Jaws of Darkness d-5

by Harry Turtledove

  “My thanks,” the Yaninan told him, and gave his own orders in his own language. Sabrino understood not a word of them, but what they were was hardly in doubt. And, almost as if diving on targets in a practice field, the Yaninans carried out the attack. The behemoths below scattered, as targets would not and could not, but that mattered little, for what was a behemoth’s speed when measured against a dragon’s? If Scoufas and his men had to get a little closer to flame the behemoths than they would have needed to do with more cinnabar in them, what difference did that make?

  But, just as Sabrino began to gloat in good earnest, Captain Orosio’s face appeared in the crystal that kept the wing commander in touch with his fellow Algarvians. “Enemy dragons!” the squadron leader shouted. “A whole great swarm of them, coming out of the west!”

  They were painted rock-gray, of course, and Sabrino hadn’t seen them against the clouds. I’m getting old, he thought. If he wanted to get much older, he would have to fight hard now. “Melee!” he ordered. “If we break up their formation, we have the edge.” The Unkerlanters did fine as long as they acted in accordance with someone else’s plan. If they had to think for themselves, to decide quickly, they had trouble.

  A wild melee it was, too, once the Algarvians got in amongst the Unkerlanters. Dragons spun crazily through the sky. Sabrino tried to flame one of Swemmel’s sparrowhawks-that was the name the Algarvians gave the Unkerlanters’ best dragonfliers-but couldn’t come close enough to do it.

  When an Unkerlanter dragon got on his tail, he had to fly like a man possessed to keep from getting flamed himself. But he managed to blaze the enemy dragonflier with his stick-a lucky blaze, but he was glad to take it- and the rock-gray beast went wild, attacking every dragon around it. Since the Unkerlanters had far more dragons in the air than he did, that helped his side more than theirs.

  It didn’t do enough to help the Yaninan dragonfliers down below, though. The Unkerlanters had enough dragons to assail the Algarvians and Yaninans at the same time. Major Scoufas’ image appeared in Sabrino’s crystal. “We have to pull out!” he shouted.

  “We haven’t got rid of the bridgehead,” Sabrino said, blazing at another Unkerlanter dragonflier and missing.

  “If we stay, we still will not be rid of the bridgehead-and the Unkerlanters will be rid of us,” Scoufas replied.

  Sabrino cursed as he pondered. Had he not judged Scoufas right about the first part of that, he would have ignored the second; men and dragons fought to be used up at need. As things were… “Aye,” he said bitterly, and began the tricky business of getting his wing free. They’d hurt the Unkerlanters, but Swemmel still had men-and, worse, behemoths-on this bank of the Trusetal.

  All things considered, Garivald was pleased with the crop he and Obilot had managed to plant. They’d started late, with the mule they’d hired from Dagulf. But, looking over the soft green of growing barley and rye, he thought they should end up with plenty to get them through the winter.

  “Not so bad,” he told her after a long day of weeding.

  “No, not so bad,” she agreed. “The farther we are from anybody else, the better, too.” She dipped a horn spoon into the porridge of barley and leeks they were eating for supper.

  Garivald grunted. “That’s true enough, by the powers above. I didn’t think I’d end up a hermit, but you never know, do you?”

  “No.” Obilot’s eyes went far away. Back to whatever she’d had before the Algarvians swarmed into the Duchy of Grelz? Maybe. Garivald had never had the nerve to ask such questions, and she’d never said what drove her into the irregulars. All she said now was, “You never know.”

  Sooner or later, they would have to go back into Linnich. The farm had no salt lick; they could trade herbs and vegetables from the garden plot for salt, and for tools, and maybe for some chickens or ducks, too. When spring came again, they would need a draught animal for the plowing. Garivald was in no hurry. Not even the thought of seeing Dagulf cheered him. His friend reminded him of all he’d lost when Zossen vanished off the face of the earth.

  And he wasn’t sure he could trust Dagulf, not any more. They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. A lot had happened in that time. A lot could have happened, too. The only way to find out would be the hard way.

  Filled with such gloomy thoughts, Garivald was glad to lie down on the benches against the wall of the hut he and Obilot had taken for their own and go to sleep. As usual, a day in the fields made him sleep as if he were stuffed into a rest crate till the next morning.

  When he woke, he ate more barley porridge and went out to the fields to begin all over again. He might not do exactly the same thing day after day, but he always had plenty to do. No one who lived on a farm ever complained of too little to do, not between planting time and harvest.

  He’d just thrown a rock at a rabbit-and, to his disgust, missed, for it would have gone into the pot had he hit it-when three men came up the path leading to Linnich. They were the first men he’d seen on the path since he and Obilot found this farm. Now that spring had come, it was hardly a path at all, being much overgrown. Whoever had used this place before he came hadn’t had much use for company, either.

  Those three men saw him, too. One of them waved. Without thinking, Garivald waved back. He cursed himself for a fool afterwards, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. Two of the men carried sticks slung on their back; the third had his in his hand. If they were bandits, Garivald was in trouble. If they served King Swemmel, he was liable to be in more trouble still.

  “Hail!” called the one who’d waved. “Are you Fariulf?”

  “Aye, that’s me,” Garivald answered with something approaching relief. If they were using his false name, they didn’t want him for the crime of fighting the Algarvians without doing it under King Swemmel’s auspices. He hadn’t done much as Fariulf to get into trouble. “What do you want?” he added as the men came forward.

  Obilot was watching from the garden. He wondered if she would get a stick from inside the farmhouse and start blazing. But he stood between her and the three oncoming men, who’d got very close by then.

  “Are you hale?” asked the fellow who was doing the talking. He answered his own question: “Aye, I can see you are. Come along with us.”

  “Come along with you where?” Garivald asked.

  “Someplace you should have been long before this: King Swemmel’s army,” replied the-the impresser, Garivald realized he had to be. “You think you can sit out the war here in the middle of nowhere? That’s not how things work, pal. Come along quiet-like and nothing bad’ll happen to you till the cursed Algarvians have their chance at your worthless hide.” By then, all three aimed their sticks at him.

  Considering what they could have done to him, considering what they surely would have done to him had they known his real name, going into the Unkerlanter army didn’t strike Garivald as such a bad bargain. All he said was, “Let me tell my woman good-bye.” He pointed back toward Obilot.

  He expected them to refuse; impressers had an evil name. Maybe they were relieved he didn’t put up more of a fuss, for the man who talked for them replied, “Go ahead, but make it snappy.”

  “I will.” Garivald beckoned Obilot forward. She came with obvious reluctance, but she came. Her face was hard and closed, showing nothing to the impressers but nothing to him, either. He made the best of things he could: “Bringane, they’re taking me into the army.”

  “How will I get the crop in without you?” she cried. But her voice, like his, held a note of relief. This wasn’t good, but it could have been worse. In the army, at least, he’d have a chance to fight back.

  With a certain rough sympathy, the impresser said, “Things are hard all over the kingdom, lady.”

  “Why are you making them harder for Fariulf and me?” Obilot demanded.

  “Because we need men if we’re going to whip the Algarvians,” the impresser replied. “Now let’s get going. We haven’t got all
day.”

  Garivald squeezed Obilot. He kissed her. He said, “I’ll come back.” She nodded. He hoped she believed him. He tried to believe himself. The impressers snickered. He wondered how often they’d heard the same promises. Then he wondered how often those promises came true. Having done that, he wished he hadn’t.

  The impressers led him away. He shook his head at Obilot as he went, warning her not to try to blaze them. One against three-even two against three-wasn’t good odds. Her shoulders went up and down in a sigh, but she finally nodded.

  By the time he got into Linnich, Garivald wondered if he shouldn’t have let Obilot try to stop the impressers. He was hungry and tired, and wanted nothing so much as to go back to the farm, forget about the world, and have the world forget about him, too.

  Most of the people on the streets in Linnich were women and old men. He wondered who’d told the impressers he was out there on that farm away from the village. If he ever found out, if he ever got his hands on that person… He hoped it wasn’t Dagulf. That would be a terrible thing to think of a man who had been his friend. But he knew he would wonder for a long time to come.

  More impressers stood in the market square, along with the men they’d rounded up. He didn’t see Dagulf there, which raised his suspicions. Some of the men who would be going into King Swemmel’s army were hardly men at all, but youths. Others had gray hair and gray stubble on their cheeks. Only a couple were, like Garivald, somewhere in the prime of life.

  “Let’s get moving,” an impresser said. He was in the prime of life; Garivald resentfully wondered why he wasn’t out there trying to blaze Algarvians instead of rounding up his own countrymen. The impresser went on, “We’ve got a long way to go to the closest ley-line caravan depot.”

  Wherewas the closest ley-line caravan depot? Garivald didn’t know. Ley lines weren’t so dense in this stretch of the Duchy of Grelz. He didn’t think there was one within half a day’s walk of Linnich, though. That gave him a certain amount of hope. With a little luck, he might slip away during the night. He’d had plenty of practice slipping away in his days as an irregular.

  But if he knew tricks, the impressers knew tricks, too. Sure enough, they had to halt by the side of the road for the night. They proved to have light leg irons in their packs, and fastened their recruits together before doling out black bread and sausage to them. Garivald sighed. That was the sort of efficiency King Swemmel surely approved of.

  Garivald never found out the name of the town with the caravan depot. He was formally taken into the army-as Fariulf son of Syrivald-inside the depot, before boarding the caravan. A bored-looking clerk asked, “Do you take oath to defend the Kingdom of Unkerlant and King Swemmel from all foes, as directed by those set over you?”

  “Aye,” Garivald answered, as everyone else surely did. What would Swemmel’s men do to someone who refused to swear that oath? Garivald knew he didn’t want to find out.

  Riding the ley-line caravan was something new and exciting. He’d sabotaged them, but he’d never ridden in one before. By the way some of the other new recruits exclaimed, he wasn’t the only one aboard a caravan car for the first time. How the countryside whizzed past as the caravan glided northwest! That was the first thought that struck his mind. The second was how devastated the countryside looked. It had all been fought over at least twice, parts of it more often than that. As he went through one wrecked village after another, he began to realize just how vast the war against Algarve really was.

  More recruits-again, mostly boys and older men-boarded at each stop, till they filled his caravan car and, presumably, the others. Food was more black bread; drink was water. He’d never tried to sleep sitting up on a hard bench. He didn’t think he could. When he got tired enough, though, he did.

  He stayed on the caravan for two and a half days, rising from that seat only to ease himself in a privy that stank and soon began to overflow. By the time the caravan stopped somewhere far outside the Duchy of Grelz, ever so much farther from home than Garivald had ever gone before, he could barely hobble from the car.

  No one waiting for him seemed to care. He got a rock-gray tunic and socks and a knapsack and a pair of stout boots. He got a stick. When the sergeant who issued it to him asked if he knew how to use it, he just said, “Aye.” The sergeant made a mark on a leaf of paper and sent him to the right. Those who said no went to the left.

  A mage came before the group of tired, confused men on the right and began chanting spells over them. Someone asked what they were for. “They’ll ward you against Algarvian wizardry-some of it, anyway,” a watching soldier answered. Garivald thought of Sadoc the irregular and hoped this mage knew his business better than Sadoc had.

  Once the magic was done, the new soldiers got back onto a caravan car. This one had a bad privy, too. After another day and a half, the ley-line caravan stopped again. As Garivald got out, he asked, “Is this where we train?”

  “Train?” Somebody already on the ground laughed. “We haven’t got time to waste on training you. We gave you a stick, right? If you live long enough, you’ll get trained, by the powers above.” And with no more fanfare than that, Garivald trudged off to battle against the Algarvians.

  Sidroc couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a quiet stretch of front. There were Unkerlanters west of him: he knew that. But Plegmund’s Brigade, for once, wasn’t in the midst of desperate righting at every hour of the day and night. Patrols went out with some reasonable expectation that they wouldn’t come back chopped to pieces or fail to come back at all.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” Sergeant Werferth said to anyone and everyone who would listen. “Before long, the Algarvians are going to ship us north. That’s where they’re in trouble, so that’s where we’ll go.”

  “Not fair,” Sidroc said. “They’ve been loafing in the north for the past two years. Let them worry about Swemmel’s whoresons, and leave us alone.”

  “Life isn’t fair, sonny.” Werferth looked around to make sure no redheads were in earshot, then went on, “Besides, they may really need us. From what I hear, the powers below have got their teeth into that whole Algarvian army up there.”

  “That’s not good,” Sidroc said slowly.

  “Did I say it was?” Werferth answered. “Of course, there’s another reason they might send us up there, too. If they run into much more trouble, the fight’ll be heading back toward Forthweg. They might figure we’d fight harder trying to keep Swemmel’s bastards out of our own kingdom.”

  “They might be right.” Sidroc had seen enough of the war in Unkerlant to know what both sides did to villages they overran. He winced at the idea of that happening inside Forthweg. It mostly hadn’t when the redheads conquered his kingdom; the Forthwegians had been overwhelmed too fast.

  “My arse,” Ceorl said. The ruffian had been scraping mud from his boots with a knife. Looking up, he went on, “Far as I’m concerned, the powers below are welcome to Forthweg, and so are the Unkerlanters. I joined Plegmund’s Brigade to get the demon out of there. I don’t give a flying futter if I never see the stinking place again as long as I live.”

  Plenty of people up in Forthweg would probably be glad never to see Ceorl again, either. Sidroc didn’t say that. It held true for him as well. It held true for a lot of the men in Plegmund’s Brigade.

  Sergeant Werferth, Sidroc judged, was one of the few for whom it might not hold true. Werferth hadn’t joined the Brigade because everyone hated him. He’d joined because he liked being a soldier, and this gave him the chance to keep doing what he liked and what he was good at.

  Before Sidroc could say anything along those lines, a runner came trotting up and spoke in Algarvian, which meant Brigade business: “Brigadier Polinesso orders everybody who’s not on patrol to report to the village of Ossiach at midafternoon. He’s got something special to say.”

  “Must be special,” Sidroc said. “He’s never done anything like this before.”

  “Do you know what it i
s?” Ceorl asked the runner, who shook his head. Ceorl cursed the fellow as he went off to spread the word elsewhere.

  “Something special,” Werferth repeated in musing tones. “I wonder what it could be. You don’t suppose the war’s over, do you?”

  Sidroc and Ceorl both laughed. “Fat chance,” Sidroc said. Werferth looked rueful. After a moment, he laughed, too. Sidroc didn’t think the war would ever end.

  Ossiach wasn’t far away. The rough-looking, bearded men of the Brigade filled the market square to the bursting point. If any Unkerlanters remained in the village, they prudently stayed out of sight.

  Brigadier Polinesso climbed up onto a crate so the soldiers he commanded could see him. “We have a special new regiment alongside of us on the left, men,” he said. “You need to know this, so you will not take them for the enemy. They will wear the flag of Algarve on their left tunic sleeves. We expect them to fight like tigers-like tigers, do you hear?”

  “Aye, Brigadier,” the assembled men of the Brigade chorused.

  “Good. Very good. You are dismissed,” Polinesso said.

  Sidroc scratched his head all the way back to his squad’s encampment. “What in blazes was he talking about? Who’s coming in next to us? We know about the Algarvians. We know about the Yaninans.”

  “I’d like to kill the Yaninans, the way they run,” Ceorl said.

  “They had some regiments of Sibians,” Werferth said, “but I think the Sibs went into Sulingen and never came out. Besides, Mezentio’s lost Sibiu, so he won’t get any more regiments there.”

  “Black Zuwayzin?” Sidroc suggested.

  Ceorl howled laughter. “I’d like to see those naked whoresons down here, especially in the wintertime. They’d freeze their balls off, and that’s no joke.”

  “Besides,” Werferth added, “they don’t wear tunics. How can they put flags on the sleeves of tunics they aren’t wearing?”

  “All right, not Zuwayzin,” Sidroc said. “But who, then?”