Algarvians, anyhow.” Garivald nodded again. How many Unkerlanters were thinking the same thing right now?

  Eleven

  Curse the Unkerlanters,” Brigadier Zerbino growled, slamming his fist down on the folding table inside his tent. “Curse the Lagoans and Kuusamans, too, for giving us such a hard time down here on the austral continent. And curse the Kaunians for doing everything they can to lay Algarve low.”

  A chorus of, “Aye,” rumbled through the officers he’d assembled for this council of war. Colonel Sabrino didn’t join it. Instead, he leaned over to Captain Domiziano and murmured, “He doesn’t leave many people out, does he?”

  “He hasn’t cursed the Yaninans yet,” Domiziano whispered back.

  Just then, Zerbino did: “And curse our alleged allies, whose hands are cold in war and whose feet are swift in retreat.” The Algarvian brigadier had not invited any Yaninans to the council.

  “Aye,” the officers chorused again. This time, Sabrino just sat silent. Sooner or later, Zerbino would come to the point. He probably wouldn’t take too long, either. He was by nature a hearty fellow, and usually said what he had to say without ornamenting it too much.

  So it proved now. “We are surrounded,” Zerbino declared. “All our enemies aim to attack us at once, hoping we haven’t got enough men and behemoths and dragons to stand against the lot of them.”

  For the first time, Sabrino found himself nodding. He’d been saying things like that all along, but nobody wanted to listen to him. Maybe Mezentio had decided not to pour a whole great army down into the land of the Ice People after all.

  Sure enough, Zerbino said, “We shall not get all the men or beasts we’ve asked for. Our kingdom needs them more to fight in Unkerlant and to guard the southeastern coast of Derlavai against more raids like the one at Dukstas.” That massive, heavy-knuckled fist pounded the tabletop again. “But we will have the victory here. By the powers above, we will.”

  Now Sabrino stuck up a hand. He couldn’t help himself. “How will we manage that, sir?” he asked. “Are you going to go out and wrestle General Junqueiro, best two falls out of three, for the austral continent?”

  Zerbino grinned. “Myself, I’d be glad to,” he answered, and Sabrino believed him, “but I don’t think the Lagoan has the stones for it. No, that’s not what I meant, Colonel, however much I wish it were. We aren’t getting the big reinforcements people had been talking about—I already said that. I wish we were, but we aren’t. Instead, what we are getting is two squads of mages and a good-sized shipment of . . . special personnel, that’s what they’re calling them back in Trapani.”

  For a moment, Sabrino hadn’t the faintest notion of what he meant. No doubt the people who’d come up with the bloodless phrase had that in mind. But it didn’t shield him from the truth for long. When he realized what had to lie behind it, he felt colder than the frozen ground on the far side of the Barrier Mountains. He spoke a single horrified word: “Kaunians.”

  “Aye, Kaunians,” Zerbino agreed. “A whole great whacking lot of them just got shipped across the Narrow Sea to Heshbon. They’re on their way up here now, along with our mages. Once they get here, we’ll make a magic to squash the Lagoans like so many bugs. Then we mop up, and then most of us can go back to Derlavai and give the Unkerlanters what they deserve.”

  Most of the assembled officers were nodding their heads. Several of them said, “Aye,” once more. Sabrino remembered King Mezentio coming out of the rain and into his tent the autumn before in Unkerlant to say like things in like words. We’ll do it once and it will take care of the enemy for good. Everything will be fine after that.

  Had everything turned out fine, Algarve wouldn’t need to send men back to Unkerlant now. Sabrino asked the question that had to be asked: “What do we do if something goes wrong, sir?”

  Zerbino tossed his head, as if trying to scare off an annoying gnat. “Nothing will go wrong,” he said. “Nothing can go wrong. Or are you saying our mages don’t know their business, Colonel?” His tone implied Sabrino had better not be saying that.

  “Sir, this is the land of the Ice People,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t they say it’s easy for mages from the mainland of Derlavai to have their spells go wrong here?”

  “I assure you, Colonel,” Zerbino said coldly, “that the men in charge of this necessary operation know everything that is required of them. Your task, and that of your dragon-fliers, will be to keep the Lagoans and Kuusamans from flying over the encampment of the special personnel before they are committed to the necessary operation.” More bloodless words. “That is your sole task. Do you understand?”

  “Aye, sir.” Sabrino got to his feet and left Zerbino’s tent. Captain Domiziano loyally followed. “Go back if you care to,” Sabrino told him. “You’ll do better for yourself staying than leaving. Besides, I know you think I’m wrong.”

  “You are my commander,
sir,” Domiziano said. “We guard each other’s backs, in the air and on the ground.” Sabrino bowed, touched.

  He was gladder to see the dragons than he had been to stay in Brigadier Zerbino’s tent, a telling measure of his distress. The Algarvians and the handful of Yaninans still with them gave him curious looks as he stalked among the dragons. The beasts themselves glared and screeched at him in the same way they glared and screeched at one another: they weren’t fussy in their mindless hostility.

  He wasted no time in ordering extra patrols into the air. Zerbino was bound to be right about that: if the enemy discovered Kaunians were being brought up to the front, they would know what was coming and might be able to take precautions against it. Since the army was several days’ march east of Heshbon, he had plenty of time to get the patrols as he wanted them before the Kaunians arrived.

  On the day the blonds trudged wearily into camp, a clan of Ice People also came in, to sell camels to the Algarvians. The robed, hairy natives watched impassively as the Kaunians, covered by Algarvians with sticks, made a separate camp for themselves. The mages who’d come in with the Kaunians had ridden out from Heshbon instead of walking. They were fresh and smiling, unlike the men and women in trousers.

  Sabrino didn’t want to hang around the Kaunians. In Zerbino’s eyes, he’d already given notice he was an obstructionist. Hanging around only made things worse. But he couldn’t help himself.

  Though Zerbino didn’t say anything, Sabrino knew he’d drawn his notice. He also drew the notice of one of the Ice People. The old man—Sabrino assumed it was an old man, though it might have been an old woman—wore a robe covered with fringes and bits of dried plants and the skins of small animals and birds. That made him a shaman: what passed for a mage among the Ice People. As far as Sabrino could tell, though, the savages of the austral continent knew as little of sorcery as they did of everything else.

  By his voice, the shaman did prove to be a man. He spoke in his own guttural language. Sabrino spread his hands to show he didn’t understand. The shaman tried again, this time in Yaninan. Sabrino shook his head. He turned away, not wanting to waste any more time on the barbarian. But the old man seized his arm in a grip of surprising strength, and surprised him again by speaking Lagoan: “You not want them to do this.”

  Sabrino wasn’t fluent in Lagoan, but he could understand it and make himself understood. The shaman’s dark eyes bored into his. He was suddenly sure exactly what the old man was talking about. How did the savage know? How could he know? In whatever way, he did know. Maybe there was more to the Ice People’s sorcerous talents than most folk credited. Slowly, Sabrino answered, “No, I am not wanting that.”

  “Make them stop,” the shaman said, squeezing his arm harder than ever. “They must not do this thing. The land will cry out against it. I tell you this—I, Jeush, I who know this land and its gods.” The last word was in his own tongue.

  Gods, as far as Sabrino was concerned, were more laughable nonsense. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel like laughing at this Jeush. But he shook his head again. “I cannot be doing anything to be changing this. You must be talking to Brigadier Zerbino. He is commanding here, not I.”

  Sadly, Jeush shook his head. “He will no hear me.” He spoke with great certainty.

  “He is not hearing me, either,” Sabrino said, which was all too true.

  “If this thing is done . . .” Jeush shuddered. The fringes on his robe swayed as they would have in a breeze. So did the defunct creatures and branches tied to them. In a horrid sort of way, it was fascinating to watch. Sabrino only shrugged. Had he thought Zerbino would listen to the shaman, he would have brought Jeush before the brigadier. But, as best he could guess, the old man was right: Zerbino would pay no attention to a barbarian who babbled of gods.

  “What will happen?” Sabrino asked, wondering why he wanted the views of a babbling barbarian himself. Because you’re afraid, that’s why, he thought. And he was.

  “Nothing good,” Jeush answered. “Everything bad. This is not your land. These gods is not your gods. You not understanding the hereness of here.” He waited to see if that would make Sabrino change his mind. When it didn’t, the old man turned his back with sad deliberation and slowly walked away.

  He spoke to the leader of the band of Ice People. Whatever he said didn’t keep the nomads from selling camels to the Algarvians. Once the bargains were done, though, the Ice People rode south at once instead of hanging around the camp begging and stealing as they usually did. Sabrino seemed to be the only one who noticed or cared.

  And he didn’t care for long. Getting ready for the attack on the Lagoans that would follow up the sorcerous onslaught took most of his time. During the rest, he was in the air making sure the enemy’s dragons didn’t sniff out the new camp full of Kaunians. By the time the Algarvian mages announced that all was in readiness, he’d almost forgotten about Jeush and his maunderings.

  Standing before his wing of dragonfliers, he said, “This sorcery is supposed to knock the Lagoans into a cocked hat. But the mages are braggarts, remember, so we may have a little more work than they expect. Be smart. Be careful. Let’s win.”

  With a great thunder of wings, the dragons leapt into the air one after another. The Algarvian army was already on the march. Only the mages and enough soldiers to guard and slaughter the Kaunians stayed behind. Every beat of his dragon’s wings took Sabrino farther from the camp that held the blonds, and he was thoroughly glad of it.

  Though no mage himself, he knew when the massacre and the magecraft springing from it began. His dragon seemed to feel it, too, and staggered in the air for a moment before recovering. Maybe Jeush had known something of what he was talking about after all. “But the Lagoans are catching it worse,” Sabrino muttered.

  Then he looked down at the advancing Algarvian army, looked down and cried out in dismay. He knew what sort of sorcery the mages wrought, and now he saw it visited not upon the Lagoans against whom it was aimed but upon his own countrymen. Crevasses yawned beneath them, holes closed upon them, flames seared soldiers and behemoths alike. In the blink of an eye, the Algarvians on the austral continent went from army to ruin.

  Sabrino flew on for a little while, too numb for the time being to think of doing anything else. Somewhere down on that frozen waste, a hairy old shaman was saying, “I told you so.”

  Once upon a time, Sergeant Leudast thought, Sulingen wouldn’t have been a bad town in which to live. Oh, it would get cold in the winter, he had no doubt of that; he came from the north of Unkerlant, which had a milder climate. But it would have been pleasant, sprawled as it was along the Wolter, with plenty of little patches of wood and parkland and with steeply sloping gullies to break up the blocks of homes and shops and manufactories.

  But it wasn’t pleasant any more. Algarvian dragons had been plastering it with eggs for weeks, and many of those blocks of homes were nothing but rubble. Leudast, as a matter of fact, didn’t mind rubble as terrain in which to fight. It offered endless places to hide, and he knew how to take advantage of them. The soldiers who hadn’t learned that lesson were mostly dead by now.

  Captain Hawart pointed north, though he was careful not to let the motion expose his arm to a beam from the enemy who lurked too close. “Let’s see the cursed Algarvians outflank us and run rings around us in this,” he said.

  “Let’s see anybody do anything in this,” Leudast answered, which made his company commander laugh and nod. Men could move freely enough. The company had spent some time digging trenches through the rubble, which made them much less likely to get blazed if they scrambled from one stretch of wreckage to another. But even behemoths had a hard time going where no paths had been cleared among piles of brick and stone and broken boards.

  Hawart said, “The only thing they can do now is come straight at us and slug. They’re quicker than we are. They’re more supple than we are. By the powers above, they’re more clever than we are, too. But how much good does any of that do the
m here?”

  “Do you really think they’re more clever than we are?” Leudast asked.

  “If we were more clever, we’d be attacking Trapani—they wouldn’t be here,” Hawart answered, and Leudast had a hard time finding a counterargument. But Hawart went on, “But that only takes you so far. If I hit you in the head with a big rock, how clever you are doesn’t matter any more. And here in Sulingen, we can hit the redheads with lots of big rocks. If they were really clever, they would have made the fight somewhere else.”

  Before Leudast could reply, the Algarvians started tossing eggs at the Unkerlanter front line. As usual, Mezentio’s men had made sure that their egg-tossers kept up with their advancing footsoldiers. Leudast cowered in his hole as the rubble around him got ground a little finer. It occurred to him, perhaps more slowly than it should have, that the Algarvians, regardless of whether or not they were clever, could hit the Unkerlanters with big rocks, too.

  It also occurred to him that the Algarvians could pin the Unkerlanters in their holes by tossing eggs and then finish them with the horrific magic they made from the life energy of slaughtered Kaunians. He hoped they wouldn’t think of that along this particular stretch of the line.

  Off to his right, someone shrieked. Maybe the redheads wouldn’t need to be clever to go forward. Maybe they could just go on killing the way they’d been doing for quite a while.

  Another cry rose, this one alarm, not pain: “They’re coming!” Eggs kept right on landing. Maybe Mezentio’s men didn’t care if they killed a few of their own. Maybe they just figured it was a good bargain, and that getting rid of the Unkerlanters counted for more. And maybe they were right about that, too.

  If they were coming, Leudast didn’t want—didn’t dare—to get caught in his hole. He popped up and started to blaze. An Algarvian tumbled down, and another. More dove for cover. Some kept coming. His mouth went dry—quite a few were coming, more than he thought he and his comrades could hold back. He’d already made himself expensive. Now he had to see how he could cost the redheads even more before they finally pulled him down.