Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  A big green, white, and red banner marked a badly pocked city square. Up till a couple of weeks before, that had been the place where dragons landed to unload supplies and to take wounded men off to safety. Algarvian dragons didn’t land in Sulingen any more. No part of the city that Mezentio’s men still held was out of range of Unkerlanter egg-tossers. Landing, these days, was suicidally risky.

  But that banner still made a useful beacon. Sabrino spoke into his crystal: “All right, boys, you can see where the goodies are supposed to go. Put ’em down as close as you can.”

  He used his saw-edged knife to cut the cord that attached the crates of food and charges and medicine to his dragon. Those crates plummeted down. He placed them as carefully as if he were dropping eggs on the Unkerlanters. And he clapped his hands with glee when they came down in the square, where Algarvian soldiers could recover them.

  Most of his men were as careful, or nearly as careful, as he. He cursed when a few crates fell well wide of the mark the soldiers on the ground had given his wing. King Swemmel’s men would probably get their hands on those. But he clapped again to see Algarvian soldiers, tiny as ants from the height at which he watched them, run out to grab the supplies they needed so desperately. Some of them waved or blew kisses to the dragons overhead. Behind Sabrino’s goggles, tears stung his eyes.

  He spoke into the crystal again: “We’ve done what we came for. Now let’s get back, give our beasts as much rest as we can spare them—grab a little ourselves, too, come to that—and then come down here and do it all over again.”

  “Aye, Colonel.” That was Captain Domiziano, smiling out at Sabrino from the crystal. “Who knows? We may find a way to lick those Unkerlanter buggers down there.”

  “So we may,” Sabrino answered. He would not say anything that might hurt the wing’s morale, not in public. In the privacy of his own mind, he wondered how Domiziano managed to hold on to such boyish optimism.

  For a little while, though, he could be optimistic himself. Freed of so much weight, his dragon flew like a young, fresh beast, which it assuredly was not. Or maybe, he thought, I haven’t flow a young, fresh dragon for so bloody long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like.

  He found the answer to that riddle sooner than he would have liked. His wing hadn’t got very far north of Sulingen when Unkerlanter dragons assailed them. As often happened, his men were slower to spot the Unkerlanters than they might have been—in rock-gray paint, the enemy dragons looked like nothing so much as detached, hostile bits of cloud.

  “Powers above, they’re fast!” he muttered as the Unkerlanter squadron closed with the men and dragons he commanded. After a moment, he realized they weren’t so very fast after all. It was just that his own dragons couldn’t come close to matching the foe’s turn of speed.

  Had the Unkerlanters been able to equal his dragonfliers in skill, his wing would have suffered badly, for Swemmel’s men flew fresher beasts. But, no matter how fast they were, none of the Unkerlanters had seen much action. They didn’t dive from on high as they might have, and they did start blazing too soon, when they weren’t close enough to their targets to have much chance of hitting.

  No matter how fresh and fast their dragons were, they paid for those mistakes. Sabrino and his men were veterans. They knew what they could do, what they couldn’t, and how to help one another when they got in trouble. Had it been a tavern brawl, the Unkerlanters would have complained that the Algarvians didn’t fight fair. As things were, rock-gray dragons and the men who flew them tumbled toward the snow far below one after another in quick succession.

  One of those Unkerlanters, intent on some other Algarvian, flew right in front of Sabrino’s dragon, as if he weren’t there at all. From fifty yards, perhaps less, even a poor blazer could hardly have missed. Sabrino was as good with a stick from dragonback as any man breathing. A quick blaze and the Unkerlanter dragonflier no longer was breathing. His dragon, suddenly out of control, went wild. By luck, the first beast it attacked belonged to another Unkerlanter. Sabrino nodded in sober satisfaction.

  But his men did not have it all their own way. Two of their number also plummeted to the ground before the Unkerlanters had enough and broke off their attack. One of the Algarvian dragons, wounded but not ruined, came down gently in the snow. The flier aboard it might well have survived the landing. How long he would survive once Unkerlanter foot-soldiers got their hands on him was, unfortunately, another question.

  Heavy weather closed in around the Algarvians as they kept flying north. The clouds shielded them from more Unkerlanter dragons and from the heavy sticks down on the ground. Sabrino would have liked that better if those clouds hadn’t been a harbinger of more dreadful weather blowing in from the trackless west.

  A great roaring bonfire on the ground led him back to the dragon farm. When he landed, his dragon’s wings drooped limply. So did the small head on the end of its long neck. The beast didn’t even protest when a handler came up and chained it to a stake.

  Sabrino knew exactly how the dragon felt. He felt every one of his years as he unfastened the harness securing him in place and slid down to the frozen ground. Ever so slowly, he walked toward the tents at the edge of the dragon farm. He wanted a tender slice of veal and a fine brandy. What he’d get was a chunk of sausage and a mug of raw spirits cooked up from turnips or beets. That would have to do.

  “Colonel!” The call made him pause and turn his head. Up came Captain Orosio, goggles shoved up onto his forehead. Sabrino waited for him. When Orosio had caught up with his wing commander, he asked, “Sir, how much longer do you think we’ll be flying down to Sulingen?”

  Orosio wasn’t Domiziano. He had a notion of the way the world really worked. Sabrino was speaking to him alone, not to all the squadron commanders through the crystal. The truth, here, wouldn’t hurt. Sabrino spoke it without joy but without hesitation: “Not much longer.” Orosio grimaced, but didn’t contradict him.

  Twenty

  Have you ever smashed in a viper’s head, Tewfik, and then watched it die?” Hajjaj asked.

  “Oh, aye, your Excellency—a couple of times, as a matter of fact,” his majordomo answered. “I wouldn’t have lived to get all these white hairs if I hadn’t, especially once: cursed thing was coiled up in my hat.”

  The Zuwayzi foreign minister nodded. “All right. You’ll know what I’m talking about. The snake thrashes and thrashes, for what seems like forever. If you get too close, or if you poke it with your finger, you’re liable to get bitten no matter how well you’ve smashed it. Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “Oh, you’re right, lad, no doubt about it,” Tewfik said. “That almost happened to me, matter of fact. I was a young man, and not so very patient.”

  Tewfik was close to twenty years older than Hajjaj, who had trouble imagining him as a young man. Nodding again, Hajjaj said, “The point is, though, once its head is smashed in, it will die, regardless of how much it thrashes and even if it manages to get in a bite or two.”

  “That’s so, your Excellency.” Tewfik cocked his head to one side and studied Hajjaj. “You’re not just talking about vipers, are you?”

  “What? You accuse me of allegory?” Hajjaj laughed, but not for long. “No, I’m not just talking about vipers. I’m talking about the Algarvian army down in Sulingen, or what’s left of it.”

  “Ah.” Tewfik weighed that. “News from those parts isn’t good, I will say.”

  “News from those parts could hardly be worse,” Hajjaj answered. To his majordomo and to his senior wife, he could speak freely. With everyone else, even with King Shazli, he guarded his words. “The Algarvians will soon be crushed. They cannot help being crushed.”

  “And what will that do to the course of the war?” Tewfik asked. He had not spent upwards of half a century as majordomo to a leading Zuwayzi house without acquiring a good deal of knowledge and without getting a feel for which questions were the important ones.

  No question, right then, was more important for
Zuwayza—for the whole of Derlavai, come to that, but Hajjaj naturally put his own kingdom first. “It means the Algarvians are going to have a demon of a time knocking Unkerlant out of the war now,” he answered. “And if they don’t . . .”

  “If they don’t, Swemmel’s men are going to do some knocking of their own,” Tewfik predicted. He needed no magecraft to see what lay ahead there.

  “How right you are,” Hajjaj said. “And how very much I wish you were wrong.”

  “What will you do, your Excellency?” Tewfik asked. “I know you will do something to keep us safe.”

  Everyone in Zuwayza knew Hajjaj would do some such thing. Hajjaj only wished he knew it himself, or had some idea of where such an escape might lie. He understood why his countrymen relied on him. He had, after all, been the kingdom’s foreign minister throughout its independent history.

  “Sometimes,” he said with a sigh, “life offers a choice between good and better. More often, it offers a choice between good and bad. And sometimes the only choice one has is between bad and worse. I fear we are in one of those times now.”

  “You’ll lead us through it, lad,” Tewfik said confidently. “I know you will. You got the Unkerlanter garrison out of Bishah, after all. If you can do that, you can do anything.”

  In the chaos that followed the Six Years’ War, Hajjaj had indeed persuaded the Unkerlanter officer in charge of Bishah to leave the city in the hands of its own people, who’d promptly raised Shazli’s father to the throne of a newly free Zuwayza. But that case wasn’t comparable to this one. The Unkerlanters had been eager to go so they could throw themselves into the Twinkings War then engulfing their whole vast kingdom. These days, Hajjaj had no such convenient levers with which to manipulate affairs. He saw that only too clearly. Why couldn’t anyone else see it at all?

  Eager to escape Tewfik’s unbridled optimism, he said, “I am going down into Bishah. Please have my carriage readied as soon as may be.”

  “Of course.” The majordomo gave him a creaking bow. “You will want to be close to the news as it comes in.”

  “So I will,” Hajjaj agreed. Some folk down in the city knew better than to think him a master mage of foreign affairs. His mouth twisted. He wished King Shazli were one of those people.

  Since it hadn’t rained for a few days—even in winter, rain around Bishah was only intermittent—the road had firmed up. The journey down to the city, in fact, struck Hajjaj as quite pleasant. The road wasn’t dusty, as it always was in summer, and the rains that had fallen made long-dormant plants spring up all over, so the hillsides were green with occasional speckles of orange or red or blue flowers. Bees buzzed everywhere.

  Down at the palace, people buzzed everywhere. Hajjaj was not unduly surprised when his secretary said, “Marquis Balastro craves an audience at your earliest convenience, your Excellency.”

  “Tell him he may come, Qutuz,” Hajjaj answered. “I will be interested to hear how he turns this latest disaster into a triumph of Algarvian arms.”

  “I wish he could, your Excellency,” Qutuz said, and Hajjaj had to nod.

  A couple of hour later, the Zuwayzi foreign minister greeted King Mezentio’s envoy in Bishah. “You have terrible taste in clothes, your Excellency,” Balastro said.

  “Considering how seldom I wear them, that should hardly surprise you,” Hajjaj replied. Qutuz brought in tea and wine and cakes then. Hajjaj didn’t use the refreshments to string things out to the degree he sometimes had; he wanted to find out what was in Balastro’s mind. After hurrying through the ritual sips and nibbles, he asked, “And how fare things with you and your kingdom?”

  “We’re making the Unkerlanters pay a fearful price for Sulingen,” Balastro said. Hajjaj inclined his head without answering. The Algarvians hadn’t come to Sulingen for that purpose. And Balastro admitted as much: “It’s not the way we would have had things turn out there, which I can hardly deny. We’ll hit Swemmel more hard licks yet, see if we don’t.”

  “May it be so,” Hajjaj murmured. Algarve made an imperious, demanding, unpleasant ally. But if the Unkerlanters took the bit firmly between their teeth, who could guess what they’d do to Algarve . . . and to Zuwayza?

  Then, to Hajjaj’s surprise, Balastro said, “But that isn’t what I came to discuss with you today.”

  “No?” Hajjaj said. “Tell me what is in your thoughts, by all means do.” If he wouldn’t have to listen to Balastro haranguing him about how Algarvian victory was just around the corner despite whatever misfortunes the redheads had suffered at the moment, he would face anything else with heightened equanimity.

  Leaning forward a little, Balastro said, “And so I shall, your Excellency. You’ve taxed my kingdom for being first to use certain strong sorceries in the Derlavaian War, is it not so?”

  Hajjaj had never before heard multiple murder mentioned so delicately. He almost twitted Balastro about that, but held back. All he said was, “Aye, I have taxed you about it, and with reason, I think. Why do you mention it now?”

  “Because my kingdom’s mages tell me that, down in Kuusamo or Lagoas, our foes have done something even more vicious,” Balastro answered.

  “They do not even know just where?” Hajjaj asked, and Balastro shook his head. Hajjaj went on, “Do they know just what?” The Algarvian minister shook his head again. Hajjaj stared at him in some exasperation. “Then why should I not believe you are weaving this from whole cloth for no other reason than to make me happier with you and more inflamed against your enemies?”

  “Because, if the reports I get from Trapani are anywhere close to true, half the mages in Algarve are tearing their hair out, trying to figure out what in blazes the islanders have gone and done,” Balastro answered.

  Hajjaj studied him. He didn’t think Balastro was lying, though the Algarvian minister wouldn’t have let an untruth or six stop him from doing what he judged would serve his kingdom best. Hajjaj asked, “Do your mages think they’ll be able to learn?”

  “How should I know?” Balastro returned. “They’ve got a war to fight, too; they can’t very well go haring after everything anybody else does. But this was big enough to set them in a tizzy over it, and I figured you ought to know.”

  By which he surely meant he had instructions from Trapani to let Hajjaj know. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, “I shall consult with my own kingdom’s mages. Depending on what they say, I may or may not have more questions for you.”

  “All right, your Excellency.” Balastro got up from the nest of cushions he’d made for himself on the floor of Hajjaj’s office. Hajjaj rose, too. They exchanged bows. Balastro went on, “I’ve come to tell you what I had to tell you, so now I’ll be on my way.” He bowed again and left.

  He hadn’t come to talk about the military situation or the politics that sprang from it. He’d come to talk about this Lagoan or Kuusaman magecraft, whatever it was. Isn’t that interesting? Hajjaj thought. If Balastro had some ulterior motive, he was putting a lot of art and effort into keeping it hidden.

  Before Hajjaj could do more than scrawl a note to himself to check with some leading Zuwayzi mages, Qutuz came into his office. His secretary, for once, looked quite humanly astonished. “Well?” Hajjaj said. “Whatever it is, you’d better tell me.”

  “I just had delivered to me a letter from Hadadezer of Ortah, requesting a few minutes of your time this afternoon,” Qutuz replied.

  “That is something out of the ordinary,” Hajjaj agreed. “Of course I will see the Ortaho minister. How else am I to satisfy my own curiosity? Hadadezer has been minister to Zuwayza for twenty years, and I am not sure I have seen him twenty times in all those years. And I can count the times he has sought an audience on the fingers of one hand.”

  “Some kingdoms are lucky in their geography,” Qutuz observed, to which Hajjaj could only nod. Ortah lay between Algarve and Unkerlant, but its mountains and the swamps surrounding them had always made it impossible to invade and overrun. Thanks to them, the Ortahoin had dwelt
there undisturbed since before the days of the Kaunian Empire.

  Hadadezer came at precisely the appointed hour. He had a white beard that rode high on his cheeks and white hair that came down low on his forehead. Some folk wondered if the Ortahoin were kin to the Ice People. Ethnography, though, would have to wait. After a polite exchange of greetings, Hajjaj spoke in Algarvian: “How may I serve you, your Excellency?”

  “I would ask a question,” Hadadezer answered in the same language. Hajjaj nodded. The Ortaho said, “My sovereign, King Ahinadab, sees war all around him. With Algarve in retreat, he sees war coming toward him. It is a very great war. We have not got much skill in diplomacy. For long and long, we have had no need of such. Now . . . How do we keep the flames of war from setting our homeland ablaze? You are a most able diplomatist. Perhaps you will be able to tell me.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” Hajjaj exclaimed. “Oh, my dear, dear fellow! If I knew the answer, I would tell my own king first, and after that would gladly share what I knew with you—and with the whole world. You’ve stayed neutral so far. Perhaps you can keep it up. And if not . . . if not, your Excellency, be as strong as you can, for strength will let you save more than pity ever would.”

  Hadadezer bowed. “That is good advice. I shall convey it to King Ahinadab.” He paused and sighed. “Do not be offended, but I wish you had something better still to offer.”

  “Offended? Not I, sir,” Hajjaj replied. “I wish I did, too.”

  Leudast had seen the Algarvians running strong, like the floods that sent rivers out of their banks. They’d rolled west across Unkerlant two summers in a row. He’d seen them in stubborn defense, damming up the counterflow of Swemmel’s men the winter before.