Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  “I don’t know,” Moisio answered easily. “What sort of excuses would you like, your Majesty?” Rathar didn’t think Swemmel would order a friendly land’s minister boiled alive, but he wasn’t altogether sure. Few people had the nerve to talk back to the King of Unkerlant. Even he trembled every time he had to try it. But Moisio went on, “The plain truth is, we are not ready to fight on the mainland yet. We would not have been in this war at all had the Algarvians not started killing Kaunians to power their sorcerers’ spells against you.”

  Don‘t push us too far, or we can still back out. That was what Rathar thought the Kuusaman meant. He hoped King Swemmel understood as much. Swemmel’s storms of temper were famous, but now would be a very bad time for him to have one.

  The king glared at Moisio. The Kuusaman minister looked steadily back. In his quiet, understated way, he had sand. After a silence that stretched, Swemmel said, “Well, now you have seen for yourselves what their wizards can do. If you are not yet ready to fight hard, you had better be soon.”

  “We work toward it,” Moisio answered. “As soon as we can, we aim to hit Algarve a good, solid blow.”

  “As soon as you can.” Swemmel was sneering again, though not so fiercely. “And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? We have been bearing this burden by ourselves since last summer.”

  “We bore it alone for most of a year,” Gusmao said.

  King Swemmel looked daggers at him. “But Mezentio’s men could not come to grips with you, not when you hid behind the sea. If they could have, your kingdom would have rolled onto its belly soon enough. We did not. We have not. We fight on.”

  Rathar coughed. If the king ever wanted help from Kuusamo and Lagoas, he would be wise not to antagonize their ministers now. Gusmao was scowling back at the King of Unkerlant. Lagoans weren’t quite so proud and touchy as their Algarvian cousins, but they had their limits.

  Then Moisio said, “We need to remember the enemy we all fight.”

  And that, for the first time in the audience, struck the proper chord with Swemmel. “Aye!” he exclaimed. “By the powers above, aye! But you two, your lands are all but untouched. We have taken many heavy blows. How many more can we take before our hearts break?”

  In his own way, Swemmel was clever. He never would have raised the possibility of defeat to his own people. If these foreigners thought Unkerlant might give up, though, what would they not do to keep her in the fight? If Unkerlant went under, Kuusamo and Lagoas would have to face a Derlavai-bestriding Algarve allied with Gyongyos. Rathar wouldn’t have wanted to try that.

  By their expressions, neither Lord Moisio nor Count Gusmao relished the prospect. Gusmao said. “We of Lagoas have not given up, and we know our brave Unkerlanter comrades will not give up, either. We’ll help you in every way we can.”

  “And we,” Moisio agreed. “It would be easier if we didn’t have to dodge so many Algarvian ships to bring things to you, but we manage every now and then.”

  “A pittance,” Swemmel said. Rathar suppressed a deadly dangerous urge to turn and kick his sovereign in the ankle. But then the king seemed to realized he’d gone too far. “But all aid, we grant, is welcome. We are in danger, and stretched very thin. Aye, all aid is welcome.”

  When Gusmao and Moisio used we they were plainly speaking of their people. With King Swemmel, Rathar often had trouble figuring out whether he was talking about Unkerlant or himself. He certainly seemed stretched very thin these days-one more reason Rathar wished he were back on the battlefield and away from the subtle poisons of the capital.

  Not two minutes after the ministers from Kuusamo and Lagoas bowed their way out of the throne room-before most of the Unkerlanter courtiers had had the chance to leave-a runner came up the aisle toward Rathar. “Lord Marshal!” he called, and waved a folded sheet of paper.

  Rathar waved back. “I am here.”

  Swemmel leaned down from the throne. “How now?”

  “I don’t know, your Majesty.” Rathar could think of nowhere he less wanted to open an urgent dispatch than under the king’s eye. But he had no choice-and the news was urgent indeed, even if it was news he would sooner not have had. He looked up toward Swemmel. “Your Majesty, I must tell you that, since you summoned me up here to attend this audience, the Algarvians have broken through in the direction of Sulingen.”

  “And why is that, Marshal?” King Swemmel rasped. “Is it because you botched the defenses while you were there, or because you are the only one of our generals with any wits at all?”

  Rathar bowed his head. “That is for your Majesty to judge.” If Swemmel still felt liverish because of the imperfectly satisfying meeting with the ministers of Lagoas and Kuusamo, his head might answer.

  But the king said only, “Well, you’d better get back down there and tend to things, then, hadn’t you?”

  After a long but, he hoped, silent breath of relief, Rathar answered, “Aye, your Majesty.” He almost added, Thank you, your Majesty. He didn’t. He was beholden to Swemmel, of course, but not, he hoped, overtly so. Staying official was easier and safer.

  Traveling south to Sulingen wasn’t so easy, and on one stretch of the journey Algarvian dragons dropped eggs from on high, trying to wreck his ley-line caravan. They missed, but not by much.

  When he did make it to the city on the Wolter, he found that General Vatran had set up his headquarters in a cave in the side of a steep gully that led down to the river. The only light in the place when Rathar ducked inside came from a candle stuck into the mouth of an empty jar of spirits. The jar sat on a folding table, at which Vatran was scribbling orders. He looked up from his work and nodded. “Back from the capital, eh, lord Marshal?” he said. “Well, welcome home, then.”

  “Home?” Rathar looked around. The walls of the cave were nothing but dirt. When he looked back through the opening, most of what he saw was rubble and wreckage. Smoke and the smell of death filled the air. He grabbed a folding chair and sat down beside Vatran. “Thanks. What do we need to do here?”

  Sergeant Istvan sneaked toward the forest village with nothing but suspicion. Most of these places were only Unkerlanter strongpoints these days. King Swemmel’s soldiers looked to have forgotten about this one, though. Maybe they didn’t never know it was here. Maybe.

  Corporal Kun was as delighted to find the village as he was. “If only we had a couple of light egg-tossers, we could knock the place flat without needing to go in there and do the job ourselves. That’s expensive.”

  “I know. There’s you and me and Szonyi-I don’t think anything the stars shine on will kill Szonyi any time soon,” Istvan said. “But there’s an awful lot of new fish, too, and they die easier than they should.”

  Kun said, “We’re not getting the best of the levies, either. I heard Captain Tivadar grousing about that. They’re sending the men they like best out to the islands in the Bothnian Ocean to fight the Kuusamans. We get what’s left.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me a bit,” Istvan said. “Only thing that surprises me is how long it took ‘em back home to figure out this miserable war here isn’t ever going to get anywhere.”

  Kun nodded. His spectacles and, somehow, his patchy beard made him look very wise. “Aye, I think you’re right. The trouble is, we still have to fight it.”

  “And isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Istvan peered through a screen of pine saplings and ferns at the village ahead. All at once, he went very still. Voice the tiniest thread of whisper, he said, “Come up here and tell me whether that’s not a real woman drawing water from the well there.”

  “Has it been so long you’ve forgotten the differences?” Kun asked, but also in a whisper. Istvan started to plant an elbow in his ribs as he moved up to take a look, but refrained. The noise might give them away. Kun’s lips pursed in a soundless whistle. “That is a woman-may the stars accurse me if I lie. What’s she doing?”

  “Drawing water from the well there,” Istvan repeated patiently. “Where there’s one
woman, there’ve got to be more, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Are the Unkerlanters trying to make them into warriors?” Kun asked. “If they are, they must be running out of men.”

  “She doesn’t look like a warrior,” Istvan said. That proved nothing, and he knew it. If Swemmel’s men-no, Swemmel’s soldiers-were setting a trap, the woman naturally wouldn’t look like a warrior.

  He kept peering toward the village. It didn’t look like a trap, either. It looked like a village that had been going about its business for a long time. He wondered if the people there even knew Unkerlant and Gyongyos were at war. After a moment, he wondered if the people there had ever heard of Gyongyos. His hand tightened on his stick. If they hadn’t, they would.

  A man strolled by. He was an Unkerlanter, of course, but wore a brown tunic, not one of rock-gray. He carried a chicken carcass by the feet. When he came up to the woman, she said something. He paused and answered. She made as if to slosh the bucket of water she’d just drawn up over him. They both laughed. Thin with distance, their voices floated to Istvan’s ears.

  He turned to Kun. “If that’s a trap, it’s an accursed good one.”

  “The Unkerlanters make accursed good traps,” Kun pointed out, which was inarguably true.

  But Istvan shook his big, shaggy head even so. “It doesn’t feel like a trap,” he said, which was a harder argument to knock over the head. “It feels like a village that hasn’t thought about anything but its own concerns since-since the stars first shone down on it.”

  He waited for Kun to mock him. Mockery was one of the things the city man, the mage’s apprentice, the sophisticate, was good for. But when Kun answered, he too sounded wondering: “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s. .” Istvan groped for a word, and found one: “It’s peaceful, that’s what it is. Maybe peace is a magic.” That wasn’t the sort of thing that should have come from a man of a warrior race, but it was what lay in his heart.

  Kun only nodded. He’d seen enough war to know what it was, enough war to have had a bellyful of it himself. He said, “You don’t suppose that woman would laugh for us if we came out of the woods and tried to chat her up?”

  “She’d laugh if we tried doing it in Unkerlanter, that’s certain sure,” Istvan said. Wistfully, he went on, “I haven’t even seen a woman since that Unkerlanter I blazed in the mountains this past winter.”

  “No sport in her,” Kun said. “Well, Sergeant, what do we do?”

  “Let me think.” Istvan plucked at his beard and tried to do just that. What he wanted to do was what Kun had said: show himself, walk up to the villagers, and say hello. He knew he had a better than even chance of getting blazed if he did; he wanted to do it anyhow.

  Safest would be to bring the whole company forward and crush the village under an avalanche of Gyongyosian might. But if the village really was just a village, he would be wrecking something he might enjoy.

  He let out a soft sigh. He’d long since come to understand the difference between what he wanted to do and what he needed to do. “Go back to the company encampment,” he said with a sigh. “Let the captain know what we’ve found, and tell him we want reinforcements to make sure we take it out.”

  “Aye, Sergeant.” Kun looked as if he hated him, but obeyed. Silent as a cat, he slipped off into the woods.

  Is this part of the curse of eating goat’s flesh? Istvan wondered. Must I worry for the rest of my days? Or am I simply being led astray now? He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. But he feared that, sooner or later, the curse would bite down hard. Ritual cleansing went only so far. The stars had seen what he’d done.

  Maybe thinking about the goat’s flesh was what made him step out of the forest and into the clearing that held the village. If somebody there grabbed a stick and blazed him, it would be expiation for what he’d done. If no one did, maybe the stars had forgiven him after all.

  Behind him, his men let out startled gasps. “Get back, Sergeant!” Szonyi hissed from a few trees away. Istvan shook his head. They’d already seen him, there in the village. Oh, he could still duck back into cover but, oddly, he didn’t want to. Whatever would happen would happen, that was all. The stars already knew. They’d known for as long as they’d been shining. Now he would find out, too.

  Startled cries rang out. The woman at the well stared and pointed toward Istvan. People came tumbling out of houses and a bigger log building that might have been a tavern. They all pointed and exclaimed. Plainly, strangers here were a prodigy, which proved the Unkerlanter army didn’t know this place existed. Nobody aimed a stick at him. Nobody was holding one. They have to have them, Istvan thought. There isn‘t anybody who doesn‘t know about sticks. . is there?

  Like a man in a dream, he walked toward the villagers. Some of them came toward him, too. He still had hold of his stick, but didn’t raise it. It was too light to see the stars, but they were always there. Eclipses proved it. If you want me to make amends for what I did, that can happen. I’m ready.

  One of the villagers spoke to him in guttural Unkerlanter. It wasn’t Hands high! or Surrender! or Throw down your stick! — about all he knew of the enemy’s language. “I don’t follow,” he said in his own language, and then, because being polite seemed wise in a dream, he added, “I’m sorry.”

  To his surprise, the Unkerlanter, a gray-haired man, answered in accented, halting Gyongyosian: “Not try to talk this talk many years. Sometimes-past times-you people come, trade for furs. You want trade for furs? We have furs to spare.”

  They didn’t know there was a war. They didn’t recognize his uniform for what it was. “Maybe I will… trade for furs,” he said dazedly. He fumbled in his belt pouch and pulled out a small silver coin. “Can I buy some brandy first?”

  All the villagers gaped at the coin. There were out-of-the-way valleys in Gyongyos that hardly ever saw real money, too. The Unkerlanter who spoke Gyongyosian said something in his own language. Everyone exclaimed. Three young men pelted toward the big building. The one who got there first came back with not just a mug but a jar. He took the silver from Istvan as if afraid the soldier would scream about being cheated.

  With another coin, I could buy the prettiest girl here, Istvan realized. Money’s worth a lot. They must never see it at all. First things first, though. He yanked out the stopper and took a swig. Sweet fire ran down his throat. It was plum brandy, and tasted like summer. “Ahh!” he said, and swigged again. The gray-haired Unkerlanter clapped him on the back. He put an arm around the shorter man’s shoulder, then looked around, trying to decide which girl he would offer silver.

  The villagers exclaimed again, and pointed toward the woods. The soldiers in Istvan’s squad, seeing nothing bad happen to him-seeing, in fact, the reverse-were coming out, too. “Your friends?” asked the man who spoke Gyongyosian.

  “Aye-my friends.” Istvan turned and called to his men: “They’re nice as can be. Act the same, and we’ll all stay happy.”

  “They all to dress like you,” the Unkerlanter said. He sounded surprised once more. Didn’t he know about uniforms? If he didn’t, how long had this village been cut off from the wider world? A cursed long time, that was sure.

  Istvan’s troopers wasted no time in getting spirits for themselves. A couple of them wasted no time in trying to get friendly with the village girls, and their luck looked likely to be good. Sure enough, silver was almost sorcerously potent here.

  Smiling at one of the girls, Istvan jingled the coins in his belt pouch. She smiled back. Aye, she’s a slut, he thought. But it might not have been so simple. An encounter with a stranger was hardly the same as lying down with a village boy who’d brag of his conquest for months afterwards.

  With dumb show, they reached a bargain. Istvan gave the girl two coins and offered her the jar of brandy. She drank from it, then tilted her face up and kissed him. His arms slid around her. Her lips were sweet on his, her breasts firm and soft against his chest.

  “Where?” he asked. She m
ight not know the word, but she’d understand what he meant. And she did, pointing back toward one of the houses.

  But they’d taken only a few steps in that direction when more Gyongyosian soldiers burst from the woods, shouting war cries: “Gyongyos! Ekrekek Arpad!” They started blazing before they asked a single question or saw nothing amiss had happened to Istvan and his squad.

  The villagers screamed and ran and tried to fight back. Some of them made it back to their homes. They did have sticks, and used them bravely. A beam from a comrade’s weapon caught the girl Istvan had kissed and dropped her dead at his feet. He was lucky his own friends didn’t blaze him down, too.

  “No!” he shouted, but nobody on either side-and there were sides now- paid him any attention. When the villagers started blazing, he threw himself down behind the girl’s corpse and blazed back. Finishing them off didn’t take long, not when Captain Tivadar’s whole company rolled down on them.

  Three or four women didn’t get killed right away. The Gyongyosians lined up to have a go at them, ignoring their shrieks. Istvan stayed out of the lines; he found he had no taste for that sport. Captain Tivadar came over to him-public rape was beneath an officer’s dignity. “One village that won’t trouble us,” Tivadar said.

  “It wasn’t troubling us anyhow,” Istvan mumbled.

  Tivadar only shrugged. “War,” he said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

  As she usually did, Pekka bristled when someone knocked on her office door. How was she supposed to guide a caravan of thought down its proper ley line if people kept interrupting her? If this was Professor Heikki, Pekka vowed to put an itching spell on the department head’s drawers.

  But it wasn’t Heikki, as Pekka discovered when she opened the door. A Kuusaman soldier stood there, one hand on the stick at his belt, the other holding a sealed envelope. He eyed her. “You are Pekka, the theoretical sorcerer?”

  “Aye,” Pekka said. The soldier looked as if he didn’t want to believe her. In some exasperation, she told him, “You can knock on any door you like along this hall and get someone to tell you who I am.”