Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  Kun shook his head. “The spell detects an enemy’s motion toward us, and nothing else. I wish I knew more.”

  I wish you knew more, too, and not just about magic, Istvan thought. But Kun, this time, had done nothing to deserve an insult. “You tried your best,” Istvan said, “and we know more than we did, even if we don’t know as much as we’d like. Come on, lads--forward again. If we find the foe by falling over him, then we do, that’s all.”

  “How do we even know we’re going in the right direction?” Szonyi asked. “With all this snow flying every which way, who can say where east is?”

  “If we keep the wind almost at our backs, we won’t go too far wrong,” Istvan answered, but he didn’t sound happy about the reply even to himself. Nothing easier than for the wind to shift. He turned to Kun. “Do you know any spells for finding out which way we’re headed?”

  “There is one, quite a good one, but it depends on a bit of lodestone, and I have none,” the mage’s apprentice answered regretfully.

  “Anyone have any lodestone?” Istvan asked. No one admitted to it. He wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t seen lodestone more than a couple of times in his life, both when traveling mountebanks did astonishing things with it. He turned back to Kun. “Any other ways?”

  “I’m sure there are, Sergeant, but I don’t know how to use them,” Kun replied.

  Istvan sighed through the muffler over his mouth. “All right, then. We’ll just have to keep on and see what happens. Stars be praised, we’re through the worst of the really rugged country. Not so much risk of blowing off a cliff here.”

  “If we can hold where we are till spring, we’ll be in a place where we can stab deep into Unkerlant’s vitals,” Kun said.

  “I thought you were a mage’s apprentice, not a news-sheet scribbler’s,” Istvan said. Kun was too swaddled in fur and fabric for Istvan to see if he changed expression, but he turned away and kept quiet for a while.

  And then, up ahead, someone called a challenge--in Unkerlanter. Istvan knew no more than a handful of words of the language. Neither did anyone else in the squad. The challenge came again, sharper and more peremptory. “What do we do, Sergeant?” somebody asked.

  “Get down, you fools!” Istvan shouted, suiting action to word. As he thumped down into the snow himself, he added, “Balogh, back to the rest of the company. Tell ‘em we’ve found the enemy!”

  Actually, the Unkerlanters had found them. Beams hissed overhead, blasting snowflakes to steam. Istvan worried about them less than he would have in clearer weather; snow attenuated their force even faster than rain did. But how large an Unkerlanter position lay ahead there, shielded by the blizzard? If he’d uncovered a regiment of King Swemmel’s soldiers, they’d wipe out his squad as casually as he swatted a fly ... provided they knew he had only a squad.

  He blazed at the Unkerlanters a couple of times, not so much in the hope of hurting them as to make them believe he led a good-sized force. “Kun!” he hissed. “Hey, Kun! You all right?”

  “Aye, for the time being,” the mage’s apprentice answered from over to his left.

  “Can you make the Unkerlanters think we’ve got more men here than we really do?” Istvan asked.

  For a moment, he didn’t think the mage’s apprentice heard him. Then a voice--Kun’s voice, he realized, but bigger and deeper and more resonant than it had any business being--answered, “Aye, Colonel!” Istvan looked around to see where so exalted a figure as a colonel might have sprung from, but then started to laugh. Kun was doing his best to follow orders.

  And his best turned out to be better than Istvan had expected. Other voices came out of the snow from different directions: nonexistent captains positioning equally nonexistent companies for a charge. Mythical sergeants who sounded much fiercer than Istvan ever had gave their mythical squads orders.

  Off to the east, the Unkerlanters started shouting, nerving themselves for an attack: “Urra! Urra! Urra!” Istvan’s shiver had nothing to do with the snow on which he lay. From the sound of those shouts, he hadn’t stumbled over a regiment: That had to be at least a brigade. He wished Kun had given him an imaginary brigade of his own. He would have enjoyed being a brigadier, even an imaginary one, for the few brief moments till the Unkerlanters overran him.

  Amid the calls and the shouts, Kun spoke in his own voice: “What next, Sergeant? This can’t last--they’re bound to test it, all the men they have over there.”

  He was right, curse him. Balogh must have got lost, or else Captain Tivadar would have brought up real reinforcements. But Istvan, having begun the game, did not want to give it up. He got to his feet, advanced on the Unkerlanter position, and shouted a couple of the Unkerlanter phrases he knew: “You surrender! Hands high!”

  King Swemmel’s men didn’t blaze him down out of hand. The shouts of “Urra! Urra!” died away. Only the wind spoke, the wind and Kun’s conjured-up officers and sergeants. And then, dejectedly, an Unkerlanter shouted back: “We surrender!”

  Istvan gaped. He’d known how colossal a bluff he was running and was astonished past words that the Unkerlanters had fallen for it. If he showed that, though, everything was ruined. “Hands high!” he yelled again, not caring if he rasped his throat raw so long as he made his voice pierce the gale.

  He aimed his stick eastward. He could do no more than that; the snow was blowing too hard to let him find a sure target. Out of that swirling snow came Unkerlanters in long, thick wool tunics with leggings beneath and long, hooded cloaks over them. They carried no weapons; their hands were above their heads. Catching sight of Istvan, the first one in the line repeated, “We surrender.”

  Gesturing with his stick, Istvan sent them back toward his comrades. As they glumly tramped past him, he counted them. Only twenty men were marching into captivity. Had more stayed behind or . .. ? Sudden suspicion flowered in him. “Kun!” he shouted. “You’ve got to have more of their language than I do.”

  “Maybe, Sergeant, though I haven’t got much,” the mage’s apprentice answered, sounding more respectful than he usually did.

  “Tell ‘em you’re a first-rank mage who’ll know if they lie, then ask ‘em if all those cursed ‘ Urrafs were magic to scare us off,” Istvan said.

  “I’ll try.” Kun sounded doubtful, but he spoke to the Unkerlanters. Istvan listened to gutturals going back and forth and watched gestures till Kun returned to Gyongyosian: “That’s what they were doing, all right. They knew the jig was up when they heard our regiment forming for the attack.”

  Istvan laughed till tears came. The tears promptly started freezing his eyelashes together. He swiped at his face with his mittens. Then he heard shouts from the west: Captain Tivadar at last, bringing reinforcements against the Unkerlanter host. . . the Unkerlanter host Istvan had just captured. He made his way over to Tivadar. Saluting, he said, “Sir, the enemy position is ours,” and laughed again at the flabbergasted expression on his company commander’s face.

  No one came back from the west. That, to Vanai, was the central fact to life in Oyngestun these days. No one came back. No one sent money from the wages the Algarvians had promised to pay. No one sent so much as a scrawled note. That continuing, echoing silence made the worst rumors easier and easier to believe as day followed day.

  One chilly afternoon, Vanai went to the apothecary’s to get a decoction of willow bark for her grandfather, who’d come down with the grippe. As Tamulis handed her the small jar of green glass, he remarked, not quite out of the blue, “If you hear the Algarvian constables are on their way here again, you’d be smart to take to the woods before they start yelling, ‘Kaunians, come forth!’ “

  “Do you think so?” Vanai asked, and Tamulis nodded vigorously. Then she asked another question: “Is that what you intend to do?”

  “Aye, I expect I will,” the apothecary answered. “I’m no woodsman--anyone who know me knows that. I don’t know whether I’d starve before I froze or the other way round. But whatever happens, it has to be better
than getting into one of those caravan cars bound for Unkerlant.”

  Vanai bit her lip. “You may be right. And thank you for telling me that. You’ve been as kind as... as anyone in Oyngestun.” It wasn’t enormous praise, but she could give it without feeling like a hypocrite.

  “Life’s hard,” Tamulis said gruffly. “Life’s hard for everybody, and especially for everybody with yellow hair. Go on, get out of here. I hope your grandfather feels better, the old fool. If he gets well, maybe you won’t have to come in here so often and listen to me complain.”

  “It’s not as if there’s nothing to complain about.” Vanai bobbed her head and then turned and went out the door.

  A couple of Forthwegian men two or three years older than she leaned against the wall of the apothecary’s shop. Vanai wasn’t too surprised to see them in the Kaunian part of Oyngestun; Tamulis knew three times as much as his Forthwegian counterpart, and had plenty of stocky, swarthy, dark-haired customers.

  But one of the Forthwegians pointed at her and said, “So long, blondy!” He drew a thumb across his throat and made horrible gagging, gargling noises. While he was laughing, the other fellow grabbed his crotch and said, “Here, sweetheart. My meat’s got more flavor than an Algarvian sausage any day.”

  That the earth did not swallow them proved the powers above were deaf. Vanai stalked past them, pretending they didn’t exist. She’d had plenty of practice doing that with both Forthwegians and Kaunians. But now she had to hide more fear than usual. Since the Algarvians sent that shipment of Kaunians west, Oyngestun’s Forthwegians had grown bolder toward their neighbors. Why not? Would the redheads punish them for it? Not likely!

  If these two laid hands on her . . . I’ll fight, Vanai thought. I don’t have to lie there and take it, the way I did with Spinello. She chose not to dwell on what her odds would be against two men both stronger than she. To her vast relief, they did nothing worse than taunt her. After she slipped round a corner, she breathed easier.

  She passed the postman on the way home. He was a Forthwegian, too, but decent enough. “Letter for you,” he said. “Something for your granddad, too.”

  “I’ll take it to him,” Vanai said. She almost always took him whatever mail there was; these days, she made a point of getting it first. Holding up the little green bottle, she added, “He’s down with the grippe.”

  “Aye, it’s been going around; my sister and her husband have it,” the postman said. “Hope he feels better soon.” With a nod, he went on his way.

  Vanai hurried the rest of the way to the house she shared with Brivibas. Her heart sang within her. A letter for her had to be a letter from Ealstan. No one else wrote to her. She’d feared Spinello would, but he must have realized any letter he sent her would only go into the fire. Ealstan’s letters she cherished. Strange how a few minutes of fondling and grunting and thrashing could make two people open their souls to each other. She had no idea how that happened, but was ever so glad it did.

  As far as her grandfather knew, no one sent her letters. That was why she made a point of picking up the mail before Brivibas could. It wasn’t hard; even well, he usually stayed in his study, on the far side of the house from the doorway.

  But when Vanai opened the door, no letters shoved in under it lay on the entry-hall floor. She wondered if the postman had delivered them to the house next door by mistake, though he didn’t usually do things like that. Then she heard her grandfather moving about in the kitchen, and she realized she might have a problem.

  She had to go into the kitchen anyhow, to mix the bitter willow-bark decoction with something sweet to make it more palatable for Brivibas. “I greet you, my grandfather,” she said when she saw him. “I have your medicine. How are you feeling?”

  “I have been better,” he answered, his voice a rasping croak. “Aye, I have been better. I came out here to make myself a cup of herb tea, and heard that ignorant lout of a postman slide something under our door. I went to get it and found--this.” He’d taken Ealstan’s letter out of the franked envelope in which it had come.

  “You read it?” Anger pushed fear from Vanai’s mind. “You read it? You had no business doing that. Whatever Ealstan says there, it’s not meant for you. Give it to me this instant.”

  “Very well, my dearest sweet darling Vanai.” Brivibas quoted Ealstan’s greeting with savage relish. Two spots of color, from fever or outrage or both at once, burned on his cheeks. He crumpled the letter into a ball and flung it at Vanai. “As for its being none of my business, I would have to disagree. I would say, just as a guess from the style, that this is not the first such letter you’ve received.”

  “That’s not your business, either,” Vanai snapped, cursing his literary analysis. She bent and picked up the letter and unfolded it far more carefully than Brivibas had wadded it up. Why couldn’t he have stayed in bed till she got back?

  “I think it is.” His eyes glittered. “You still live under my roof. How much more shame must I endure on account of you?”

  He still thought of what Vanai did in terms of how it affected him, not in terms of what it meant to her. Her chin lifted haughtily, as if she were a noblewoman from the days of the Kaunian Empire. “I don’t propose to discuss it.”

  “It’s fortunate that we have no Zuwayzin or Kuusamans close by,” Brivibas said, “or you might seek to slake your lust with them as well.”

  Vanai threw the bottle of willow-bark decoction at his head. Rage lent her strength, but not aim. The bottle flew past and shattered against the wall behind him. “If you think I was slaking my lust with the cursed Algarvian, you’re even blinder than I thought,” she snarled. “The only reason I sucked his prong was to keep you alive, and now--” And now I’m sorry I did it was in her mind, but she burst into tears before she could say it.

  Brivibas took her words in a different direction: “And now this Forthwegian barbarian satisfies you better still, is that it?” he demanded.

  When Vanai found herself looking toward the cutlery to see which knife was longest and sharpest, she spun away with a groan and fled to her bedchamber. It was less a refuge than she might have wanted, less a refuge than it would have been a year before. Lying on the bed alone, she couldn’t help thinking of the times when she’d had to lie there with Spinello. If her grandfather thought she’d wanted to lie with the Algarvian . . . If he thought that, he had even less notion of what went on around him than she’d imagined.

  She didn’t know what she would have done had Brivibas knocked on her door then or come in without knocking. Luckily, she didn’t have to find out. Her tears--tears of fury rather than sorrow--quickly dried. She sat up and did a better job of smoothing the letter from Ealstan.

  “At least someone cares about me,” she murmured as she began to read it. It was, as her grandfather had sneeringly shown, filled with endearments, as were the ones she sent to him. But it was also filled with his doings, and those of his father and mother and sister and his cousin and uncle. She wondered if he knew how lucky he was to have a good-sized family where everyone--except, she gathered, Sidroc and Hengist--got along. Probably not. To him, that would be like water to a fish.

  I honor you for choosing to stay with your grandfather, even though it means we must be apart, Ealstan wrote. Please believe me when I say that. Please also believe me when I say I wish we could be together.

  “Oh, I wish we could, too,” Vanai whispered. For the first time, she really thought of leaving the house where she’d lived almost all her life and traveling to Gromheort. She had no idea of what she would do there, or how she would keep from starving, but the idea of being away from Brivibas glowed in her thoughts like a fire catching hold in dry grass.

  She shook her head, then wondered why she pushed the idea aside. When she was a child, she and Brivibas had fit together well enough. He did not fit her now, any more than one of the small tunics she’d worn then would. Why not go her own way, then, and leave him behind to go his?

  Because if I lea
ve him behind, he’ll die in short order. Because if I wanted him to die in short order, I never would have let Spinello have me. Because, since I did let Spinello have me, I’ve given up too much to let him die in short order. But oh!--how I wish I hadn’t!

  After a little while, grimacing, she got up and opened the door. She couldn’t even stay and sulk, not if she wanted to--or felt she should, which came closer to the actual state of affairs--nurse her grandfather back to health. She had to go fix his supper and fetch it to him. It wouldn’t be much--vegetable soup and a chunk of bread--but she didn’t trust him to be able to do it for himself.

  She’d known all along that he underestimated her. Now she discovered she’d underestimated him, too. Her nose told her as much as soon as she came out of the bedchamber: she smelled cooking soup. When she came into the kitchen, she found the pot over a low fire and a note on the table nearby.

  Brivibas’ spidery hand was as familiar to her as her own: far more familiar than Ealstan’s. My granddaughter, he wrote in a Kaunian straight out of the glory days of the empire, judging it wiser that we not impinge on each other for some little while, I have prepared my own repast, leaving enough behind to satisfy, I hope, those bodily wants of yours susceptible to satisfaction through food.

  Vanai stared in the direction of his study, where he was probably spooning up soup even now. She had to look at the note twice before she noticed the sting in its tail. “Bodily wants susceptible to food, eh?” she muttered, and the stare turned into a glare. “Why didn’t you come right out and call me a whore?”

  In the end, though, she ate the soup Brivibas had heated. She was unhappy doing it, just as, no doubt, her grandfather had been unhappy eating a great many meals she’d made. When she was finished, she washed and dried her bowl and spoon and the ladle she’d used. She went to her bedchamber and started a letter to Ealstan. That made her feel better.

  Felgilde squeezed Leofsig’s hand as they walked along the street together. “Oh, this will be fun!” she exclaimed.