Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “Aye, they are still too close to Cottbus,” the king agreed. “They were too close the instant they crossed our border. That is why we have to hammer them hard all along the line, to drive them from our kingdom.”

  Rathar chose his words with great care: “Hammering them all along the line may not be--I do not think it is--the best way to beat them back.”

  “Say on.” Suspicion gleamed in Swemmel’s dark eyes. Had he not had those eyes and dark hair, he would have looked more like an Algarvian than an Unkerlanter. But in his ability to smell plots whether they were there or not, he was very much a man of his kingdom. And like every king of Unkerlant since its earliest days, he didn’t fancy contradiction.

  Knowing that, Marshal Rathar kept on speaking carefully: “Look how the Algarvians attacked us, your Majesty. They didn’t just swarm across the border from south to north.”

  “No?” Swemmel growled. “Then why does the fighting run all the way from the icy Narrow Sea up to the desert the treacherous Zuwayzin infest?”

  Rathar vividly remembered the sorts of things King Swemmel did to those who displeased him. But more than any other courtier who served Swemmel, he also remembered what Unkerlant needed. He spoke more frankly to the king than did anyone else in the palace. One day, that would probably cost him his head. Meanwhile ... “Don’t look only at what the Algarvians did, your Majesty. Look at how they did it.”

  “Vile, treacherous dogs,” Swemmel muttered. “Traitors everywhere. They will pay. How diey will pay! How everyone will pay!”

  Pretending not to hear, Rathar went on, “They used behemoths and dragons massed together to tear holes in our lines, then met behind the front and cleaned out the pockets they made. If they’d attacked all along the line, they wouldn’t have been able to find or make so many weak places.”

  “And you want us to imitate them.” By King Swemmel’s tone, he wanted to do anything but.

  “If we aim to beat them back, we’d better,” Rathar said. “Whatever else they are, man for man they’re the best warriors in Derlavai.”

  Whatever else they are. The Algarvians had also turned out to be the most accomplished murderers in Derlavai. They wouldn’t have come so far so fast without their murders, either. That sickened Rathar. Swemmel hadn’t been shy about imitating them there--not a bit. That sickened his marshal, too.

  “Are they?” Swemmel said. “We doubt it. If they were, how could our armies have beaten them back?” He sniffed contemptuously.

  “Because we have more men than they do. Because we put snowshoes on our behemoths, where they didn’t think of that. Because we had the sense to give our soldiers white smocks. Because we understand winter better than they do.” Rathar ticked off the points on his fingers one by one. He went on, “But you must recall, your Majesty, they’re learning, too. Unless we can hurt them badly while they’re still off balance, our job gets harder.”

  He wished King Swemmel would trust him to command Unkerlant’s armies and would stay out of his way. While he was at it, he wished for the moon. He had about as much chance of getting one as the other. Swemmel stayed strong not least because he allowed no subjects too much strength. Rathar was, without a doubt, the second most powerful man in Unkerlant. To those looking up, that made him great and mighty. But if the king crooked a finger, the kingdom would have a new marshal the next instant. Rathar understood that all too well.

  “Oh, we want to hurt them, too.” Swemmel’s voice was a low, hungry croon. “We want to see their armies fall apart and fall to ruin. We want to see Algarvian soldiers frozen in the snow. We want to see our borders restored before spring comes.”

  “Unless they fall to pieces, I don’t think we can do so much,” Rathar warned. Because Swemmel could get anything he wanted in the palace just by crooking his finger, he too often thought he could do the same in the wider world. His inspectors and impressers made him all-powerful in those parts of the kingdom he still ruled. King Mezentio’s men, though, put up a stiffer fight than did Unkerlanter peasants. Swemmel needed to grasp that.

  He looked petulant. “Why do we have armies, if we cannot get the best use from them?” he demanded.

  “Your Majesty, you are getting the best use from them,” Rathar answered. “If you expect more than men and beasts can give, you are doomed to disappointment.”

  “We are always doomed to disappointment.” Swemmel wasn’t deaf to the bittersweet songs self-pity sang. “Even our own twin betrayed us. But we had revenge on Kyot--aye, we did.”

  King Guntram, Swemmel and Kyot’s father, had died just after the end of the Six Years’ War. Neither twin would admit he was the younger, and the other thus the rightful heir. The Six Years’ War had cost Unkerlant a dreadful price. But the Twinkings War that followed made its toll seem light by comparison. In the end, Swemmel had boiled Kyot alive.

  Coming back to the here-and-now, the king said, “Very well, Marshal. If you think we must fight like the Algarvians, fight like the Algarvians we shall. You have our leave to make it so. But our arms had best meet with success, or you will be judged for your failures.” Robes flapping behind him, he swept out of Rathar’s office.

  Momentarily alone, the marshal allowed himself the luxury of a long, loud sigh of relief. He’d just finished it when his adjutant came into the office. Major Merovec’s strong-boned face bore an anxious expression, as any officer’s might have after a visit from the king.

  “We go on, Major,” Rathar said, understanding him completely.

  “Powers above be praised,” Merovec said, and said no more. Suddenly, he looked anxious in a different way, as if realizing even that little might have been too much. Only Rathar had heard him, but the comment gave the marshal a hold on him he hadn’t had before. Such was life in the Unkerlanter royal palace.

  “His Majesty wants us to keep pressing the Algarvians hard,” Rathar said. “He is not the only one who wants that, of course. The discussion was about the means, not the end.”

  “And?” Major Merovec asked. He knew as well as Rathar that sometimes Swemmel would give orders and would insist they be obeyed. Unkerlant had had its share of disasters over the years because of that.

  “And we are to continue as we have been doing,” Marshal Rathar replied. Merovec didn’t let out a noisy sigh of relief, but the urge to do so was written all over his face.

  “Any more word out of Kuusamo?” Rathar asked, glad to talk about anything, even bad news, that had nothing to do with Swemmel.

  “Two princes dead, they say, and half the capital wrecked,” Merovec told him. “I wonder how many Kaunians the redheads had to kill to bring that off. Powers above be praised they didn’t try to do it to Cottbus.”

  “No promise they won’t,” Rathar said, and his adjutant, looking sour, nodded. The marshal of Unkerlant went on, “Of course, when they’re fighting us, they have to worry about our soldiers. There aren’t any Kuusaman soldiers in the fight yet, not to speak of.”

  “Aye, though I wish there were.” Merovec sounded sour, too. “After this, it’ll take longer for the Kuusamans to get into the fight, too.”

  “You’re likely right,” Rathar said. “But they’re liable to fight harder once they are finally in. Now they know what sort of foe they’re up against. I hope Mezentio’s men don’t decide to do the same to Setubal. That would hurt us.”

  “Aye, Lagoas truly is in the fight, even if it’s only in the land of the Ice People,” Merovec said.

  “And on the sea,” Rathar added. His adjutant grunted dismissively. ““We don’t pay the sea enough attention,” Rathar insisted. “We didn’t start worrying about losing Glogau, up in the north, till almost too late, but where would we be without it? In a cursed mess that’s where.”

  “That’s so.” Merovec’s admission was grudging but real. “Still and all, though, you win wars or you lose them on land.”

  “I think so,” Rathar said. “If you asked Mezentio’s marshals, odds are they’d think so, too. But if you asked in S
ibiu or Lagoas or Kuusamo, you’d hear some different answers.”

  “Foreigners,” Merovec muttered under his breath. Far and away the largest kingdom on Derlavai, Unkerlant was and always had been to some degree a world unto itself. Like Rathar’s adjutant, a lot of Unkerlanters had little use for anyone from outside that world.

  But the Algarvians had stormed into it and were doing their best to tear it to pieces--and their best had proved terribly, terrifyingly, good. “His Majesty hopes we can win the war this winter,” he said, wanting to learn what Merovec thought of that.

  As a marshal’s chief aide, Merovec was at least as much a political animal, a courtier, as he was a soldier. Whatever he thought, he wasn’t about to show much of it. All he said was, “I hope his Majesty is right.”

  Rathar sighed. He hoped King Swemmel was right, too, but he wouldn’t have bet a broken tunic toggle on it. Sighing again, he said, “Well, we’ll just have to do our best to make sure he is right.”

  “Aye, so we will.” Merovec could agree with that, and he did, enthusiastically.

  “First things first.” Rathar started to pace, then stopped in his tracks: what was he doing but imitating the king? He needed a moment to recover his caravan of thought: “We have to push the redheads as far back from Cottbus as we can. That will make it harder for them to do to us what they did to Kuusamo. And we have to keep the corridor to Glogau open, and we have to take back as much of the Duchy of Grelz as we can. We have to do that if we intend to keep eating next year, anyhow.”

  “All true,” Major Merovec said. Then, thinking like a political animal, he added, “The more of Grelz we take back, the bigger the black eye we give Mezentio and his puppet king, too.”

  “That’s so,” Rathar agreed. “He could have hurt us much more if he’d named one of the local nobles King of Grelz instead of his own cousin. The peasants won’t want to do anything for an Algarvian with a fancy crown on his noggin.”

  After the Twinkings War, after Swemmel’s years of harsh rule, he’d feared the peasants and townsfolk of Unkerlant would welcome the Algarvians as liberators.

  Some had. More would have, he suspected, had the redheads not made it so very plain they came as conquerors.

  “If the foe makes mistakes, we had better take advantage of them,” he said. “He hasn’t made enough, curse him. And we’ve made too many of our own.”

  No one else at Swemmel’s court would have said such a thing. Merovec looked horrified that Rathar had. “Be careful, lord Marshal,” he said. “If word of that got back to the king, either he would blame you for what goes wrong or he would think you were blaming him.”

  Either of those, from Rathar’s point of view, would be equally disastrous. Nodding brusquely to acknowledge the point, the marshal of Unkerlant studied the map. An attack into Grelz was already underway. He examined the disposition of his forces. He could also attack to the northeast of Cottbus, which would keep the Algarvians from shifting troops to the south. Nodding again, he began giving orders.

  Rank, or at least some rank, had finally caught up with Leudast. He was, at last, officially a sergeant. He was also commanding a company: a handful of veterans like himself, fleshed out with recruits who no longer deserved to be called fresh-faced--a few days in the line and they were as grimy and disreputable-looking as anybody else.

  He wondered how many other sergeants in King Swemmel’s army were commanding companies. A lot of them, or else he was a black Zuwayzi in disguise. He also wondered when the extra pay that went with his new rank would start catching up with him. He didn’t intend to hold his breath.

  Thinking about money made him laugh, anyhow. What could he do with it, up here at the front, but gamble? He couldn’t buy much--there wasn’t much to buy. And he wouldn’t hold his breath waiting for leave, either. Every man who could carry a stick was in the line these days, or so it seemed.

  But, for the first time in the fight against Algarve, the Unkerlanter armies were moving forward. Leudast was almost inclined to cheer every time snow or freezing rain came pelting down, even if he had to endure them out in the open. He knew Marshal Winter had done as much to stop the redheads as Marshal Rathar had.

  Somewhere not far away, eggs began bursting. The Algarvians holed up in the village northeast of the trench in which he huddled weren’t about to give up without a fight. They had plenty of egg-tossers and, no doubt, plenty of stubborn soldiers, too. A wounded man started screaming not far away. Leudast clicked his tongue between his teeth. The Algarvians might be retreating, but they weren’t making life easy for their foes.

  Captain Hawart came up to Leudast, leaving tracks behind him in the snow. Hawart had started out commanding the company Leudast now led. These days, the captain was in charge of a brigade’s worth of men. He hadn’t been promoted at all and was doing a senior officer’s work on a junior officer’s pay.

  He’d also grown forgetful like a senior officer, for he called, “A good day to you, Magnulf.”

  “Magnulf’s dead,” Leudast said. Had he been looking out of the hole he’d shared with his sergeant when the egg burst in front of it, he would have been the one who didn’t come out. Luck, he thought. Nothing but luck. “I’m Leudast.”

  “Well, so you are.” Hawart took off his fur hat and whacked himself in the side of the head. “And I’m Marvefa, the fairy who makes new leaves grow every spring.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit, sir--you look just like her,” Leudast said, and Captain Hawart rocked back on his heels and laughed. He was a pretty good officer, and didn’t slip very often. Leudast went on, “What now?”

  Hawart pointed ahead, toward the village from which the Algarvians were still tossing occasional eggs. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to throw them out of that Midlum place,” he answered. “We’re supposed to have behemoths coming up to give us a hand, but we’ll take a whack at it whether they do or not.”

  “Aye, sir,” Leudast said resignedly, and then, because he couldn’t help himself, “If they don’t show up, we’re going to leave a lot of dead men in the snow in front of Midlum.”

  “I know.” Captain Hawart sounded resigned, too. “But those are the orders I got, so that’s what I’m going to do. Even if we get slaughtered, we help the kingdom.”

  “Huzzah,” Leudast said in tones that sounded like anything but celebration.

  More often than not, Hawart would have laughed again and agreed with him. Today, the captain said, “Like it or not, it’s true. We’re doing our best to shove our way back into Grelz. This attack--and we’re just part of it--is supposed to keep the Algarvians from moving reinforcements down there.”

  “All right, sir,” Leudast said. “Once I’m dead, I’m sure I’ll be glad to know it was for some good reason.”

  “Probably because I hit you over the head with a rock.” But Captain Hawart was laughing again. He slapped Leudast on the back. “Have your men ready. We move before sunup, with the behemoths or without “em.”

  “Aye, Captain.” Leudast didn’t expect the behemoths. The whole course of the war had taught him not to expect them. There were rarely enough to go around; more stretches of line needed the great beasts than could have them. He got his company ready to attack Midlum without them. For once, he was glad he had only a handful of veterans. The new troops would go forward without knowing how unlikely they were ever to get into the village.

  And then, in the middle up the chilly night, the behemoths did come up to the front, chainmail clinking below the heavy blankets that helped their shaggy fur keep them warm. Starlight glittered off their long, sharp, iron-shod horns. Thanks to the great snowshoes attached to their feet, they had little trouble making their way over the drifts.

  Real hope--a strange feeling--began to rise in Leudast. “We’re going to do this,” he told his men. “We’re going to kick the redheads out of that village, we’re going to chase them across the fields, and we’re going to slaughter them. This is what they bought for coming into Unkerlant
and trying to take away our homes. Now they’ll pay full price--every last copper.”

  His own home village, not too far from what had been Unkerlant’s border with Forthweg, lay far to the east of where he squatted now. He wondered how his kinsfolk fared under Algarvian occupation. The only thing he could do to help them was hurt Mezentio’s men as much as he could.

  In the darkness, his men’s heads bobbed up and down. They listened earnestly. Most of them lacked the experience to know what they were getting into. After the coming day’s fighting, though, they’d be veterans, too--the ones who wouldn’t be corpses strewn across the frozen ground.

  Almost on time, Unkerlanter egg-tossers started pounding Midlum. “Get ready, boys,” Leudast said. “It won’t be long now.” He peered across the fields toward the bursts of sorcerous energy ahead. Now the Algarvians would know something was coming their way. With luck, the bursting eggs would keep them from doing too much about it. With luck . . .

  They were alert, there in Midlum. Leudast had never known the Algarvians when they weren’t alert. He wished this might be one of those times, but it wasn’t. Eggs began flying back toward his own position. Fortunately, the Algarvians were tossing a little long, so they didn’t hurt too badly the men gathered to attack them.

  Whistles blew, all along the Unkerlanter line: officers ordering their men forward. Leudast was doing an officer’s job, but he didn’t have the formal rank, so he didn’t have a whistle, either. A shout had to do: “Let’s go!”

  The behemoths went forward, too. They paused outside of Midlum. Some, the ones that mounted egg-tossers on their backs, joined in pounding the village and the Algarvians inside. Others sent beams from their heavy sticks against the houses to the east. Fires began to burn, lighting up the eastern sky as if dawn were coming too soon.