Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  But Ilmarinen, contrary as usual, said, "Suppose we fail here. Sooner or later, we'll still have big armies in the field against the Algarvians. Sure as Mezentio's got a pointy nose, they'll start killing Kaunians to try to stop us. What do we do then?"

  That was a large, important question. The only time the Lagoans and Kuusamans had had a large army in the field against Algarve after Mezentio's men unveiled their murderous magic was down in the land of the Ice People. Sure as sure, the Algarvians had tried to turn back their foes by butchering blonds. But the magic had gone wrong, there on the austral continent. It had come down on the Algarvians' heads, not those of their foes. That wouldn't happen on the mainland of Derlavai. Too many massacres had proved as much.

  Pekka said, "We cannot match them in murder. That is the best argument I know for mastering them with magecraft."

  "Suppose we fail," Ilmarinen repeated. "We'll be fighting Mezentio's men even so. What do we do when they start killing? We had better think about that, you know- I don't mean us here alone, but also the Seven here and King Vitor and his

  counselors in that small town of yours, Fernao. The day is coming. We've all heard the name Habakkuk-no use pretending we haven't."

  "I have heard the name, but I do not know what it means," Fernao said.

  "My husband works with Habakkuk, and I do not know what he does," Pekka added. "I do not ask, any more than he asks me what I do."

  "You are the soul of virtue." Ilmarinen's voice was sour. "Well, I know, because I have no virtue save perhaps that of thinking backwards and upside down. I will spare your tender virgin ears the details, but I trust I do not shock you when I say Habakkuk isn't intended to make Mezentio sleep easier of nights."

  "If Mezentio can sleep at all, after the things he has done, his conscience is made of cast iron," Fernao said, "and doubtless he can, so doubtless it is."

  "All right, then." Ilmarinen took his usual pleasure in making himself as difficult as possible. "Thanks to Habakkuk, among other things, we come to grips with Algarve on land. Mezentio's mages kill Kaunians to throw us back. What comes next?"

  "There are blocking spells," Fernao said. "If you and Siuntio had not used them then, we probably would not be here to have this discussion."

  "Aye, they helped-some," Ilmarinen answered. "How would you like to be a foolish young man, more balls than brains, trying to kill other foolish young men in a different uniform, with your mages helping you with a spell that leaks as much as it shields? Before very long, wouldn't you sooner take after them than after the enemy soldiers? I would, and I wouldn't take long to get there, either."

  "Master Ilmarinen, you have just shown why we so badly have to succeed," Pekka said.

  "No." The master mage shook his head. "I've shown why we so badly need to succeed. But have to?" He shook his head again. "Life does not come with a guarantee, except that it will end. What I tried to show you was that we'd better find some answers somewhere else in case we don't find them here. But you don't want to listen to that. And so..." He got to his feet, gave Fernao and Pekka nicely matched mocking bows, and departed.

  "I am always so grateful for such encouragement," Pekka said.

  "As am I," Fernao agreed. He made as if to rise and follow Ilmarinen. "And now, if you will excuse me, I think I shall go back to my room and slit my wrists."

  Pekka stared at him, then laughed when she realized he was joking. "Be careful with what you say," she warned. "I took you seriously for a moment."

  "He asks interesting questions, does he not?" Fernao said. "If he were as interested in answering them as he is in asking them..." He shrugged. "If that were so, he would not be Ilmarinen."

  "No-he would come closer to being Siuntio," Pekka said. "And Siuntio is the mage we need most right now. Every day without him proves that." Her hands folded into fists. "Powers below eat the Algarvians. Curse their magic."

  Fernao nodded. But the question Ilmarinen had posed kept rattling around in his mind, whether he wanted it to or not. "If we fail here, how do our kingdoms beat the Algarvians without sinking into the swamp that has already taken them?"

  "I do not know," Pekka said. "If we do sink down into the swamp with the Algarvians, does it matter in the end whether we win or lose?"

  "To us, aye, it matters." Fernao held up a hand to show he hadn't finished and to keep Pekka from arguing. "To the world, it probably does not."

  Pekka pondered that, then slowly nodded. "If Algarve beats Unkerlant, we have Mezentio's minions eyeing us from across the Strait of Valmiera. And if Unkerlant beats Algarve, we have Swemmel's minions eyeing us instead. But the one set would not be much different from the other, would it?"

  "The Algarvians would tell you more about the differences than you would ever want to hear," Fernao answered. "So would the Unkerlanters. My opinion is that they would not matter much."

  "I think you are right," Pekka said. "You see through the show to the essential. That is what makes you a good mage."

  "Thank you," Fernao said. "Praise from the praiseworthy is praise indeed." That was a proverb in classical Kaunian. He brought it out as if he'd thought of it on the spur of the moment.

  Kuusamans were swarthy; he couldn't be sure whether Pekka blushed. But, by the way she murmured, "You do me too much honor," he judged he'd succeeded in embarrassing her. He didn't mind. He wanted her to know he thought well of her. Even more, he wanted her to think well of him. He wished he could come right out and say that. He knew he would ruin everything if he did.

  He sighed, both because of that and for other reasons. "One way or another," he said, "the world will not be the same after this war ends."

  Pekka thought about that, then shook her head. "No. One way and another, the world will not be the same after this war ends. We are changing too many things ever to be the same again."

  "True enough," Fernao said. "Too true, if anything." He waved in the direction of the blockhouse. "If all goes well, we help set the tone of the changes. That is no small privilege."

  "That is no small responsibility." Pekka sighed. "I wish it were not on my shoulders. But what we wish for and what we get are not always the same. I know that I can deal with the world the way it is, no matter how much I wish it were otherwise."

  Fernao inclined his head to her. "We are lucky to have such a leader." Part of that was flattery. A larger part was anything but.

  "If we were lucky, we would still have Siuntio," Pekka answered. "Whenever we run into trouble, I ask myself how he might fix it. I hope I am right more often than I am wrong."

  "You could do worse," Fernao said.

  "I know," Pekka said bleakly. "And, one of these days, I probably will." Try as he would, Fernao found no flattering answer for that.

  ***

  When Istvan looked up at the night sky from the island of Becsehely, he had no trouble seeing the stars. The didn't glitter so brilliantly as they did in the clear, cold air of his own mountain valley, but they were there, from horizon to

  horizon. "It almost seems strange," he remarked to Szonyi. "After so long in the accursed woods of western Unkerlant, I'd got used to seeing a star here, a star there, but most of them blotted out by branches overhead."

  "Aye." Szonyi's fingers writhed in a sign to avert evil. "Me, too. No wonder I felt forsaken by the stars while I was there."

  "No wonder at all." Some of Istvan's shiver had to do with the night air, which was moist and chilly. More sprang from dread and loathing of the forest he and his companions had finally escaped. "There are places in those woods that no star saw for years at a time."

  "Can't say that here." Szonyi's waved encompassed all of Becsehely-not that there was a whole lot to encompass. "It's not much like Obuda, is it? Before we got to this place, I always thought, well, an island is an island, you know what I mean? But it doesn't look like it works that way."

  The gold frame to Captain Kun's spectacles glittered in the firelight as he turned his head toward Szonyi. "After you had one woman," he as
ked, "did you think all women were the same, too?"

  He probably wanted to anger Szonyi. But the big trooper just laughed and said, "After my first one? Aye, of course I did. I found out different pretty fast. Now I'm finding out different about islands, too."

  "He's got you there, Kun," Istvan said with a laugh.

  "I suppose so-if you're daft enough to assume one island is like another to begin with," Kun answered.

  "Enough." Istvan put a sergeant's snap in his voice. "Let's hope this island won't be anything like Obuda. Let's hope-and let's make sure-we don't lose it to the stinking Kuusamans, the way we lost Obuda."

  He peered west through the darkness, as if expecting to spot a fleet of Kuusaman ley-line cruisers and patrol boats and transports and dragon haulers bearing down on Becsehely. Gyongyos had lost a good many islands besides Obuda to Kuusamo this past year; Ekrekek Arpad had vowed to the stars that the warrior race would lose no more.

  I am the instrument of Arpad's vow, Istvan thought. An instrument of his vow, anyway. In the forests of Unkerlant, he'd often feared that the Ekrekek had joined the stars in forsaking him. Here, by contrast, he felt as if he were serving under his sovereign's eye.

  After a while, he wrapped himself in a blanket and slept. When he woke, he wondered if Ekrekek Arpad had blinked: a thick fog covered Becsehely. All the Kuusaman ships in the world could have sailed past half a mile offshore, and he never would have known it. More fog streamed from his nose and mouth every time he exhaled. When he inhaled, he could taste the sea almost as readily as if he were a fish swimming in it.

  Not far away, a bell began ringing. Istvan's stomach rumbled. "Follow your ears, boys," he told the troopers in his squad. "Try not to break your necks before you get there."

  His boots scrunched on gravel and squelched through mud as he made his own way toward the bell. The fog muffled his footsteps. It muffled the bell, too, and the endless slap of the sea on the beach perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Becsehely was low and flat. Had it not lain along a ley line, it wouldn't have

  been worth visiting at all-but then, as far as Istvan was concerned, the same held true for every island in the Bothnian Ocean.

  There was the cookfire-and there was a queue of men with mess kits. Istvan took his place in it. The man in front of him turned and said, "Good morning, Sergeant."

  "Oh!" Istvan said. "Good morning, Captain Frigyes. I'm sorry, sir-a man wouldn't know his own mother in this fog."

  "Can't argue with you there," his company commander replied. "You'd almost think the Kuusamans magicked it up on purpose."

  "Sir?" Istvan said in some alarm. "You don't suppose-?"

  Frigyes shook his head. "No, I don't suppose that. Our mages would be screaming their heads off were it so. They aren't. That means it isn't."

  Istvan considered. "Aye. That makes sense." He peered out into the fog with new suspicion just the same.

  A bored-looking cook filled his mess tin with a stew of millet and lentils and bits of fish. He ate methodically, then went down to the beach and washed the tin in the ocean. Becsehely boasted only a handful of springs; fresh water was too precious to waste on washing.

  Toward mid-morning, the fog lifted. The sky remained gray. So did the sea. Becsehely seemed gray, too. Most of the gravel was that color, and the grass and bushes, fading in the fall, were more yellowish gray than green.

  An observation tower stood on the high ground-such as it was-at the center of the island. Sentries with spyglasses swept the horizon, not that they would have done much good in the swaddling fog. But dowsers and other mages stood by to warn against trouble then. Istvan hoped whatever warning they might give would be enough.

  A dragon flapped into the air from the farm beyond the tower. Istvan expected it to vanish into the clouds, but it didn't. It flew in a wide spiral below them: one more sentry, to spy out the Kuusamans before they drew too close to Becsehely. Sentries were all very well, but...

  Istvan turned to Captain Frigyes and said, "I wish we had more dragons on this stars-forsaken island, sir."

  "Well, Sergeant, so do I, when you get right down to it," Frigyes answered. "But Becsehely doesn't have enough growing on it to support much in the way of cattle or pigs or even" -he made a revolted face-"goats. That means we have to ship in meat for the dragons, same as we have to bring in food for us. We can only afford so many of the miserable beasts."

  "Miserable is right." Istvan remembered unpleasant days on Obuda, mucking out dragon farms. With a frown, he went on, "The stinking Kuusamans bring whole shiploads of dragons with 'em wherever they go."

  "I know that. We all know that-much too well, in fact," Frigyes said. "It's one of the reasons they've given us so much trouble in the islands. We'll be able to do it ourselves before too long."

  "That'd be about time, sir," Istvan said. We'll be able to do it before too long was a phrase that had got a lot of Gyongyosian soldiers killed before their time.

  "We are a warrior race," Frigyes said, disapproval strong in his voice. "We shall prevail."

  "Aye, sir," Istvan answered. He couldn't very well say anything else, not without denying Gyongyos' heritage. But he'd seen over and over again, on Obuda and in the woods of western Unkerlant, that warrior virtues, however admirable, could be overcome by sound strategy or strong sorcery.

  Despite the tower, despite the dragons, despite the dowsers, no one on Becsehely spied the approaching Kuusaman flotilla till it launched its dragons at the island. Mist and rain clung to Becsehely, thwarting the men with the spyglass, thwarting the dragonfliers, and even thwarting the dowsers, who had to try to detect the motion of ships through the motions of millions of falling raindrops. Dowsers had techniques for noting one kind of motion while screening out others; maybe the Kuusamans had techniques for making ships seem more like rain.

  Whatever the explanation, the first thing the garrison knew of the flotilla was eggs falling out of the sky and bursting all over the island. The observation tower went down in ruin when a lucky hit smashed its supports. More eggs burst near the dragon farm, but the dragonfliers got at least some of their beasts into the air to challenge the Kuusamans.

  Frigyes' whistle wailed through the din. "To the beach!" he yelled. "Stand by to repel invaders!"

  "Come on, you lugs!" Istvan shouted to his squad. "If they don't make it ashore, they can't hurt us, right?"

  More eggs burst close by, making all the Gyongyosians dive for holes in the ground. As dirt pattered down on them, Szonyi said, "Who says they can't?"

  "Come on!" Istvan repeated, and they were up and running again. He and Kun-and Szonyi, too-had spent a lot of time harping on how important it was to keep the Kuusamans from landing. He knew a certain amount of pride that the rest of the squad took them seriously. Everybody loved the stars, but no one wanted them to take and cherish his spirit right then.

  The Kuusaman dragons had already given the trenches by the beach a pretty good pounding. Istvan wasn't fussy-any hole in the ground, whether a proper trench or the crater left by a bursting egg, would do fine. He jumped down into one, then peered out again, wondering how close the invasion fleet was, and what sort of defending vessels Gyongyos had in these waters. He remembered only too well how the Kuusamans had fought their way onto the beaches of Obuda.

  He spied no enemy ships gliding along the ley line toward Becsehely, no landing boats leaving larger ships and approaching the island on a broad front propelled by sails or oars. Corporal Kun saw-or rather, didn't see-the same thing, and spoke with some relief: "Just a raid from their dragon haulers."

  "Aye." Istvan sounded relieved, too. The dragons might kill him, but without landing boats in the water there wasn't the certainty of a life-and-death struggle for the island. Sooner or later, the accursed beasts would fly back to the ships that had brought them, and the raid would end.

  "Demon of a lot of dragons overhead for just a raid," Kun said.

  That was also true. Istvan shrugged. "They must have brought more of those sh
ips along than usual. Aren't we lucky?"

  And then they were lucky, for one of the heavy sticks mounted on Becsehely blazed a Kuusaman dragon out of the sky. It fell into the sea just offshore and

  thrashed out its death agony there. Painted pale blue and light green, it might almost have been a sea creature itself. If its dragonflier hadn't been dead when it smashed down, its writhings would surely have crushed him.

  Eventually, a soldier managed to blaze the dragon through one of its great, glaring eyes. It shuddered and lay still. A moment later, another dragon plunged into the sea, and then one onto the stony soil of the island behind Istvan. He shook his fist in triumph. "By the stars, nothing's going to come cheap for the stinking Kuusamans here."

  The foe must have decided the same thing, for the dragons flew off toward the west. Only later did Istvan pause to wonder whether Becsehely was worth having for anybody at all.