Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

“Aye, if only,” Leudast echoed. “It’s nothing but luck any of us are left alive, you ask me. We didn’t have enough of anything to stop them once they got gliding down the ley line.”

  As if to underscore his words, a dragon screeched, not too high overhead. He looked up. The dragon was painted in Algarvian colors. Leudast stayed where he was. Bushes and scrubby trees helped hide the Unkerlanters in the swamp from the dragonfliers’ prying eyes. Leudast’s rock-gray tunic, now stained with grass and dirt, was a good match for the mud and shrubs all around.

  After another screech, the dragon flew on. “Here’s hoping the whoreson didn’t spy us,” Leudast said.

  Captain Hawart shrugged. “We can’t stay here forever, not unless we want to turn into irregulars.”

  “We can eat frogs and roots and such for a long time, sir,” Leudast said. “The Algarvians’d have a cursed hard time digging us out.”

  “I know that,” Hawart answered. “But there’s a bigger war going on than the one for this stretch of swamp, and I want to be a part of it.”

  Leudast wasn’t so sure he wanted to be a part of it. He’d risked his neck too many times, and come too close to getting killed. Sitting here in a place the redheads would have a hard time reaching suited him fine. He would have liked it better with more food and a drier place to sleep, but, as he’d said, Unkerlanter peasants could get by on very little.

  Saying as much would only get him into trouble, and he knew it. He tried an oblique approach: “A lot of the men are pretty frazzled right now.”

  “I know that. I’m pretty frazzled myself,” Hawart replied. “But so is the kingdom. If Unkerlant folds up, it won’t matter that we got to sit here happy in the swamp for a while-and the fight’s already moving past it on both sides. You can hear that.”

  “Aye,” Leudast said. Every one of Hawart’s words was the truth, and he knew it. But he still didn’t want to leave this shelter that had been so long in coming and so hard to find.

  And then one of the sentries came trotting back from the eastern approaches to the high ground. “There’s Algarvians starting to probe the swamp, sir,” he told Hawart.

  “Still think we can drive ‘em back whenever we please, Alboin?” Leudast asked.

  The youngster scratched at his formidable nose. “It’s gotten harder, Sergeant,” he admitted, “but we aren’t licked yet.” He had a burn above one eyebrow. A couple of fingers’ difference in the path of the beam that had scarred him and it would have cooked his brains inside his head.

  “Only three real paths that lead here,” Leudast said. “The redheads’ll be a while finding ‘em, too. They’ll spend a couple of days floundering in the mud, odds are, and we can hold ‘em off for a long time even if I’m wrong.”

  Hawart laughed, though he didn’t sound very happy doing it. “The war’s coming to us whether we like it or not,” he said. “Me, I don’t like it very much.” He glanced up at Alboin. “Your orders are, don’t blaze unless you’re discovered or unless they strike a path and come straight for us. If they don’t, we’ll pull back after dark and see if we can find the rest of our army.”

  Alboin saluted and repeated the orders back. Then he headed east to pass them on to the other lookouts and to return to his own station. Watching his broad back, Leudast slowly nodded. Alboin was a veteran now, all right. He’d seen the bad along with the good, and he was still fighting and not too discouraged.

  Captain Hawart and his men got about half of what Leudast had predicted: as much as anyone could expect when dealing with Algarvians without snow on the ground. The sun was going down in the southwest before King Mezentio’s men realized the swamp was defended. Then they started a brisk little skirmish with the sentries. They sent more and more soldiers forward to drive back the Unkerlanters, and also started lobbing eggs in the general direction of the strongpoint.

  “Don’t let ‘em worry you, lads,” Hawart said as one of those eggs burst and threw mud and stinking water all over the landscape. “They’re tossing blind. Sit tight a bit, and then we’ll get out of here.”

  Unlike the Algarvians, Hawart’s men knew the swamp well. They’d found paths that led west, as well as some that offered escape in other directions. “Pity we haven’t got any eggs we could bury here to give the redheads a little surprise when they make it this far,” Leudast said.

  “Pity we can’t bury the cursed Algarvians here,” Hawart answered. “But, as long as they don’t bury us, we’ll get another chance at them later.”

  The sentries came back up the paths to the main patch of higher ground. One of them had an arm in a sling. “It’ll be a while before the Algarvians get here,” he said; he still had fight in him.

  “Let’s get moving,” Hawart said, and then, casually, “Leudast, you’ll head up the rear guard.”

  Leudast had been in the army since the days when the only fighting was the spasmodic war between Unkerlant and Gyongyos in the mountains of the far, far west. If anyone here could lead the rear guard, he was the man. If that meant he was all too likely to get killed.. well, he’d been all too likely to get killed quite a few times now. If he stood and fought, his comrades would have a better chance of getting away. He shrugged and nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  Hawart gave him a dozen men, a couple of more than he’d expected. He positioned them so that they covered the places where the paths from the east opened up onto the high ground. They waited while their countrymen slipped away to the west. By the trilling Algarvian shouts that came from the other direction, they wouldn’t have to wait very long.

  Sure enough, here came a filthy, angry-looking redhead. He didn’t seem to realize the path opened out onto a wider stretch of nearly dry ground. He didn’t get much of a chance to ponder it, either; Leudast blazed him. He crumpled, his stick falling from his hands to the muddy ground.

  A moment later, another Algarvian appeared at the end of a different track. Two beams cut him down, but not cleanly; he thrashed and writhed and shrieked, warning Mezentio’s men behind him that the Unkerlanters hadn’t all disappeared.

  “We’ll get the next few, then back over to the paths the rest of the boys are using,” Leudast called. Here he was, leading a squad again rather than a company. With the problem smaller, the solution seemed obvious.

  Several Algarvians burst out onto the firm ground at once, blazing as they came. The Unkerlanters knocked down a couple of them, but the others dove behind bushes and made Leudast’s men keep their heads down. That meant more Algarvians could come off the paths without getting blazed.

  Leudast grimaced. King Mezentio’s men weren’t making his life easy-but then, they never had. “Back!” he shouted to the little detachment under his command. They’d all seen a good deal of action, and knew better than to make a headlong rush for what would not be safety. Instead, some retreated while other blazed at the Algarvians. Then the men who’d run stopped and blazed so their friends could fall back past them.

  Darkness was gaining fast now, but not fast enough to suit Leudast. He felt horribly exposed to Mezentio’s men as he scrambled and dodged and twisted back toward the mouth of one of the paths the rest of Hawart’s shrunken command had taken. He counted the soldiers who came with him: eight, one of them wounded. They’d made the redheads pay, but they’d paid, too.

  “Let’s go!” he said, and hurried till the path bent. He barely recalled the bend was there, and came close to rushing straight ahead into the ooze and muck of the swamp. Peering back through the thickening twilight, he made out the redheads coming after his little force. He blazed at them, blazed and shouted the vilest curses he knew.

  After he’d blazed, after he’d cursed, he slid on down the path as quietly as he could. The Algarvians charged straight toward where he had been, as he’d hoped they would. They charged toward where he had been, and then past where he had been-and right into the mud. He didn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but it sounded hot.

  He was tempted to start blazing again; he was su
re he could have picked off a couple of them. Instead, he drew away from them, disappearing down another bend in the path. He’d been this way before, by day and by night- Captain Hawart wanted everybody ready for whatever might happen. But the Algarvians would have a cursed hard time following the path. Leudast chuckled. They would have had a hard time following it in daylight, as he knew full well.

  “Swemmel!” somebody called softly from up ahead.

  “Cottbus,” Leudast answered: the king and the capital were hardly the most imaginative sign and countersign in the world, but they’d do. He added, “Bugger every Algarvian in Unkerlant with the biggest pine cone you can find.”

  Whoever was up ahead of him laughed. “You’re one of ours, all right.”

  “I’m your sergeant,” Leudast told him. “Come on. Let’s get moving. We’ve got to catch up with the rest of the regiment.”

  “The rest of the company, you mean,” the other soldier said.

  Both statements amounted to about the same thing. A couple of run-ins with the redheads had melted what was a regiment on the books to a company’s worth of men. Leudast hoped the Algarvians who’d faced his regiment had melted in like proportion, but wouldn’t have bet on it.

  He stumbled along, sticking a foot into the muck every now and again himself. When he would cock his head to listen to the redheads’ progress, the noise they made got fainter and fainter. He nodded to himself. No, they couldn’t follow the path in the dark.

  Somewhere before midnight, the ground grew firm under his feet no matter where he set them. Swamp gave way to meadow. What was left of the regiment waited there. Leudast lay down on the sweet-smelling grass and fell asleep at once. He’d come through another one.

  In summertime, after the hucksters and farmers and artisans left the market square in Skrunda, young Jelgavans took it over. By the light of torches and sorcerously powered lamps, they would promenade and flirt. Sometimes, they would find places where the lights didn’t reach and do other things.

  Talsu and Gailisa headed for the market square hand in hand. Talsu walked more freely these days; the knife wound an Algarvian soldier had given him in the grocery Gailisa’s father ran still troubled him, but not so much as it had. He said, “At least the cursed redheads let us keep our lights. Down in Valmiera, everything goes dark at night so enemy dragons can’t see where to drop their eggs.”

  “No enemy dragons around these parts,” Gailisa said. She lowered her voice and leaned over to whisper in Talsu’s ear: “The only enemies in these parts wear kilts.”

  “Oh, aye,” Talsu agreed. With her breath soft and warm and moist on his earlobe, he would have agreed to just about anything she said. But he might not have had that fierce growl in his voice. He’d reckoned the redheads enemies long before one of them stuck a knife in him, and had been part of Jelgava’s halfhearted attack on Algarve before the Algarvians overran his kingdom.

  Into the square he and Gailisa strolled, to see and to be seen. They weren’t the chief attractions, nor anything close to it. Rich men’s sons and daughters didn’t stroll. They strutted and swaggered and displayed, as much to show off their expensive tunics and trousers and hats as to exhibit themselves.

  Gailisa hissed and pointed. “Look at her, the shameless creature,” she said, clicking her tongue between her teeth. “Flaunting her bare legs like a, like an I don’t know what.”

  “Like an Algarvian,” Talsu said grimly, though he didn’t mind the way the rich girl’s kilt displayed her shapely legs. To keep Gailisa from thinking he was enjoying the spectacle too much, he also pointed. “And look at that fellow there, the one with the mustache. He’s as blond as we are, but he’s in a kilt, too.”

  “Disgraceful,” Gailisa said. “What’s the world coming to when Kaunian folk dress up in barbarian costumes?”

  “Nothing good,” Talsu said. “No, nothing good at all.”

  Something new had been added to the promenade since Algarve invaded Jelgava and King Donalitu fled for Lagoas: redheaded soldiers leaning against the walls and eyeing the pretty girls along with the young men of Skrunda. One of the Algarvians beckoned to the girl in the kilt. When she came over, he chucked her under the chin, kissed her on the cheek, and put his arm around her. She snuggled against him, her face shining and excited.

  “Little hussy,” Gailisa snarled. “I want to slap her. Shameless doesn’t begin to say what she is.” She stuck her nose in the air.

  Talsu had been looking at the girl’s legs again. If kilts hadn’t been an Algarvian style, he would have said they had something going for them … for women. As far as he was concerned, the young Jelgavan man in a kilt simply looked like a fool.

  A Jelgavan in proper trousers came by, squeezing music out of a concertina. The Algarvians made horrible faces at the noise. One of them shouted at him: “Going away! Bad musics.”

  But the Jelgavan shook his head. “My people like it,” he said, and half a dozen Jelgavans raised their voices in agreement. They far outnumbered the redheads, and the soldiers weren’t carrying sticks. A fellow in a sergeant’s uniform spoke to the music critic, who didn’t say anything more. The concertina player squeezed out a happy tune.

  Gailisa tossed her head. “That’ll teach ‘em,” she said.

  “Aye, it will.” Talsu pointed toward a fellow trundling a barrel along on a little wheeled cart. “Would you like a cup of wine?”

  “Why not?” she said. “It’ll wash the taste of that mattress-backed chippy out of my mouth.”

  The wine seller dipped up two cups from his barrel. The wine was of the plainest-an ordinary red, flavored with oranges and limes and lemons. But it was wet and it was cool. Talsu poured it down and held out the cheap earthenware cup for a refill. The wine seller pocketed the coin Talsu gave him, then plied his tin tipper once more.

  As Talsu sipped the citrus-laced wine, he glanced at the Algarvians in the market square. He knew it was foolish, but he did it anyhow. He might recognize the one he’d hit in the nose in the grocer’s shop, but he had no idea what the one who’d stabbed him looked like. A redhead-that was all he knew.

  Gailisa was glancing across the market square, toward the other side of town. “It still doesn’t seem right,” he said.

  “Huh? What doesn’t?” Talsu asked. So many things in Skrunda didn’t seem right these days, he had trouble figuring out which one she meant.

  “That the Algarvians knocked down the old arch,” Gailisa answered. “It had been here more than a thousand years, since the days of the Kaunian Empire, and it hadn’t done anybody any harm in all that time. They didn’t have any business knocking it down.”

  “Ah. The arch. Aye.” Talsu nodded. He’d been running an errand to that side of town when a couple of Algarvian military mages brought it down with well-placed eggs. He hadn’t thought much about the arch-which commemorated an imperial Kaunian victory over long-dead Algarvian tribesmen-while it stood, but he too missed it now that it was gone.

  Maybe the wine he’d drunk made him say, “The arch,” louder than he’d intended. A fellow a few feet away heard him and also looked toward the place where the monument had stood. He said, “The arch,” too, and he said it loud on purpose.

  “The arch.” This time, a couple of people said it.

  “The arch. The arch! The arch?’ Little by little, the chant began to fill the square. The concertina player echoed it with two notes of his own. The Algarvian soldiers started watching the crowd of Jelgavans in a new way, looking for enemies rather than pretty girls.

  One of the redheads, a lieutenant wearing a tunic Talsu’s father had sewn for him, spoke in Jelgavan: “The arch is down. Not going up again. No use complaining. Go home.”

  “The arch! The arch! The arch!” The cry kept on, and got louder and louder. Talsu and Gailisa grinned at each other as they shouted. They’d found something King Mezentio’s men didn’t like.

  Like it the Algarvians certainly didn’t. They huddled together in a compact band. They’d come to
the market square to have a good time, not to fight. The promenading Jelgavans badly outnumbered them. If things went from shouting to fighting, the unarmed redheads were liable to have a thin time of it.

  In an experimental sort of way, Talsu kicked at one of the cobbles in the square. It didn’t stir. He kicked it again, harder, and felt it give a little under his shoe. If he needed to pry it out of the ground and fling it at the Algarvians, he could. If he wanted to, he could. And he knew he couldn’t be the only Jelgavan in the crowd having such thoughts.

  “Go home!” the Algarvian lieutenant said again, shouting this time. Then he made an enormous mistake, adding, “In the name of King Mainardo, I order you to go home!” Mainardo was Mezentio of Algarve’s younger brother, put on the throne here after the redheads conquered Jelgava.

  A moment of silence followed. People stopped shouting, “The arch! The arch! The arch!” When they resumed, they had a new cry: “Donalitu! Donalitu! Donalitu!” Talsu joined it, roaring out the name of Jelgava’s rightful king.

  Even as he roared, he wondered at the passion for King Donalitu that had seized everyone, himself included. The king had been more feared than loved while he sat on Jelgava’s throne, and with reason: he’d ground down the commoners, and flung them into dungeons if they complained. In spite of that, though, he was a Jelgavan, not a redheaded usurper kept on the throne by redheaded invaders.

  Instead of shouting again for the Jelgavans to go home, the Algarvian lieutenant tried a different ploy. “Stand aside!” he yelled. “Let us by!”

  That would have left the square to the Jelgavans, the biggest victory they’d have had in Skrunda since their kingdom fell to Mezentio’s men. But it didn’t feel like enough to Talsu. It didn’t seem to feel like enough to anybody. People didn’t move aside. They cried out Donalitu’s name louder and more fervently than ever. In a moment, the brawl would start; Talsu could feel it.

  Something in the air-a small hiss, right at the edge of hearing. Talsu’s body knew what it was before his brain did. He pushed Gailisa to the cobbles and lay down on top of her as the first egg burst no more than a couple of furlongs away. All through the square, young men, both Jelgavan and Algarvian, were going to the ground even before the egg burst. They’d all known combat in the recent past, and retained the reflexes that had kept them alive.