Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  But she hoped. Oh, how she hoped.

  Brivibas, as usual these days, was taciturn over supper. He’d given up lecturing her and reproving her, and had no idea how to talk to her in any more nearly normal, more nearly equal way. Or maybe, she thought as she watched him spoon up the soup, he had so many nasty things he wanted to tell her, he simply couldn’t decide which one to shout out first and so swallowed all of them. However that worked, his silence suited her.

  Major Spinello did not visit her the next day. She hadn’t expected that he would; she’d come to know the rhythms of his lust better than she wanted to. Knowing them at all, for that matter, was knowing them better than she wanted to. When he stayed away the day after that, she began to hope. When he stayed away the day after that, too, her heart sang a hymn of freedom inside her.

  That made the peremptory, unmistakably Algarvian knock on the door the following morning all the more devastating. Brivibas, who had been examining one of the antiquities in the parlor, let out a disdainful sniff and retreated across the courtyard to his study. He slammed the door behind him as if taking refuge in a besieged fortress.

  He would be long since dead, were I not doing this, Vanai reminded herself. But her steps dragged even more than usual as she made her way to the door. “Took you long enough,” Spinello said. “You don’t want to keep me waiting, you know, not if you want to keep your grandfather breathing.”

  “I am here,” Vanai said dully. “Do what you will.”

  He took her back to her bedchamber and did exactly that. And then, because he hadn’t done it for longer than usual, he wanted to do it again. When he didn’t rise to the occasion quite so promptly as he’d hoped he would, Vanai had to help him. Of all the things he made her do, she despised that most of all. If I bite down hard, she thought, not for the first time--for far from the first time--the redheads will slay me and my grandfather, and the powers above only know what they’ll do to the rest of the Kaunians in Oyngestun. And so she refrained, though the temptation got stronger every time.

  At last, after what seemed like forever, Spinello gasped his way to a second completion. He preened and strutted as he got back into his kilt and tunic. “I know I’m spoiling you for every other man,” he said, meaning it as a boast.

  Vanai cast down her eyes. If Spinello wanted to think that maidenly modesty and not disgust, she would let him. “Aye, I think you are,” she murmured. If he wanted to think that agreement rather than disgust. . . again, she would let him.

  He left Brivibas’ house whistling cheerfully, the picture of sated indolence. Vanai barred the door after him. She went back to the house’s crowded bookshelves, to the text from which she’d taken the classical spell of repulsion. She’d hoped that, because it was so old, Spinello would not be warded against it. Maybe he was. Or maybe the spell, like so many from the days of the old Empire, had no real value. Either way, she wanted to throw the book into the fire or drop it down the privy.

  As she had when pleasuring Spinello, she refrained. She’d made sure she put the text back exactly where she’d got it. If it went missing, Brivibas would know and would hound her without mercy till it turned up or till she explained why it couldn’t. Or he might think Spinello had stolen it. If anything could rouse her grandfather to violence, a purloined book might.

  Spinello returned three days later--he probably needed extra rest after his unusual exertion during his previous visit--and then again two days after that. In his own way, he was nearly as regular and methodical as Brivibas. Vanai cursed the classical Kaunians under her breath, and sometimes above it. Her grandfather remained convinced his ancient ancestors had been the font of all knowledge. Maybe so, but what they’d reckoned magecraft couldn’t keep the Algarvian major out of her bed. As far as she was concerned, that made them useless--worse than useless, for she’d built up her hopes relying on their wisdom, only to see those hopes dashed.

  Two days later, Spinello came back, and then two days after that. By then, Vanai had resigned herself to the failure of her ploy. She let him do what he wanted. He did leave more quickly these days than he had at first; he’d discovered she didn’t care to listen to his tales of Algarvian triumphs in Unkerlant, and so had stopped regaling her with them. He allowed her all sorts of small courtesies, but not the larger one of deciding whether she wanted to give herself to him.

  And, after another two days, he returned once more. This time, to her surprise, he had a couple of ordinary Algarvian troopers at his back. Horror blazed through her. Was he going to give her to them as a reward for good service? If he tried to do that, Vanai would ...

  She realized she didn’t have to decide what she would do then. One of the troopers carried a crate holding four jars of wine; the other was festooned with sausage links and cradled a ham in his arms. Spinello spoke to them in Algarvian. They set the food and drink inside the front hall, then went away.

  Spinello came in and closed the door behind himself. As he was barring it, Vanai found her voice: “What’s all this?”

  “Farewell gift,” Spinello answered lightly. “My superiors, in their wisdom, have decided I am better suited to fighting the Unkerlanters than to administering a Forthwegian village. It will be boring, I expect--no antiquities, and mostly homely women--but I am the king’s to command. You will have to take your chances with the constables who take over for me. But”--he slid a hand under her tunic--”I am not gone yet.”

  Vanai let him lead her back to her bedchamber. When he had her straddle him, she did it joyfully. It was not the joy of fulfilled desire, but it was the joy of a fulfilled desire, and surprisingly close to the other--closer than she’d ever come with Spinello, of that she was certain.

  Had he wanted a second go then, she would have given it to him without much resentment, knowing it would be the last. But after she’d brought him to his peak, he caressed her for a moment, then patted her bottom to show he wanted her to let him up. She did, and he began to dress.

  “I’ll miss you, curse me if I won’t,” he said, bending down to kiss her. An eyebrow quirked. “You won’t miss me a bit, and curse me if I don’t know that, but I brought the meat and wine to give you something to remember me by.”

  “I will always remember you,” Vanai said truthfully as she got back into her own clothes. Now, perhaps, she might not remember him quite as she would have before his gift--or not to the same degree, at any rate. She might even hope he would live when he went into battle--though she might not, too.

  To her relief, he didn’t ask her anything about that. He kissed and fondled her at the doorway before going out. She closed the door and barred it. Then she stood in the entry hall for a couple of minutes, scratching her head as she stared down at the sausages. Had her spell got Spinello sent off to fight King Swemmel’s men, or was this only a coincidence? If it was only a coincidence, had some coincidences like it convinced the ancient Kaunians they had an effective cantrip?

  How could she be sure? Had she been her grandfather, she would have gone to the shelves of dusty journals to find out what historians and historical mages had written. But she was not Brivibas. Knowing how she’d got free of Spinello didn’t matter to her. Knowing that she’d got free did. There in the crowded little hallway, she began to dance.

  For once, Corporal Leudast looked at behemoths with admiration rather than dread. These behemoths belonged to his own side and were trotting into action for King Swemmel and against the Algarvian invaders. “Stomp ‘em flat!” he shouted at the Unkerlanter soldiers riding the big beasts.

  “Poor tactics, Corporal,” Captain Hawart said. “More efficient to blaze the redheads down or toss eggs onto their heads.” But having delivered that admonition, he grinned. “I hope they stomp the buggers flat, too.”

  “We’ve got fine big behemoths there to do it,” Sergeant Magnulf remarked. “I think they’re bigger than most of the ones the Algarvians breed.”

  Hawart nodded. “I think you’re right. That’s the far western strain,
bigger and fiercer than any the redheads or the Kaunians ever tamed. I wish we had more of them.” His grin faded. “I wish the size difference mattered more nowadays, too. With the weapons behemoths carry, it’s not body against body and horn against horn as often as it used to be.”

  “Maybe not, sir,” Leudast said, “but if I don’t like medium-sized Algarvian behemoths coming at me, Mezentio’s men sure won’t like great big Unkerlanter behemoths coming at them.”

  “Here’s hoping they don’t,” Hawart said. “Whatever we do, we’ve got to hold the corridor between Glogau and the rest of the kingdom. The Zuwayzin have stopped their push, but the Algarvians--” He broke off, his face grim.

  Leudast wondered if anything could stop the Algarvians. Nothing had yet, or he and his comrades--those of them left alive--wouldn’t have been pushed so far back into Unkerlant. But new recruits in rock-gray tunics kept coming out of die training camps farther west. King Mezentio’s men occupied his own village along with countless others, but Unkerlant still held even more.

  “Come on!” Captain Hawart shouted to the mix of veterans and new men making up his regiment. “Forward, and stick close to the behemoths. We need them to smash a hole in the enemy’s line, but they need us, too. If the redheads pop up out of the grass and blaze the men off those beasts, they aren’t any good to us by themselves.”

  “Algarvian tactics,” Leudast remarked.

  Sergeant Magnulf nodded. “The redheads had a long time to figure out how to put all the puzzle pieces together. We’re having to learn on the fly, and I think we’re doing a lot better than we were just after they hit us.”

  “Aye,” Leudast said. “Nothing comes cheap for them these days.” But trying to hold back the Algarvians didn’t come cheap, either. As one who’d started fighting them in central Forthweg and was still fighting them here deep inside Unkerlant, Leudast understood that better than most.

  “Forward!” Magnulf shouted, echoing Captain Hawart, and Leudast shouted, too, echoing his sergeant. And forward the Unkerlanter footsoldiers went, on the heels of their behemoths. In a way, such willingness to keep on counterattacking was surprising, considering how often such blows either came to nothing or were frittered away; Leudast remembered the fight for Pfreimd only too well. In another way, though ... A lot of the men who’d retaken Pfreimd only to have to yield it up again were by now dead or wounded. The fresh-faced young soldiers who’d replaced them didn’t realize how easily their superiors could throw their lives away for no good reason.

  They’ll find out, Leudast thought. The ones who live will find out. The ones who died would find out, too, but the knowledge would do them no good. After another couple of strides, he wondered how much good it would do the ones who lived.

  He pounded along, hunched forward at the waist to make himself as small a target as he could. Men who’d seen some fighting imitated him, and also imitated him in zigzagging frequently so as not to let any Algarvian footsoldiers grow too sure where they’d be in the next moment. Troopers newly pulled from their villages stood straight up and ran straight ahead. The ones who lived would soon learn better, and that lesson would actually do them some good.

  Bursting eggs from the behemoths’ tossers tore up the wheatfield ahead. The Algarvians were supposed to have come that far, though no one on the Unkerlanter side seemed sure of exactly where they were. That struck Leudast as inefficient. Quite a few things about the way his side was fighting the war struck him as inefficient. But mentioning them struck him as efficient only in the sense that it would be an efficient way to get himself into trouble.

  Sure as sure, a behemoth-rider threw up his arms and slid out of his seat to lie crumpled and still among stalks of wheat now going from green to gold. Leudast hadn’t seen whence the beam came. But a couple of Unkerlanters cried out “There!” and pointed to a spot in the field not far ahead of him.

  A moment later, a beam blazed past his head, so close he could feel the heat on his cheek. He threw himself flat and scrambled forward through the grain. The rich smells of fertile soil and ripening wheat reminded him the harvest would be coming soon. Were he back in his village, were this a time of peace, he would follow the horse-drawn reaper, gathering up the grain it cut down. Now he wanted to cut down that Algarvian soldier who’d come so close to reaping him.

  As he moved toward the spot where he thought the redhead hid, he tried to work out what the Algarvian would be doing. If he was a new man himself, he’d probably be running. But a veteran might well sit tight, knowing he was unlikely to escape and intent on doing all the damage he could before being hunted down and killed. The way this fellow had coolly blazed down the behemoth-rider argued that he knew what he was about.

  Never had it crossed Leudast’s mind that the redhead might come hunting him. But the stalks of wheat parted in front of him, and there was the Algarvian, waxed mustachios all awry. He shouted something in his language and swung the business end of his stick toward Leudast.

  He was smart and dangerous and very fast. But so was Leudast, and Leudast blazed first. A neat hole appeared in the redhead’s face, just below his right eye. The beam boiled his brains inside his skull; most of the back of his head blew out. He was dead before he crashed to the ground like a dropped sack of barley.

  “Powers above,” Leudast muttered. Cautiously, he got to his feet and looked around to find out what had happened in the bigger fight while he and the Algarvian carried on their own private war. The Unkerlanter behemoths and his comrades were still going forward. He too hurried ahead.

  Algarvian dragons fell out of the sky on the behemoths. But a couple of those dragons smashed to earth; the Unkerlanters manning the heavy sticks some of the behemoths carried were not caught napping. And Unkerlanter dragons, their scales painted the rock-gray of Leudast’s tunic, attacked the beasts gaudy in Algarve’s red, green, and white. The redheads hurt the troop of behemoths, but could not wreck it.

  Here and there, little fires smoldered in the wheat. Had the wind been stronger, they would have grown and spread. A couple of them, one around the burning body of a dragon, were trying to spread anyhow. Leudast skirted them and ran on. He’d seen far worse things than fields afire.

  More eggs began falling among his comrades, these not dropped from dragons but hurled by Algarvian egg-tossers behind the line. Leudast threw himself into a hole one of them had made in bursting. A moment later, after another burst close by, Sergeant Magnulf jumped into the same hole--and onto Leudast, who said, “Oof!”

  “Sorry,” Magnulf said, though he didn’t sound very sorry. Leudast wasn’t unduly put out; Magnulf worried about saving his own neck first and everything else afterwards, as any sensible soldier would have. The sergeant went on, “Stinking redheads hit back faster than you wish they would, don’t they?”

  “Aye,” Leudast said. “I wish I could say you were wrong.” He tried to look on the bright side: “We’re getting better at that ourselves, too. Our dragons gave them more than they wanted a little while ago.”

  “I know, but they do it all the stinking time,” Magnulf said. “The whoresons have more crystals than we do, and they keep on talking into them.”

  Shouts from ahead warned that the Algarvians were doing more than talking into their crystals. Leudast and Magnulf scrambled up to the edge of their hole and looked east. Behemoths and soldiers and eggs had flattened enough of the wheat to let them see troopers in tan kilts and tunics running toward them in loose order.

  Leudast laughed out loud. “They didn’t do enough talking this time. Look, Sergeant--they didn’t bring any behemoths with ‘em, and we’ve still got some of ours.”

  Magnulf’s eyes glowed. “Ha! They’ll pay for that.” Gloating anticipation filled his voice.

  Pay for it the Algarvians did. The Unkerlanter behemoths’ heavy sticks blazed them down at a range from which the redheads could not hurt the beasts or their riders. Eggs from other behemoths’ tossers burst among the Algarvians, tossing some aside like broken
dolls and making most of the rest go to earth to keep from suffering a like fate.

  “Forward!” Captain Hawart called. Leudast heaved himself out of the hole and made for the Algarvians. So did Sergeant Magnulf. Almost without noticing they were doing it, they spread apart from each other, making themselves into less inviting targets for the enemy.

  But the Algarvians were as quick to correct their own mistakes as they were to punish the Unkerlanters’. Reinforcements came to the rescue of the men the Unkerlanter attack had been on the edge of crushing, and those reinforcements included behemoths with redheads aboard. One thing Leudast had seen before was that Algarvian behemoth-riders went after their Unkerlanter counterparts the instant they spied them. So it was in this fight, too, and, with fewer behemoths backing them, King Swemmel’s footsoldiers faltered.

  Shouting King Mezentio’s name, the Algarvians came on again, hot to retake the stretch of ground the Unkerlanters had wrested from them. But a flight of dragons painted rock-gray swooped down on them, dropping eggs on their behemoths and flaming their footsoldiers. Leudast shouted himself hoarse, or rather hoarser, for the smoke in the air had left his throat raw now for quite a while.

  When he looked back over his shoulder, he was surprised to see the sun dipping toward the western horizon. The fighting had gone on all day, and he’d hardly noticed. Now he felt how worn and hungry and thirsty he was.

  Unkerlanter reinforcements came up during the night. So did a little food. Leudast had more than a little food on him; he knew supplies were liable to be erratic. During the night, the wind shifted, as it had a way of doing as summer swung toward fall. It blew from out of the south, a cool breeze with a warning of rain in it.

  Sure enough, at dawn gray clouds covered most of the sky. Eyeing them, Sergeant Magnulf said, “It’ll already be raining, I expect, down in the village I come from. Nothing wrong with that, you ask me.”