Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “He sent me,” Ilmarinen answered. “He said I was better at being rude than he was. Bugger me if I know what he meant.” His chuckle displayed uneven yellow teeth.

  “Why would you want to be rude to me?” Fernao asked.

  “That’s just it--I don’t need a reason, and Siuntio would.” Ilmarinen’s eyes lit up. “And here’s supper.” For a while, he and Fernao paid attention to little else.

  Fernao’s salmon steak was moist and pink and flavorful. He did not enjoy it so much as he might have, though, for he’d become convinced he wasn’t going to learn anything on this journey. He’d also become convinced there were things he badly needed to learn.

  “More ale?” he asked Ilmarinen, hefting the pitcher.

  “Oh, aye,” the Kuusaman mage answered, “though you’ll not get me drunk.” Fernao’s ears burned, but he poured anyway.

  “What would happen if I ignored you and did go to see Siuntio?” he asked.

  Ilmarinen shrugged. “You’d end up buying him supper, too. You’d be even less likely to make him drunk than you are me--I enjoy it every now and again, but he’s an old sobersides. And you still wouldn’t find out anything. He’d tell you there’s nothing to find out, the same as I’m telling you now.”

  “Curse you both for lying,” Fernao flared.

  “If Pinhiero’s curses won’t stick to me--and they won’t--I’m not going to worry about yours, lad,” Ilmarinen answered. “And I say I am not lying. Your own research will prove the truth of it, as the exception proves the rule.”

  “What sort of research?” Fernao asked.

  Ilmarinen only smiled again, and said not a word.

  These days, Vanai feared every knock at the door. Most Kaunians in Forthweg did, and had reason to. She had more reasons, far more than most. Major Spinello had kept his part of the bargain: her grandfather no longer went out to labor on the roads. And she had to keep her part of the bargain, too, whenever the Algarvian officer chose. For Brivibas’ sake, she did.

  It no longer hurt, as it had the first time. Spinello was not cruel that particular way. In fact, he kept trying to please her. He would caress her for what seemed like forever before doing what he wanted. She never kindled. She never came close to kindling. She despised him far too much for that. Even resignation wasn’t easy, though at last she managed it.

  Instead of by wounding her in the bedchamber, Spinello took his nasty pleasure by ostentatiously leading her to that chamber and closing the door in Brivibas’ face. He didn’t bother barring it. Once, in a transport of impotent fury, Brivibas had burst in. “Come to watch, have you?” Spinello asked coolly, not missing a stroke. Vanai’s grandfather reeled away as if blazed through the heart.

  It was after Major Spinello left that the fights would start. “Better you should have let me die than to do such a thing!” Brivibas would shout. Vanai knew he meant it, too, which was twisting the knife.

  She always answered the same way: “In a while, this will be over. If you died, my grandfather, that would be forever, and I could not bear it.”

  “But how does this make me look?” Brivibas cried one day. “Preserved alive because my granddaughter gives herself to an Algarvian barbarian? How am I to hold my head up in the village?”

  He spoke in terms of himself, not in terms of Vanai. His selfishness infuriated her. She said, “I have not been able to hold my head up in Oyngestun since you first grew friendly toward the Algarvian barbarian--which is not what you called him when he began meeting with you--how he admired your scholarship! I shared your shame then. If you share mine now, is it not part of the bargain you made?”

  Brivibas stared at her. For a moment, she thought she’d made him see things through her eyes. But then he said, “How, after this, will I be able to make a proper marriage alliance for you?”

  “How, after this, do you think I would ever want another man to touch me?” Vanai retorted, at which her grandfather flinched and retreated to the safety of his study. Vanai glared after him. He hadn’t thought about how she might feel about being married, only about the difficulties her behavior might cause him. A poisonous thought sprouted in her mind, tempting and lethal as a death-cap mushroom: I should have let him labor till he dropped.

  She shook her head violently. If she blamed him for thinking only of himself, how could she let herself do the same? By all the logic Brivibas had so carefully taught her, she couldn’t. And once in the open, the thought sickened her. However much she wanted it to, though, it would not go away.

  When she had to go out in the streets of Oyngestun, she held her own head high. That stiff, straight carriage--and the trousers she wore, still stubbornly clinging to Kaunian styles--drew howls and leers from the Algarvian soldiers who passed through the village these days, marching west toward the fight with Unker-lant down roads her grandfather had helped pave. The men of the small local garrison, though, stopped bothering her. She wished she could be happy about that, but she understood why all too well: they knew she was an officer’s plaything, and so not for the likes of common soldiers.

  Only little by little did she notice that the Kaunians of Oyngestun were slower to curse her or turn their backs on her than they had been the summer before. When she did notice, she scratched her head. Then all she’d done was eat some of the food Major Spinello lavished on her grandfather and her in the hope of getting Brivibas to say how happy he was with Algarvian rule. Now she was indeed Spinello’s plaything, was the harlot she’d been accused of being then. The villagers should have hated her more than ever.

  She got part of the answer one day from Tamulis the apothecary. Brivibas had sent her forth because he was down with a headache--he seemed to come down with headaches ever more often these days--and they had no powders in the house. Handing her a packet, the apothecary remarked, “I’m cursed if I think the old buzzard is worth it.”

  “What? Headache powders?” Vanai shrugged. “We can afford them--and, except for food, there’s not much to spend silver on these days.”

  Tamulis looked at her. After a moment, he said, “I was not talking about headache powders.”

  Vanai felt the flush climb from her throat to her hairline. She couldn’t even say she didn’t know what he was talking about. She did. Oh, she did. She looked down at the dusty slates of the floor. “He is my grandfather,” she whispered.

  “By all the signs I’ve seen, that’s his good fortune and none of yours,” the apothecary said, his voice rough.

  Tears filled Vanai’s eyes. To her mortification, they began dripping down her cheeks. She was powerless to stop them. She’d spent so long and put so much effort into inuring herself to the villagers’ scorn, sympathy struck her with double force. “I’d better go,” she said thickly.

  “Here, lass--wait,” Tamulis said. Blurrily, she saw him holding out a square of cloth to her. “Dry your eyes.”

  She obeyed, though she didn’t think it would help. Her eyes would still be red and swollen, her face blotchy. When she handed the cloth back, she said, “These days, we all do what we have to do to get through.”

  Tamulis grunted. “You do more for that long-winded old foof than he would ever do for you.”

  Vanai had a vision of a statuesque, brassy-haired Algarvian noblewoman demanding that Brivibas--whose own blond hair was heavily streaked with silver--make love to her to keep his granddaughter out of a labor gang. She held that vision in her mind for a couple of seconds. . . but for no more than a couple of seconds, because after that she exploded into laughter almost as involuntary as her tears had been. Try as she would, she couldn’t imagine an Algarvian noblewoman with such peculiar tastes.

  “And what’s so funny now?” Tamulis asked.

  Somehow, explaining to the apothecary why she’d laughed would have embarrassed Vanai more than having the whole village know Major Spinello spread her thighs whenever the fancy struck him. Maybe it was that she couldn’t do anything about Spinello, not if she wanted Brivibas to stay safe in Oyngestun. B
ut maybe, too, it was that explaining would have meant admitting she’d had a bawdy thought of her own. She took the headache powders and left in a hurry.

  “What kept you?” Brivibas demanded peevishly when she gave him the powders. “My head feels as if it were on the point of falling off.”

  “I brought them to you as quickly as I could, my grandfather,” Vanai answered. “I am sorry you are in pain.” She kept her voice soft and deferential. She’d been doing that around Brivibas for as long as she could remember. It was harder now than it had been. She sometimes felt he ought to keep his voice soft and deferential around her, considering who owed whom what at the moment.

  She shook her head. Brivibas had been father and mother both to her since she was no more than a toddler. All she was doing when she lay still for Spinello or sank to her knees in front of him was paying back a small part of that debt. So she told herself, over and over again.

  And then Brivibas said, “Part of my pain, I have no doubt, comes from my grief and sorrow at your fall from the proper standards of Kaunian womanhood.”

  Had he said, at what you are enduring for my sake, everything would have been well. But that was not how he measured things. To him, the standards were more important than the reason for which they were broken. Vanai said, “I can meet your expectations, my grandfather, or I can keep you alive. My apologies, but I do not seem to be able to do both at once.” She turned on her heel and walked away without giving him a chance to reply.

  They did not speak to each other for the next several days.

  They might have healed the rift sooner, but Major Spinello chose that afternoon to pay Vanai a visit. Brivibas retreated to his study and slammed the door. Spinello laughed. “The old fool does not know when he is well off,” he said. As if to declare the rest of the house his to do with as he chose, he took Vanai on the divan in the parlor, under the eyes of the ancient statuettes and reliefs displayed there.

  Afterwards, sated, he ran his hand along her flank. She wanted to get up, to wash away the feel of his skin slick against hers, but his weight still pinned her to the rather scratchy fabric of the divan. With a wriggle and a twist, she let her exasperation at that show. She’d seen he didn’t mind, or not too much.

  This time, though, he didn’t let her go free right away. Looking down at her face from a distance of about six inches, he said. “You were wise to yield yourself to me. The whole of Derlavai is yielding itself to Algarve.”

  All Vanai said, rather faintly, was, “You’re squashing me.”

  Spinello took more of his weight on his elbows and knees. He stayed atop her, though, his legs between hers, imprisoning her. “Forthweg is ours,” he said. “Sibiu is ours. Valmiera is ours. Jelgava is ours. And Unkerlant crumbles. Like a child’s sand castle when the tide rolls over it, Unkerlant crumbles.”

  Boasting of his kingdom’s conquests excited him; she felt him stir against her inner thigh. He bent his head to her breast. She realized he was going to have a second round. With a small sigh, she looked up at the rough plaster of the ceiling till he finished.

  As he got back into his kilt and tunic, he went on, “The war is as good as over. You need have no doubt of that. Our time, the Algarvian time, is come at last, the time of which our forefathers dreamt even in the days when they dwelt in the forests of the distant south.”

  Vanai only shrugged. What seemed a golden dream to Spinello was her nightmare brought to life. She shuddered to think of Algarvians free to torment Kauni-ans for the next hundred years. She also shuddered to think of Spinello free to come back here tomorrow or the next day or a week from now to make her do whatever he wanted.

  She could do nothing about Spinello. She could do nothing about the war. As the Algarvian major had boasted that his kingdom’s armies were overwhelming the Unkerlanters, so the war had overwhelmed her.

  Spinello chucked her under the chin--one more liberty she had to let him take. “Until I see you again,” he said with a bow, as if he imagined she might want to see him again. “And do give my best regards to your ever so learned grandfather.” Out he went laughing and whistling.

  He was happy. Why not? He’d satisfied himself, and Algarve’s armies stood everywhere triumphant. Vanai, despised by the large Forthwegian majority in her own kingdom, despised even more by its conquerors, went off to get a rag and a pitcher and to do her best to scrub the memory of his touch from her body. She despised herself most of all.

  Marshal Rathar had come down into the south to see with his own eyes how the Algarvians were making such headway against the Unkerlanter armies there. He had gone to the north, to the border with Zuwayza, to take charge of the fight in the desert when it was going badly. That had been an embarrassment for Unkerlant. If this fight went badly, it would be a catastrophe.

  His first lesson was very nearly his last. He had just got out of his ley-line caravan car in the medium-sized town of Wirdum, a good twenty miles behind the battle line, when flight after flight of Algarvian dragons appeared overhead. By the time they got done dropping eggs, the local depot was burning. So were the baron’s castle and much of the center of town.

  He didn’t realize he was bleeding till someone offered him a sticking plaster for the cut on his cheek. He declined with a shrug: “I thank you, but no. I don’t want the soldiers to think I hurt myself shaving.” The joke would have been better if he hadn’t had to say it three times, each louder than the one before, till the fellow with the plaster finally got it. The rain of eggs from the sky had stunned everyone’s ears.

  Strong, hook-nosed face set in a frown, he rode forward toward General Ortwin’s headquarters. That was no easy trip, either. The Algarvians had already given the roads hereabouts the same sort of pasting Wirdum had just taken. Rathar s horse had to pick its way through the fields to get around the craters in the roadway. Soldiers and horses and unicorns and a few behemoths lay sprawled in death; the stink of rotting meat that rose from them was very strong. Flies rose from them, too, in great humming, buzzing clouds. Rathar’s horse flicked its tail this way and that; the marshal swatted and fumed.

  Turning to the soldier guiding him to General Ortwin, he demanded, “Where are our own dragons? We need to pay the enemy in his own coin.”

  “We didn’t have as many to start with as the cursed redheads did,” the man answered. “The ones we did have are mostly dead by now.”

  Closer to the line of battle, egg-tossers concealed from the air with nets hurled destruction back at King Mezentio’s men. Rathar grunted in some satisfaction when he saw that. “The Algarvians aren’t having it all their own way then,” he said.

  “Oh, no, my lord Marshal,” his escort replied. “They pay a price for every mile they move forward.”

  “They’ve already moved too many miles forward,” Rathar said, “and the price they’ve paid hasn’t been nearly high enough.” The soldier riding with him grimaced and then, with obvious reluctance, nodded.

  After what seemed far too long, the marshal reached the tent from which

  General Ortwin was conducting his defense. Ortwin, who was very bald on top

  but, as if to compensate, had tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears and nos-

  ‘ trils, shouted into a crystal: “Bring that regiment forward, curse you! If we don’t hold the line of the river, we’ll have to fall back past Wirdum, and King Swemmel will pitch a fit.” He glanced up and saw Rathar. In a voice full of defiance, he said, “If you want to haul me away for lese majesty, my lord Marshal, here’s your chance.”

  “I want to halt the Algarvians,” Rathar said. “That’s the only thing I want, and I’m not fussy about how I do it.”

  Ortwin snorted, which made his nose hairs quiver like grass in the breeze. “Why aren’t you shorter by a head?” he asked with what sounded like genuine curiosity. “Everybody thought you were going to be, this past fall.”

  Rathar shrugged. “His Majesty believes I do not want to be king, I think. Powers above know it’s a true be
lief. But I came here to escape the court, not to gossip of it.” He strode forward. “Show me how you are doing.”

  “None too bloody well,” Ortwin answered, which would have served as commentary for the entire Unkerlanter fight against Algarve. “When you set out, we still had a decent force on the east side of the Klagen. This morning, though, the cursed Algarvians threw us back over the river, and powers below eat me if I see how we’re going to keep them from crossing.” He pointed to the map to show what he meant.

  “Why didn’t you reinforce your men on the east side?” Rathar asked.

  “My lord Marshal, what do you think I tried to do?” Ortwin retorted. “I haven’t got a fancy hat with a feather in it like an Algarvian general, but I’m not stupid--not too stupid, anyhow. I tried. I couldn’t. Their dragons kept dropping eggs on the fords of the Klagen, and their behemoths thundered right through the line our men put up.”

  “Where were our behemoths for a counterattack?” Rather inquired.

  “Spread too thin to do much,” Ortwin told him. “They bunched theirs, and they broke through with them.”

  Rather exhaled angrily. “Shouldn’t that have given you a hint, General? We’re going to have to learn to fight like the Algarvians if we intend to throw them back.”

  Ortwin said, “My lord Marshal, I didn’t have enough of the beasts to make any great counterattack with them anyhow.” He held up a hand whose back was gnarled with veins like old tree roots. “And before you ask why I didn’t get some from the north or the south, the redheads are driving back our armies there, too, and no general has enough for himself, let alone to spare any for his neighbors.”

  “That is not good,” Rathar said, an understatement if ever there was one. “We must be able to concentrate our behemoths, as the Algarvians are doing, or else they will go right on smashing through us.”

  “You are the marshal of Unkerlant,” Ortwin said. “If anyone can make it so, you are the man.” He cocked his head to one side. “Listen to the way the eggs are falling. Sure as sure, Mezentio’s men are trying to get over the Klagen.” Rathar cocked his head to one side, too. Ortwin was right. Most of the bursts came from the southeast, where the Unkerlanters were fighting to hold the line of the river. One of the crystallomancers turned and spoke urgently to the general.