Through the Darkness d-3

by Harry Turtledove

  That evening, a couple of squads of Unkerlanters sneaked out of their pocket and prowled among the Algarvians, doing all the damage they could till they were hunted down and killed. When the wan sun of fading autumn rose in the northwest, Trasone was running on wine and fury, for he hadn’t had any sleep.

  He was, then, the wrong man to greet the dapper officer who came up to the front with a fancy stick that had a spyglass screwed to the top of it. “Is this where we’ve had trouble with snipers?” the fellow demanded.

  “What if it is?” Trasone growled. Belatedly-very belatedly-he added, “Sir?”

  “I am Colonel the Count Casmiro,” the officer replied in a snooty accent that said he’d been born and raised in Trapani, no matter where he’d hunted big game. “You will have heard of me.” He struck a pose.

  Trasone, worn and filthy and burning inside, was in no mood to back down from anybody. “Blaze the bastard who bagged my battalion commander and I’ll have heard of you. Till then, you can go jump off the fornicating cliffs into the fornicating Wolter for all I care.”

  Casmiro’s nose was almost as beaky as King Mezentio’s. He looked at Trasone down it. “Curb your tongue,” he said. “I can have you punished.”

  “How?” Trasone threw back his head and laughed in Casmiro’s face. “What can you do to me that’s worse than this?”

  The hulking trooper waited to see if Colonel Casmiro had an answer for him. The Algarvian noble pushed past him toward the front, muttering, “I will rid the world of that Unkerlanter for good and all.”

  “He doesn’t lack for confidence,” Sergeant Panfilo observed when Trasone recounted the conversation to him. The sergeant laughed. “Why should he? He’s an Algarvian, after all.”

  “He’s an officer, too,” Trasone said darkly.

  Casmiro prowled the forwardmost trenches and foxholes all that day, flitting from one pile of ruined brickwork to the next as if he were a ghost. He did know something-quite a bit-about moving without drawing notice. At some point that afternoon, Trasone wrapped himself in his blanket and went to sleep. When he woke, night had fallen-and Colonel Casmiro was nowhere to be found.

  A pot full of pillaged buckwheat groats and what was probably dog meat interested Trasone more, anyhow. Only after he’d filled his belly did he bother asking, “Where’d that know-it-all sniper get to?”

  “He crawled out toward the Unkerlanters,” somebody answered.

  “Where’d he go?” Trasone asked.

  No one knew. A soldier said, “You don’t want to stick your head up to find out, you know what I mean? Not when Swemmel’s stinking whoresons’ll drill you a new ear hole first chance they get.”

  “That’s the truth-no doubt about it.” Trasone felt better for some food in him. The Unkerlanters weren’t tossing very many eggs. After their raid the night before, they didn’t try another one. Nobody ordered the Algarvians forward in a night attack. Trasone cleaned his mess tin and went back to sleep. No one bothered him till dawn. That left him only about a year behind.

  When he woke, he yawned and stretched and made his slow, careful way up to the front. He didn’t think it was light enough for Swemmel’s soldiers to have an easy time spying him and blazing him, but he didn’t want to find out he was wrong, either. “Anything going on?” he asked when he reached the battered trenches nearest the enemy.

  “Seems quiet enough,” answered one of the men unlucky enough to be there already.

  “Any sign of the sniper?” Trasone asked. Everybody shook his head.

  Cautiously, Trasone looked out from the rubble the Algarvians occupied toward the rubble the Unkerlanters still held. He saw no trace of Colonel Casmiro. With a shrug, he ducked down again. “Maybe the powers below ate him,” he said, and his comrades laughed. They had no love for snipers on either side. He doubted whether even Swemmel’s men loved snipers on either side.

  It was a quiet day, punctuated only by occasional screams. He had time to wonder how Major Spinello was doing, and if Spinello was doing at all. After darkness fell-and it fell horribly early-Colonel Casmiro appeared, complete with his stick with the spyglass on it, for all the world as if he’d been conjured up. He might have been speaking of leopards or large flightless birds when he said, “I bagged four today.”

  “Where were you hiding, sir?” Trasone asked, and the master sniper gave him nothing but a smug smile. Trasone found another question: “Any sign of the bugger who’s been blazing us?”

  “Not a single one,” Casmiro answered. “I begin to doubt he’s there anymore.” Even in those dismal surroundings, he managed a swagger; he would have got on well with Spinello. “He likely got word I was coming and fled.”

  “Here’s hoping,” Trasone said. As long as the Unkerlanter sniper wouldn’t put a beam between his eyes, he cared about nothing else.

  But Casmiro said, “No, I want him dead at my hands. In his last moment of pain, I want him to know I am his master.”

  Day after day, the count and colonel went out before dawn and came back after sunset with tales of Unkerlanters he’d blazed. But he saw no sign of the enemy sniper. Neither did Trasone-till two of his countrymen in quick succession died after incautiously exposing a tiny part of their persons for half a heartbeat.

  Casmiro vowed a terrible revenge. Trasone didn’t see him go out before dawn the next morning, but Panfilo did. The veteran sergeant was wide-eyed with admiration. “He’s got a regular little nest there, under a chunk of sheet iron,” he told Trasone. “No wonder the Unkerlanters can’t spy him.”

  “He’d better get that lousy bugger,” Trasone said. “Otherwise, we’ll never be free of him.”

  Trasone peered east more often than was really safe, hoping to watch the Unkerlanter sniper meet his end. And he thought he had, when an Unkerlanter screamed and toppled from the second story of a burnt-out block of flats a couple of furlongs away. An instant later, though, another scream rose, this one from between the lines, not far from the trench in which Trasone stood. His gaze flashed to the sheet iron under which Colonel Casmiro sheltered. He felt like a fool. How could he tell what was going on under there?

  He found out that evening, when Casmiro did not come back inside the Algarvian lines. The chill that went through him somehow sank deeper than that from the snow gently falling on King Mezentio’s men in Sulingen.

  During the day, Talsu hardly felt married. He went downstairs to work with his father, while Gailisa walked the couple of blocks back to her father’s grocery to help him there. The only difference in the days was that they both got wages, out of which they paid for food and the tiny lodging that was Talsu’s room.

  At night, though. . Talsu wished he’d got married a lot sooner. He seemed to come to work every morning with an enormous grin on his face. His father eyed him with amused approval. “If you can stay happy with your lady when you’re cooped up together in a room where you couldn’t swing a cat, odds are you’ll be happy anywhere for a long time to come,” Traku remarked one morning.

  “Aye, Father, I expect so,” Talsu answered absently. It was a cool day, so he wore a wool tunic, and it rubbed at the scratches Gailisa had clawed in his back the night before. But then, thinking about that anywhere, he went on, “We’ve been looking at flats. Everything is so cursed expensive!”

  “It’s the war.” Traku blamed the war for anything that went wrong. “Not just flats are dear these days. Everything costs more than it should, on account of the Algarvians are doing so much thieving. Isn’t enough left for decent folks.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right.” Like his father, Talsu was willing to blame Mezentio’s men for any iniquity. Even so … “If it weren’t for the redheads, though, we’d have a lot less work ourselves, and that’d mean a lot less money.”

  “I won’t say you’re wrong,” Traku answered. “And do you know what?” He waited for Talsu to shake his head before continuing, “Every time I turn out something in an extra-heavy winter weight, I’m not even sorry to d
o it.”

  “Of course you’re not-it means one more Algarvian heading out of Jelgava and off to Unkerlant.” Talsu thought for a moment, then spoke in classical Kaunian: “Their wickedness goes before them as a shield.”

  “Sounds good,” his father said. “What’s it mean?” Talsu translated. His father thought about it, then said, “And with any luck at all, the Unkerlanters’ll smash that shield all to bits. How long have the news sheets been bragging that the redheads’ll have the last Unkerlanter out of that Sulingen place any minute now?”

  “It’s been a while,” Talsu agreed. “And they say it’s already started snowing down there.” He shuddered at the very idea. “Only time I ever saw snow was up in the mountains when I was in the army. Nasty cold stuff.”

  “It snowed here the winter before you were born,” Traku said reminiscently. “It was pretty as all get-out, till it started melting and turning sooty. But you’re right-it was bloody cold.”

  Before Talsu could answer, the front door opened. The bell above the door jingled. In walked an Algarvian major with bushy red side whiskers with a few white hairs in them and a little chin beard. “Good day, sir,” Traku said to him. “What can I do for you?” The Algarvians had occupied Skrunda for more than two years; if the locals weren’t used to dealing with Mezentio’s men by now, they never would be.

  “I require winter gear,” the major said in good Jelgavan. “I mean to say, tough winter gear, not winter gear for a place like this, not winter gear for a place with a civilized climate.”

  “I see.” Traku nodded. He said not a word about Unkerlant. Talsu understood that. Some Algarvians got very angry when they had to think about the place to which they were bound. “What have you got in mind, sir?”

  The officer started ticking things off on his fingers. “Item, a white smock. Item, a heavy cloak. Item, a heavy kilt. Item, several pairs of thick wool drawers reaching to the knee. Item, several pairs of thick wool socks, also reaching to the knee.”

  During the first winter of the war in the west, Algarvians bound for Unkerlant had been a lot less certain about what they needed. They’d learned, no doubt from bitter experience. Talsu wasn’t sorry; the redheads had given a lot of other people bitter experience, too. He said, “How many do you reckon go into several, sir?”

  “Say, half a dozen each,” the Algarvian answered. He pointed one forefinger at Talsu, the other at Traku. “Now we shall argue over price.”

  “You’ll argue with my father,” Talsu said. “He’s better at it than I am.”

  “Then I would sooner argue with you,” the major said, but he turned to Traku. “I have some notion of what things should cost, my dear fellow. I hope you will not prove too unreasonable.”

  “I don’t know,” Traku answered. “We’ll see, though. For everything you told me-” He named a sum.

  “Very amusing,” the Algarvian told him. “Good day.” He started for the doorway.

  “And a good day to you, too,” Traku replied placidly. “Don’t forget to shut the door when you go out.” He picked up his needle and went back to work. Talsu did the same.

  The officer hesitated with his hand on the latch. “Maybe you are not madmen, merely brigands.” He named a sum of his own, a good deal lower than Traku’s.

  “Don’t forget to shut the door,” Traku repeated. “If you want all that stuff for that price, you can get it. But you get what you pay for, whether you think so or not. How do you suppose those cheap drawers you find will hold out in an Unkerlanter blizzard?”

  Mentioning that name was a gamble, but it paid off. Scowling, the Algarvian said, “Very well, sir. Let us dicker.” He drew himself up and approached the counter again.

  He proved better at haggling than most of the redheads who’d gone up against Talsu’s father. He kept starting for the door in theatrical disbelief that Traku wouldn’t bring his price down further. The fourth time he did it, Talsu judged he really meant it. So did his father, who lowered the scot to something not too much higher than he would have charged one of his own countrymen.

  “There, you see?” the Algarvian said. “You can be reasonable. It is a bargain.” He stuck out his hand.

  Traku shook it, saying, “A bargain at that price?” After the major nodded, Traku said, “You might have screwed me down a little more yet.”

  “I do not quibble over coppers,” the redhead said grandly. “Silver, aye; coppers, no. You look to need coppers more than I do, and so I give them to you. I shall return in due course for my garments.” He swept out of the shop.

  Traku couldn’t help chuckling. “Some of them aren’t so bad,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” Talsu said grudgingly. “But I’ll bet he would have stabbed me if he’d been in the grocer’s shop, too.” Traku coughed a couple of times and made a point of looking busy for a while.

  When Talsu told the story over the table the next morning, Gailisa said, “I hope all the Algarvians get sent to Unkerlant. I hope they never come back, either.”

  Talsu beamed at his new bride. “See why I love her?” he asked his family- and, by the way he said it, the world at large. “We think alike.”

  His sister Ausra snorted. “Well, who doesn’t want the Algarvians gone? Powers above, I do. Does that mean you want to marry me, too?”

  “No, he’d know what he was getting into then,” Traku said. “This way, he’ll be surprised.”

  “Dear!” Laitsina gave her husband a reproving look.

  “Let discord not come among us,” Talsu said in the old language. Classical Kaunian came close to making common sense worth listening to. Then he had to translate. In Jelgavan, it came out sounding like, “We’d better not squabble among ourselves.”

  “That’s what our nobles kept telling us,” Gailisa said. “And we didn’t squabble with them, and so they led us into the war against Algarve-and right off a cliff.” She started to say something else in that vein, but suddenly stopped and looked at Talsu-not at his face, but toward his flank, where the redhead had stuck a knife into him. When she did speak again, it was in a subdued voice: “And now, the way Mezentio’s men have treated us, I wouldn’t be sorry to see the nobles back again.”

  “Aye, that’s the truth.” Talsu nodded toward his wife. “Next to the Algarvians, even Colonel Dzirnavu seems.. well, not too bad.” The rabid patriotism of a man whose kingdom groaned under the occupier’s heel couldn’t make him say more than that for the fat, arrogant fool who’d commanded his regiment.

  Traku said, “Anyhow, half the nobles have gone to the court at Balvi to suck up to the king the redheads gave us. If they suck up to the Algarvians, how are they any different than the Algarvians?”

  “I’ll tell you how,” Ausra said hotly. “They’re worse, that’s how. The Algarvians are our enemies. They’ve never made any bones about that. But our nobles are supposed to protect us from our enemies, instead of… sucking up, like Father says.” She looked on the point of bursting into tears-tears of fury more than sorrow.

  Gailisa got to her feet. “I’d better go on over now.” She bent and brushed Talsu’s lips with her own. “I’ll see you tonight, sweetheart.” Her voice was full of delicious promise. Talsu wondered if he were the only one who heard it. By the way his mother and father and even his sister grinned at him, he wasn’t.

  As soon as the door downstairs closed, showing Gailisa was on her way to her father’s shop, Ausra said, “You turned pink, Talsu.” She laughed at him.

  He glared. “Somebody ought to turn your backside red.”

  “That will be enough of that,” his mother said, as if he and Ausra were a couple of small, quarrelsome children. She turned toward him. “Remember what you said in the old-time language? You should have paid more attention to it.”

  “She started it.” Talsu pointed at his sister. He felt like a small, quarrelsome child-a small, quarrelsome, embarrassed child.

  “Enough,” Laitsina repeated. His mother could have given Colonel Dzirnavu lessons in command.
She went on, “Now you and Traku had better go on down and get some work done. Your poor wife shouldn’t have to do it all.”

  The unfairness of that took Talsu’s breath away. Before he could find a comeback, Traku said, “Aye, we’ll get downstairs, won’t we, son? That we, we’ll have half a chance to hear ourselves think.” He left in a hurry. Talsu, no fool, followed in a hurry.

  As they worked away on the Algarvian officer’s winter outfit, Talsu said, “I wish our nobles weren’t sucking up to King Mezentio’s pointy-nosed brother. I wish they were doing something to get rid of the redheads. I wish somebody was doing something to get rid of the miserable redheads.”

  His father finished threading a needle before answering, “Somebody is. Who painted all those slogans in classical Kaunian a few weeks ago?”

  “Algarvians haven’t caught anybody.” Talsu gestured dismissively. “Besides, who cares about slogans?”

  “Maybe there’s more to it than slogans,” Traku said. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

  “I haven’t seen any.” Talsu went back to basting together the redheaded major’s white smock. After a while, his silence grew thoughtful. The people with whom he studied classical Kaunian didn’t care for the Algarvians, not even a little. What all were they doing? Could he find out without putting his own neck on the line? That was a good question. He wondered what sort of answer it had. Maybe I ought to see, he thought.

  “Do you ever hear anything from Zossen?” Garivald asked Munderic. “Seems like I’ve been gone-forever.” A cold, nasty wind whipped through the forest west of Herborn. Garivald could smell snow on the breeze. It had already fallen a couple of times, but hadn’t stuck; along with the autumn rains, it left the ground under the trees a nasty, oozy quagmire.

  Munderic shook his head. “Nothing to speak of. The Algarvians still have their little garrison in it, if that’s what you mean.”