Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  The only book in the flat was a cheap, badly printed volume the previous tenant had forgotten when he moved out. At the moment, it lay on the nightstand. Vanai picked it up, sighed, and shook her head. It was a Forthwegian translation of an Algarvian historical romance called The Wicked Empire Aflame.

  Because it was the only book she had, she’d read it. It was laughably bad in any number of different ways. She had trouble deciding whether it took liberties with history or simply ignored it. All the Algarvian mercenaries were virile heroes. The men of the Kaunian Empire were cowards and villains. Their wives and daughters fairly panted to find out what the Algarvians had under their kilts--and find out they did, in great detail.

  But Vanai didn’t laugh at the romance, not any more, though she had when she first started reading. Being her grandfathers granddaughter, she saw through all the lies the writer was telling. But what would some ignorant Algarvian or Forthwegian think after reading The Wicked Empire Aflame} He’d think Kaunians were cowards and villains, that’s what, and their women sluts. He’d think they deserved the massacre so lovingly described in the last chapter.

  And if he thought that about the ancient Kaunians, what would he think about their modern descendants? Wouldn’t he be more likely to think they deserved whatever happened to them, too, than if he hadn’t read the romance?

  Vanai wondered how many copies of The Wicked Empire Aflame were floating around in Algarve and, now, in Forthweg. She wondered how many similar romances Algarvian writers had churned out and how many copies of them were floating around. She wondered what else the redheads had done to convince their own people and those they’d subjected that Kaunians weren’t quite human.

  Her mouth twisted. A lot of Forthwegians wouldn’t need much convincing about that. A lot of Algarvians probably didn’t need much convincing, either. Were things otherwise, how could they put Kaunians on caravan cars heading toward the miserable end awaiting them in the west?

  She shivered. That had nothing to do with the weather; the flat, whatever its other shortcomings, was warm enough. But she and her grandfather had come within a hair’s breadth of being herded aboard one of those caravan cars themselves. One Algarvian constable had persuaded another to pick a couple of different Kaunians from Oyngestun. They were surely dead now, while Vanai and Brivibas lived.

  “If you call this living,” Vanai muttered. She went out of the flat as seldom as she could. If the Algarvians saw her on the street, they were liable to seize her. She knew that. But staying cooped up with nothing to do had no appeal, either. The flat probably hadn’t been so clean since the week after it was built.

  Opening the shutters and looking out the window gave her some relief. It would have given her more had she been able to see anything but a narrow, winding street and, across from it, another block of flats as grimy and neglected as the one in which she was living.

  Almost all the people on the street were Forthwegian. From everything she’d heard, Eoforwic was home to a large number of Kaunians. Either most of them were hiding as she was or a lot had already been shipped away. One of those prospects was bad, the other worse.

  Three Algarvian constables strode up the street, sticks in hand. Vanai shrank back from the window. She didn’t know they were trolling for Kaunians, but she didn’t know they weren’t, either. She didn’t want to find out. The constables kept walking. Everyone who saw them scrambled out of their way. That no doubt appealed to their vanity. But if they were such heroes as their strides made them out to be, why did they always travel in groups of at least three?

  Time crawled on. A pigeon landed on the windowsill and peered in at Vanai with its beady little red eyes. She knew several recipes that dated back to the days of the Kaunian Empire for roast squab, squab seethed in honey, baked squab stuffed with mushrooms and figs. . . . Thinking about them made her hungry enough to start to open the window. At the noise and the motion, the pigeon flew off.

  Darkness had already fallen before Ealstan came upstairs with a couple of days’ worth of groceries. The flat had no rest crate with spells to keep food from going bad, so he couldn’t shop very far ahead. “I’ve got a nice soup bone here,” he said. “A good bit of meat on it, and plenty of marrow inside. And I bought some ham. That’ll keep till tomorrow.”

  “I’ll get the fire going in the stove and chop some vegetables for the soup,” Vanai said. “That does look like a good bone.”

  “Don’t go yet.” Ealstan was rummaging at the bottom of the cloth sack in which he’d brought home the food. “Here--I found these for you.” He held up three Forthwegian romances--one, The Deaf Mute’s Song, a great classic. Apologetically, he went on, “I couldn’t find you anything in Kaunian. I looked, I really did, but the redheads have made it against the law to print anything in your language, and I didn’t dare ask too many questions.”

  “I know they’ve done that,” Vanai answered. “I remember how furious my grandfather was when he had to try to compose in Forthwegian. Thank you so much! I was just thinking earlier today that I needed something to do, and now you’ve given me something.”

  “I was thinking the same thing--about you, I mean,” Ealstan said. “Sitting up here by yourself all the time can’t be easy.”

  Vanai’s eyes opened very wide. Tears stung them, and she had to turn away. As best he could, Ealstan did look out for her and try to make her happy. That still astonished her; she was altogether unused to it. She’d gone away with him partly for his own sake, true, but also because she’d thought he couldn’t be worse than her grandfather and because she’d felt guilty that he’d got into trouble in Gromheort on account of her.

  She hadn’t really expected she’d be so much happier in spite of everything. But she was.

  Ealstan said, “And this fellow pays pretty well. We’ll be able to salt plenty away. If things were different, we could think about moving to a nicer place, but they aren’t--I think we’re better off with ready cash.”

  Meeting Ealstan gathering mushrooms hadn’t shown Vanai his solid core of good sense. Neither had lying with him, however much she’d enjoyed that--and however astonished she’d been that she could enjoy such things after Major Spinello. She quoted an adage in classical Kaunian: “Passion fades; wisdom endures.”

  “I hope passion does not fade so soon as that,” Ealstan said in his slow, careful Kaunian. Hearing him speak the language with which she was most familiar always pleased her. Though she was more fluent in Forthwegian than he was in Kaunian, he made the effort for her. She wasn’t used to that, either. Still in Kaunian, he went on, “And do you know what else?”

  “No,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “The man whose accounts I cast today knows Ethelhelm the band leader and singer, and he says Ethelhelm needs someone to keep books for him, too.” Ealstan spoke as if a star were shining in broad daylight.

  But the name meant little to Vanai. “Is that good?” she asked. Forthwegians and Kaunians had different tastes in music; what pleased one group seldom delighted the other.

  “It’s the best!” Ealstan exclaimed, irked back into Forthwegian.

  “All right.” Vanai was willing to believe him even if she didn’t share his enthusiasm. As she started into the kitchen to make soup, she realized that was at least a good start on love.

  Night and fog. In winter--and, for that matter, at other seasons of the year, too--fog rolled off the ocean into Tirgoviste town, as it did into every other seaside city on the five major islands of Sibiu. Cornelu was out long after the curfew the Algarvian occupiers had imposed on his kingdom. He hoped, and had reason to hope, the Algarvian patrols that prowled his hometown would never set eyes on him. He didn’t want them to; they’d been looking for him up in the hills of central Tirgoviste, and no doubt they were looking for him down here, too.

  But even if they did, he was pretty sure he could get away from them. He’d lived in Tirgoviste almost all his life; he knew its neighborhoods and alleys without having to see them. Mezenti
o’s men might get lucky and blaze him before he could slide round a corner or into a doorway, but he didn’t think so.

  He exhaled, breathing out still more fog. He could hardly see that fog: no streetlights burned, lest they guide Lagoan dragons to their targets. Cornelu knew the houses and shop fronts past which he walked were made from mortared blocks of the rough gray local limestone. He knew they had steep roofs of red slate slabs to shed rain and snow. He knew all that because he’d seen it. He couldn’t see it now.

  Shivering, he drew his ragged sheepskin jacket more tightly around him. He’d been a commander in the Sibian navy, as good a leviathan-rider as any officer who served King Burebistu. He’d had a fine wardrobe of tunics and kilts and cloaks of all weights. Now, as a woodcutter down from the hills, he wore the same clothes day in and day out, and counted himself lucky not to be colder than he was.

  Carefully, he stepped forward. Aye, there was the curb. He started to step off the cobbles when he heard several men in heavy boots coming up the street toward him. He drew back. Somebody among those booted men stumbled and let out a couple of loud, vile curses. They were in Algarvian. He was fluent in the language, but likely would have understood most of them even if he hadn’t been: Sibian and Algarvian were as close as brothers to each other.

  He did understand those curses could mean trouble. Moving as quietly as he could, he drew back again, ready to flee if the Algarvians heard him. They didn’t. They passed him by with no notion he was there. The fellow who’d stumbled was still grumbling: “--aren’t going to be any stinking Sibs out on a night like this. It’s a waste of time, that’s what it is. Anybody who’d come out tonight would break his fool neck five minutes later, and serve him right, too.”

  “You almost broke yours, that’s cursed sure,” one of his comrades said. The others laughed. The grumbler cursed some more and kept cursing till the patrol passed out of earshot.

  By then, Cornelu had already crossed the street--quite safely. Had the Algarvians been able to see his smile through the darkness and murk, they would not have enjoyed it. The streets got steep in the direction they were going. Maybe one of them really would break his neck. Cornelu hoped so.

  He went on another couple of blocks, then turned left onto his own street and hurried toward his own house, the house in which he hadn’t lived, in which he hadn’t even set foot, since the Algarvian invasion. Costache and Brindza lived there still. So did the three Algarvian officers quartered on them.

  All the houses on his block, like the houses and shops and taverns in the rest of Tirgoviste, were dark, for the same reason street lamps were: dragons from Lagoas could reach Sibiu. Cornelu understood why the Algarvians wanted to make it hard for them to drop their eggs accurately. Here as elsewhere, understanding failed to bring sympathy.

  Here was his walk, leading up to his front porch. As he strode along the walk, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a short stick, one of the sort a constable might carry. The stick had cost him most of the silver he’d brought down from the hills, but he didn’t care. Even if it wasn’t such a powerful weapon as a foot-soldier’s stick, it ought to be good enough to dispose of the officers who’d settled down here. Then Cornelu could take Costache and Brindza away to the southern side of the island or maybe back up into the hills.

  “And then,” Cornelu muttered under his breath, “then, by the powers above, I can be alone with my wife.” He ached for her, sometimes literally.

  As quietly as he could, he stepped up onto the porch. He must have been quiet enough; no one inside called out in alarm. Once up there, he could tell lamps were lit within, though black curtains--new since he’d last seen the house--swallowed almost all the glare.

  Cornelu paused a moment, pondering his next step. Did he knock? Would he do better to sneak in through a window? Could he break down the door, slay all of Mezentio’s men, and get Costache and Brindza away before the commotion drew neighbors or more Algarvians? That was what he most wanted to do, but he knew the risks.

  While he pondered, Costache’s voice, bright and cheerful, came out through the window undimmed by the curtains: “Wait there, darling. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Rather than Brindza’s childish prattle, which Cornelu had expected, an Algarvian doing his best to speak Sibian answered, “All right, sweetheart, but you’d better not keep me waiting long.”

  “Don’t worry,” Costache said archly. “I won’t be long, I promise. And you’ll be glad when I get there.” The Algarvian laughed.

  Sick at heart, Cornelu turned away. He looked at his stick. If he blazed himself through the head, if he left his body lying on the walk, would Costache shed a tear? Or would she just laugh?

  “I should have known,” Cornelu said to himself in a sort of whispered groan. “Oh, by the powers above, I should have known.” She hadn’t wanted to see him, not really; she hadn’t wanted to be alone with him. He’d wondered, he’d worried, but he hadn’t believed, not deep in his heart. He hadn’t wanted to believe.

  He stared back toward his house--no, toward the house that had been his. He stared back toward the life that had been his, too. Things would never be the same now.

  Looking at the stick, he shook his head. Costache had betrayed him. Why should he give her the satisfaction of finding him dead? What he really wanted was revenge. He started to swing back toward the house. If he killed not only the Algarvians but his wife, his faithless wife, as well. . .

  What would he do with Brindza then? Kill her, too? She hadn’t done anything to him. She hadn’t even kept him from sleeping with Costache, as he’d thought before--Costache hadn’t wanted to sleep with him anyhow. Take Brindza with him? He had no idea how to care for a toddler; he’d never had a chance to learn.

  He slammed his forehead, hard, with the heel of his hand. He’d just found the last thing he wanted: a reason to let his wife live.

  With a muffled curse, he hurried down the street, running as much from his fury as from his former home. He let his feet carry him; his mind was empty of anything even resembling thought. He’d gone several blocks before realizing he was heading down toward the harbor, not back up into the hills. He’d worked as a woodcutter in the hope of rejoining Costache and Brindza. His feet had realized before his head that that wouldn’t happen, now. And if it wouldn’t, what point to going back to the hills and to work he despised anyhow? Mezentio’s men would still be looking for him there, too.

  The smell of the sea was always strong in Tirgoviste town. But once Cornelu drew near the piers, he caught the reek of old fish from the boats the Algarvians still permitted to sail, an odor that didn’t travel so far inland as the salt tang pervading all the Sibian islands, the main five and their smaller outliers. Through the damp, deadening fog, he caught the familiar slap of waves against the wooden pilings that supported the harbor piers.

  He knew exactly where he was by the way the waves sounded. Discovering where his feet had brought him, he also discovered they’d had a better notion of where they were going than he’d imagined: he was within a stone’s throw of the great wire pens where the Sibian navy had held its leviathans--and where the Algarvian occupiers held theirs these days.

  Cornelu had come to look at the leviathans in an earlier visit to Tirgoviste. An Algarvian guard had cursed him and sent him away in a hurry. He snorted. What would the guard have done if he’d come up in his sea-green Sibian commander’s uniform? Nothing so pleasant as cursing and running him off--of that Cornelu was sure.

  Somewhere not far away, an Algarvian guard--maybe even the same Algarvian guard--was pacing through the fog. If he was like every other guard Cornelu had ever known, he would be cursing his luck at drawing duty on a night when the only way he could find a foe would be to trip over his feet.

  As if thinking of the guard had conjured him into being, his footsteps sounded on the walk not far away. Like frost forming on a window, decision crystallized within Cornelu. The Algarvian didn’t even bother trying to move quietly. He
seemed sure he was the only man up and walking for miles around. Had the fellow been a Sibian, Cornelu would have reported him to his superior officer. As things were, he killed him instead.

  It was almost absurdly easy. All he had to do was keep from stomping his feet on the stone of the walkway as he followed the Algarvian’s footfalls. Mezentio’s man hadn’t the faintest notion Cornelu was coming up behind him. As soon as the guard became something more than the sound of booted feet, as soon as he became a dim shape ahead, Cornelu raised his stick and blazed him down.

  His beam was a brief, bright line of light in the mist. That mist attenuated the beam, which was not all that strong to begin with. But, at a range of three or four feet, it was strong enough. It caught the Algarvian in the back of the head. He let out a startled grunt, as if Cornelu had tapped him on the shoulder. Then he quietly toppled. His own stick clattered as it slipped from his nerveless fingers.

  Cornelu dragged his body off the walk, so it wouldn’t be found at once. He picked up the stick and dropped it into the water in one of the leviathan pens. It made only a tiny splash.

  But that splash, as he’d hoped, was enough to draw the leviathan to the surface to find out what had made it. Leviathans were even more curious than their squat cousins, the whales. Because of the fog, Cornelu couldn’t see this one, but it was plain in his mind’s eye: lean and long, about six times a man’s length, with a beaky mouth full of sharp teeth. Wild leviathans were wolves of the sea. Tamed and trained, they turned into hunting dogs.

  Moving quickly, Cornelu got out of his jacket and tunic, his kilt and his shoes. Naked, he jumped into the water of the leviathan pen. It was cold, but the chill did not pierce him to the core. He let out a long exhalation of relief: his sorcerous protection against the ice waters of the southern seas still held good. Had that not been so, he would have frozen to death before long.

  He swam toward the leviathan. By everything Sibian spies knew, Mezentio’s men guided their leviathans with pokes and prods almost identical to those Sibian riders used. He was betting his life the spies had it right. A man made a good mouthful for a leviathan, no more.