“What’s wrong?” he asked as he sat down on the bed. Something obviously was. One possibility sprang to mind right away: “You told me you weren’t with child. Were you wrong?”
“What?” Pekka’s eyes widened. To his vast relief, she shook her head. “No, it’s not that, powers above be praised. I’m just… upset, that’s all.”
“Why?” he said, and then, before he could stop himself, “Why come to me?”
Pekka chose to answer the second question first: “Because whatever else we are, we’re friends.” He nodded, though his lips tightened. Because that was true, they’re not being lovers any more hurt all the worse. Pekka went on, “I just got a letter from Leino. He’s leftHabakkuk so he can join in the fighting in Jelgava.”
“Has he?” Fernao said. Now Pekka nodded, miserably. Fernao made himself say what needed saying: “I hope he stays safe.” Did he mean it? Part of him did, anyhow, the larger part, the part not centered on his crotch.
“You know the spells the Algarvians use,” Pekka said. “They’ve never used them against ships. They use them on land whenever they can scrape together enough Kaunians to kill. I’m frightened for him. I wish he hadn’t done it.”
“He should be all right.” Fernao want to take her in his arms to comfort her. Did part of her want that, too? Was that why she’d come here? He wished it were, but he didn’t believe it. He also wished he were better at fooling himself. With a sigh, he went on, “If the news sheets are right, Mezentio’s men aren’t putting up much of a fight in Jelgava, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I don’t trust the Algarvians,” Pekka said, which made good, hard sense. “They can’t just go on retreating through Jelgava. If they do too much more retreating, they lose the war.”
That also made sense. The same thought had crossed Fernao’s mind. If it had crossed the minds of the people who wrote news sheets, they did their best not to let it show. Their best was quite good; the news sheets had a tone of giddy euphoria that sometimes made Fernao want to gag.
Leaning on his stick, he heaved himself to his feet once more and limped over to set a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, but she didn’t turn toward him, either. He sighed again. He didn’t see a wish coming true. “He’ll be fine,” he repeated.
Pekka rose, too. “Thank you, Fernao,” she said. “Youare a good friend. I shouldn’t have troubled you with this.”
You’re right-you shouldn’t have, went through his mind. But, again, that wasn’t altogether true. Aloud, he said, “It’s all right. Weare friends… whatever else we are, as you said.” Becoming lovers was destructive of friendships. He knew that. He was glad it hadn’t-quite-happened here.
“Do you ever want to go and fight the Algarvians yourself?” Pekka asked. Comparing him to her husband? Then she went on, “Sometimes I have all I can do, just staying here and working on this sorcery. It doesn’t seem enough.”
Fernao lifted his cane into the air. For a moment, he stood on two legs, one good, one bad. The cane was the point of the exercise. Pekka realized as much. As her eyes followed its motion, she turned red. Fernao said, “They already have as much of me as I care to give them, thank you very much.”
“Oh,” Pekka said softly. “I was foolish. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, which made his bad arm and shoulder twinge, but only for a moment. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and then, almost as romantic as an Algarvian, “If Mezentio’s men hadn’t ruined me for anything strenuous, Grandmaster Pinhiero probably wouldn’t have sent me here, and then I wouldn’t have been lucky enough to meet you.”
Pekka blushed once more. Not looking at him, she said, “You’re being difficult again, Fernao.”
“Am I?” He thought about shrugging again, and promptly thought better of it. “Well, maybe I am.”
“I’d better go,” she said quickly, and, as quickly, did. Fernao listened to her fading footsteps in the hall. If she hadn’t gone quickly, what would she have done? Thrown herself into his arms after all? Or found the nearest blunt instrument and hit him with it because he’d chosen to be difficult again?
How much would you give to know the answer to that? he wondered, but he didn’t have to keep wondering very long. Everything I have. Everything I could conjure up or borrow or steal.
He limped over to the desk, and to the report he’d been drafting for Pinhiero. With a grimace, he pushed it away. How was he supposed to pay attention to it when he had really important things on his mind? If Pinhiero had to wait a day or two longer for his answers, the world wouldn’t end, especially since he wouldn’t like them when he got them.
Another knock on the door. Fernao jumped. Inside him, his heart jumped, too. Was that Pekka coming back? At a sort of shambling trot, he hurried across the chamber and opened the door. “Oh,” he said dully. It wasn’t Pekka. It was, in fact, one of the Lagoan mages who’d come to the Naantali district to learn the new sorcery. After so long using Kuusaman and classical Kaunian, he had to make a conscious decision to speak his own language: “Come in, Viana.”
“Thank you,” she answered. She was perhaps a year or two older than he, nicely shaped but on the plain side, earnest, hard-working. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” he answered, limping back to the desk to flip the papers so she couldn’t read them. “What can I do for you? Sit down. Make yourself at home.”
“Thank you,” Viana said again. “I wanted to ask you some questions about what we were doing here and how we would use the sorcery in the field.”
“Go ahead,” Fernao said. Viana did, one question after another. Some of them were things she already should have known, but none was downright foolish. Mechanically, he answered them all.
After what seemed like forever and was in fact something above an hour, she said, “I’ve taken up enough of our time. Things are much clearer now. I appreciate your patience.” She got to her feet.
So did Fernao, using good leg, good arm, and cane to return to vertical. “It’s all right,” he said. After that session, he looked forward to getting back to work on the report for Grandmaster Pinhiero. It would have to be more interesting. With a last polite nod, Viana left.
And Fernao did start writing again. Halfway down the second leaf of paper after he did, his pen abruptly stopped scritching. He looked out the window and scratched his head. Iwonder if Viana came here trying to find out something that didn’t have anything to do with those spells. She must have known-mustn’t she?-the answers to a good many of the questions she’d asked. Was she trying to find out if I were interested in her?
Well, if she was, she had her answer. Fernao had gone on and on about magecraft without the slightest concern for anything else. He supposed he could repair that the next time they met. He supposed he could, but he didn’t really intend to, because the truth was, he wasn’t interested.
He muttered a low-voiced curse, then started to laugh. Life would have been so much simpler if he were.
Summer on Obuda meant long, misty days-it never got very hot-and mild, misty nights. Istvan remembered that from his days on the island as a Gyongyosian warrior. He was, he supposed, still a Gyongyosian warrior in some technical sense, but he thought of himself as a captive of the Kuusamans much more often.
Not everyone in the large captives’ camp on Obuda shared that view. As far asCaptainFrigyes was concerned, for instance, the war remained a going concern. Frigyes was ready to sacrifice himself and all the other captives to loose potent magecraft against the Kuusamans, just as he’d been ready to sacrifice the men under his command back on Becsehely.
“He’s daft, you know,”Kun said one morning as he and Istvan squatted over stinking latrine trenches. “Even if our sorcerous energy knocks this island out of the Bothnian Ocean and up onto the peaks of the Ilszung Mountains, it won’t change how the war turns out by even a copper’s worth.”
“You know that.” Istvan grunted. “I know that.” He grunted again. Kuus
aman guards strode the palisade not far away. Having to take care of his needs without privacy had left him badly constipated for a while. He didn’t even notice any more. “The captain doesn’t know it, or else he doesn’t care.” He tore off a handful of grass.
“Aye, well, no doubt you’re right.”Kun grabbed some grass, too. Fortunately, it grew very fast. “But I care. I don’t much fancy having my throat cut for nothing.”
Since Istvan didn’t, either, he just threw the grass down into the trench, got to his feet, and set his clothes to rights. “What are we going to do, then?” he asked. “We can’t very well go and tell the Kuusaman guards. That would get our throats cut, too, and not for nothing-when our friends found out.”
“My dear boy,”Kun said, as if he were Istvan’s father rather than his comrade. “My dear boy, if we ever had to do such a thing, we would also have to make sure our friends never, ever, found out.” That was so obvious, Istvan felt like a fool for not having seen it himself. In the nastier ways of the world if not in years, Kunwas a good deal older than he.
They queued up for breakfast. They queued up for everything in the captives’ camp: The Kuusamans regimented them even more thoroughly than the Gyongyosian army had done, which was saying a good deal. A few of the cooks were Kuusamans; more were Obudans-the occupiers put the natives to work for them. One of the Obudans, a medium-sized, medium-brown man-larger and darker than a Kuusaman-wore a dragon’s tooth on a leather thong around his neck. As Istvan, mess tin in hand, came up to him, the Gyongyosian pointed to the fang and said, “You might have bought that from me, once upon a time.” A lot of Obudan men were eager to get their hands on dragon’s teeth, thinking they reflected well on their virility.
The cook fingered the heavy tooth. “Maybe I did,” he replied. No reason he shouldn’t understand Gyongyosian; Istvan’s kingdom had had a couple of spells of ruling Obuda before the Kuusamans finally seized the island. Plunging his ladle into the kettle of fish-and-barley stew-heavy on the barley, light on the fish-he gave Istvan a bigger helping than usual.
“You lucky son of a goat,” saidKun, who hadn’t got any more than the usual. Istvan only smiled and shrugged. He knew some things about getting along with people that his sour-tempered friend had never figured out.
Once they finished eating, they washed their mess tins in big tubs of water set out for the purpose. Istvan’s spoon clanked in his tray. He had another spoon hidden under the mattress of his cot, the handle scraped down to make a knife blade of sorts. He’d never mentioned that toKun, or to anyone else, but you never could tell when a weapon might come in handy. As he carried the mess kit back to his bunk for the daily inspection, he stole a glance atKun. MaybeKun had a ground-down spoon knife stashed away somewhere, too. That hadn’t occurred to Istvan till now.
A Kuusaman lieutenant strode through the barracks as the Gyongyosian captives stood at attention by their cots. A sergeant would have done a better, more thorough job. So thought Istvan, at any rate, and never once stopped to wonder if his own underofficer’s rank had anything to do with his opinion.
Once the Kuusaman was satisfied, Frigyes pointed to Istvan and the men who’d served in his squad. “Wood-chopping detail,” he said, as if Istvan didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing. “This is something that needs to be done properly. Without enough wood, we don’t eat hot food.”
“Aye, Captain,” Istvan said resignedly. Still, he understood what Frigyes meant. Some of the work the Kuusamans gave their captives was designed to keep them busy, nothing more. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to mind the captives’ going through the motions on that sort of job. But firewood, as Frigyes had said, was serious.
It was, in fact, serious in several ways. The Kuusaman corporal who issued the captives their axes kept careful count of just how many he was issuing-no chance of stealing an axe and stowing it under a mattress. If the number turned in at the end of the day didn’t match the number given out at the start, there would be trouble.
Kungrumbled at chopping wood. Kun grumbled at a good many things, but he was particularly vain about his hands, which, for a soldier’s, were soft and fine. “How am I supposed to cast a proper spell with them all rough and bruised and battered?” he complained.
“You couldn’t cast much of a spell any which way,” Szonyi said. “You were only a mage’s apprentice, not a mage yourself.”Kun gave him a look full of loathing and swung his axe as if he would have liked to bring it down on Szonyi’s neck.
To Istvan, chopping wood was just a job. He’d been doing it since he was a boy. Back in his home valley, chopping wood meant staying warm through the harsh winter as well as having hot food in your belly.
He was raising his axe to split another chunk of beech when the gates to the captives’ camp, not too far away, swung open. “More poor buggers coming in,” Szonyi predicted.
“Aye, no doubt.” Istvan lowered the axe without chopping; he was willing to pause for a little while to see some new faces.
And new faces he saw-newer than he’d expected. “Who arethose fellows?” Szonyi’s deep voice cracked in surprise. “They sure aren’t Gyongyosians.”
The Kuusaman guards led in four men who towered over them, as Gyongyosians would have, but who, as Szonyi said, plainly did not come from Istvan’s kingdom. The newcomers were slimmer of build than most Gyongyosians, and their hair was coppery, not tawny. They wore Kuusaman military clothing, which did not fit them well at all.
“I know who they have to be,”Kun said. “They’re Algarvians.”
“Stars above, I think you’re right.” Istvan stared at the redheads, the only real allies his kingdom had. “But what are they doing out here in the middle of the Bothnian Ocean? Algarve is… way over on the other side of the world somewhere.” What he knew of geography would have filled the heads of perhaps two pins-even though, thanks to his army service, he’d seen much more of the world than he’d ever expected (or wanted) while growing up in the little village of Kunhegyes.
“Let’s ask them when we get off our shift,” Szonyi said.
Kunsmiled a sour smile. “And what language will you ask them in?” he inquired.
Szonyi had only one answer for that, which was no answer at all. A typical Gyongyosian peasant, he spoke only his own language. Sheepishly, he said, “I don’t suppose they know Gyongyosian.”
“About as much as you know of Algarvian, probably.” Aye, Kun enjoyed making Szonyi look like a fool.
The new captives, naturally, noticed everybody staring at them. They waved to the Gyongyosians and bowed from the waist as if they were visiting nobles. “Show-offs,” Szonyi muttered.
Then one of the Algarvians, waving again, called out, “Hello, friends! How are you?” in almost unaccented Gyongyosian.
“So they don’t speak our language, eh?” Istvan said. Just asKun enjoyed making Szonyi look like a fool, Istvan enjoyed turning the tables on cleverKun. He got fewer chances than he would have liked, but made the most of the ones he did find.
Kun, as usual, looked furious at getting caught in a mistake. Doing his best to discover how such a disaster might have happened, he asked the Algarvian, “Where did you learn to speak Gyongyosian?”
“My father was on the staff of the minister to Gyongyos years ago,” the redheaded man answered, “and I was born in Gyorvar. So you could say I learned your language in your capital.”
That was more than Istvan could say himself. His own upcountry accent sometimes made him feel self-conscious when he spoke to officers or others who had a more elegant turn of phrase-sometimes even toKun, who sprang from Gyorvar. But Istvan knew what he wanted to find out: “Why are you here, so far from Algarve?” Asking the question that way let him disguise his own geographical shortcomings, too.
With a wave to his comrades, the Algarvian said, “We crewed two leviathans that were bringing… oh, one thing and another from Algarve to Gyongyos. We would have brought other things back from Gyongyos to Algarve: the kinds of things you have
more of than we do, and that we could use in the war.”
Istvan started to ask what sorts of things those were, but decided not to. Some of the Kuusaman guards were bound to speak his language, and he didn’t want to give them the chance to learn anything interesting. Instead, he said, “And something went wrong, did it?”
“You might say so,” the redheaded man replied. “Aye, you just might say so. Some Kuusaman dragons were flying east to drop eggs on some island or other that belongs to you, and they saw our leviathans and dropped their eggs-or enough of their eggs-on them instead. They hurt the animals too badly to let them go on. After that, it was either surrender or try to swim home by ourselves.” He shrugged. “We surrendered.”
Istvan tried to imagine guiding a leviathan-no, a couple of leviathans- from Algarve all the way to Gyongyos. From one side of the world to the other. He couldn’t very well tell the foreigners that they should have fought to the death, not when he’d wound up in a captives’ camp, too.
Eyeing the barracks and the yard with something less than delight, the Algarvian asked, “What do you people do for fun around here?”
“What do we do for fun?” Istvan returned. “Why, we chop wood. We dig latrines. When we’re very lucky and we haven’t got anything else to do, we sit around and watch the trees out beyond the stockade grow.”
The Algarvian had a marvelously expressive face. Hearing Istvan’s reply, he looked as if he’d just heard his father and mother had died. “And what do you do for excitement?” he inquired.
“If you want excitement, you can try to escape,” Istvan answered. “Maybe you can get out of the camp. Then maybe you can steal a ship. Then maybe you wouldn’t have to swim home.”
“I am always glad to meet a funny man,” the redhead said. Istvan started to puff out his chest, till the Algarvian added, “Too bad I am not so glad to meet you.” His smile took away most of the sting; it might have taken away all of it hadKun not sniggered. Istvan gave him a dirty look, which only made him snigger again, louder this time.
Jaws of Darkness d-5 Page 50
