Jaws of Darkness d-5

by Harry Turtledove

  “You’d better get the blazes out of here,” Sidroc called back. “Those bastards will come and eat you for breakfast.” Someone translated that into gurgling Yaninan. The villagers exclaimed in horror. Some of them started fleeing east with no more than the clothes on their backs.

  “Curse it, keep your fool mouth shut,”SergeantWerferth snapped. “Now those miserable Yaninans will clog the roads for everybody else.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant.” But Sidroc wasn’t sorry. He had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud as he left the Yaninan village. He nudged Ceorl. “Didn’t they look like a flock of spooked chickens?”

  “Sure did,” Ceorl said. After another few paces, he added, “You’re not such a bad son of a whore after all.”

  “Thanks. You, too.” Sidroc grinned. Ceorl grinned back. In Forthweg, he’d been a ruffian, a robber, probably a murderer. Here, he was a comrade. Sidroc didn’t worry about what he did in his spare time. And Ceorl, evidently, had at last forgiven him for not being rough enough.

  Just after sunset, they joined up with the Algarvian brigade the crystallomancer had found. Sidroc wasn’t far from the lieutenant who led his group when that worthy asked the colonel in charge of the brigade, “Sir, what are we going to do now? Whatcan we do now?”

  “Fall back,” the colonel answered. “There’s higher ground farther east. They won’t have such an easy time pushing us off it. Wehave to hold there- nothing but Algarve behind.” The lieutenant nodded earnestly. Sidroc nodded, too, in a different way. The lieutenant thought everything would be all right once they got to the high ground, wherever it was. Sidroc had done enough retreating by now to doubt whether everything would ever be all right again.

  Pekka had had to beg the Seven Princes to get a few days’ leave from the sorcerous project in the Naantali district. She’d put Raahe and Alkio jointly in charge while she was away. They were solid and steady, not given to wild adventurism. She’d also advised them to smack Umarinen over the head with a rock when and as needed.

  Getting from the Naantali district back down to Kajaani was an adventure in and of itself. The carriage ride from the hostel to the nearest ley-line terminal was long and bumpy. Then, thanks to the way the earth’s energy grid in that part of the world ran, she had to go around three sides of a rectangle before finally heading south to her home town.

  And she did every bit of it with a smile on her face, which wasn’t like her. Small inconveniences didn’t bother her, while larger ones seemed small. This is what falling in love does, she thought. Iremember. I didn‘t think I’d ever feel this way again. But I do.

  It wasn’t that she’d stopped loving Leino. That made what she felt for Fernao seem stranger, but didn’t make it go away. Leino was far away, in time and space, while Fernao… Her whole body felt warm when she thought about Fernao, though the Kuusaman landscape outside looked as bleak and chilly as it always did in autumn.

  The ley-line caravan glided over the last low hills and down toward the harbor of Kajaani. “Coming up on Kajaani,” the ticket-taker said as he strode through the cars-as if anyone could doubt where this particular caravan was going. “Coming up on Kajaani, the end of the line,” he added-as if anyone seeing the gray, whitecap-flecked ocean ahead could doubt that, either.

  Grabbing her carpetbag from the rack above her seat, Pekka was among the first out the door when the caravan halted under the steep roof of the depot. There stood her sister Elimaki, waving. And there beside Elimaki was…

  “Uto!” Pekka squealed, and her son ran to her and squeezed the breath out of her. “Powers above, how big you’ve got!” she said.

  “Iam big,” he answered. “I’m nine.” He picked up the carpetbag she’d dropped to hug him. “I can carry this,” he said importantly, and he was right.

  Nine, Pekka thought, a little dazed. But he was also right about that, of course. He’d been four when the Derlavaian War started. The world had spent more than half his lifetime tearing itself to pieces.

  Pekka had thought she would tear herself to pieces, too, with guilt, when she saw her son. But that didn’t happen, either. She still loved him as unreservedly as ever. Aye, seeing him reminded her of Leino. But it wasn’t that she didn’t love Leino. It really isn’t, she though, as if someone had insisted that she didn’t. She felt as if she loved everybody-except the Algarvians. Them she still hated with a hatred whose cold viciousness astonished her whenever she paused to look at it.

  She didn’t have to look at it for long, because here came Elimaki behind Uto. “Good to see you again,” Pekka’s sister said as the two of them embraced and kissed each other on the cheek. “It’s been too long. It’s always much too long between your visits.”

  “I’m busy.” Pekka mimed exhaustion and falling to pieces to show how busy she was.

  Laughing, Elimaki said, “You must be doing something important.” When Pekka didn’t answer right away, her sister nodded to herself. “I know lots of people who don’t talk about what they’re doing these days.”

  “Ican’t talk about what I’m doing,” Pekka said.

  Elimaki nodded again. “That’s what they all say. Come on, let’s get up to the houses.” They’d lived side by side for years. “It’s getting dark.”

  “Of course it is,” Pekka said. Kajaani lay even farther south than the Naantali district, which meant fall and winter here were even darker and gloomier. As they hurried out of the depot, she asked, “How is Olavin?”

  It was, she thought, a harmless question. Elimaki’s husband wore uniform, aye, but he’d been a banker before the war and was a paymaster nowadays-he came nowhere closer to battle than Yliharma. Pekka was astonished when her sister stopped in her tracks and spoke in a low, toneless voice: “Oh. You must not have got my last letter yet.”

  “I never get them as fast as you think I should,” Pekka answered. “They always read them and scratch things out first. What’s happened?”

  Voice still flat, Elimaki said, “He’s taken up with one of his pretty little clerks, that’s what. He wants to leave. Our solicitors are snapping at each other.”

  “Oh, no!” Pekka exclaimed.

  “Oh, aye.” Elimaki smiled wryly. “I doubt I’ll ever see him again. Right now, I hope I don’t. He always thought he was too big for a provincial town like Kajaani. Now he gets to try his luck in the capital, and on someone else, or maybe on a lot of someone elses. Heis sending me money for the house. He’s always been scrupulous about money. Other things…” Pekka’s sister shrugged. “And how areyou!”

  “I don’t know. I think I’m stunned.” Pekka had intended to unburden herself to Elimaki. If she couldn’t talk about men and life and love with her own sister, with whom could she? The answer to that looked to be, no one.

  “UncleOlavinis a louse,” Uto said.

  Elimaki laughed a harsh laugh. “I’ve called him a lot worse than that, but I try not to do it where Uto can hear. He picks up enough bad language without learning it from me.” Uto looked proud when his aunt said that. Pekka had to stifle a giggle. Uto had always delighted in the mischief he caused.

  They took the local ley-line caravan to the stop where Pekka had got out so often on her way home from Kajaani City College. Then they walked up the hill to the lane with her house and Elimaki’s beside it. By then, full darkness had fallen. Lights were few and far between. Pekka worried more about slipping and turning an ankle than about footpads. Robbers were few and far between in Kajaani: an advantage to provincial towns, though Kuusamans generally were law-abiding folk.

  Elimaki’s house lay closer to the opening of the lane than did Pekka’s. “Why don’t you come in with me?” her sister said. “I’ll fix some supper and something for both of us to drink, and we can go on from there.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Pekka said.

  “What’s wonderful is to see you,” Elimaki answered. “Now I have someone I can let my hair down to.” She sighed. “I’m jealous of you and Leino. Isn’t that terrible?”


  Pekka’s ears heated. “Not really.” She changed the subject in a hurry: “I’ll help in the kitchen.”

  Elimaki didn’t let her do much, but she did fix them both stiff drinks. Uto hung around while the halibut steaks cooked. He stared wide-eyed at his mother all through supper. Elimaki, these days, surely felt more like a mother to him than Pekka. After supper, though, he hurried off to play. Before long, a horrible crash came from a back room. “What was that?” Elimaki called as she and Pekka carried dishes back to the kitchen to wash them.

  “Nothing,” Uto answered sweetly. Pekka snickered. She knewthat tone altogether too well.

  She and Elimaki had a couple of more drinks while they did the dishes, and they took more brandy out to the parlor. Eventually, Elimaki called Uto and told him to go to bed. He sent Pekka the look of appeal she knew too well and hadn’t seen in too long. “Do I have to, Mother?”

  “Is this the time you usually go to sleep?” Pekka asked. Powers above! I don’t even know! Reluctantly, Uto nodded-Elimaki would give him the lie if he did anything else. “Then you do,” Pekka told him. “But come give me a kiss first.” He ran to her. They clung to each other. Then, with less fuss than she’d expected, he went off to the back of the house. Pekka glanced over to Elimaki. “He’s growing up.” She emptied her glass.

  “Aye-when he feels like it,” her sister said. “He’s probably reading under the covers for a while. Sometimes I let him get away with that.” Elimaki drained her glass, too, then poured it full again and filled Pekka’s with it. “You haven’t said two words about yourself since you got off the caravan car.”

  “Well…” Discretion warred with brandy. For the moment, discretion won. Pekka said, “There are a lot of things I can’t talk about.” She could hear the beginning of a slur in her words. Brandy hadn’t lost by much.

  “I knowthat,” Elimaki said impatiently. “I don’t care about what youdo. I wouldn’t understand most of it anyway-I’m no mage. I want to know how youare.”

  “Do you?” Pekka said. Her sister nodded, the motion exaggerated enough to show she’d had a good deal to drink, too.“Do you?” Pekka repeated. Elimaki nodded again. And Pekka, surprising herself even as the words poured out, told her.

  Silence stretched and stretched after she finished. Ishouldn‘t have done that, she thought, and blamed the brandy. But it wasn’t just the brandy, and she knew it. One of the reasons she’d come home was to talk with Elimaki about Fernao. Now she’d done it. If only Olavin hadn’t chosen the most inconvenient possible time to take up with someone else, too.

  At last, Elimaki said, “I don’t know what to say. I… never expected anything like this-from Olavin or from you. Especially from you, I think.”

  “I didn’t reallyexpect it, either,” Pekka said, and knocked back the brandy Elimaki had poured her. “It just… happened. These things do, sometimes.”

  “I know. I ought to know.” Elimaki’s face twisted. She paused again, then asked, “What are you going to do? What are you going to tell Leino?”

  “I don’t know,” Pekka answered. “I just don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea in the world. I’ll cross that ice when I come to it.”

  “Ididn’t expect it of you,” Elimaki said again. “If anybody in the family was going to go off and take a lover, I thought it would be me. Here I was, sitting at home by myself-except for Uto, and that’s a pretty big ‘except.’ But I… sat here. I was lonely, but it wasn’t that bad. And now this.” Her goggle-eyed look also came only in part from the brandy.

  “I know. But-” Pekka stopped, unsure how to go on.

  Her sister held up a hand. “Never mind. Your face says it all. If I doused every one of the lamps, you’d still glow.”

  “Does it? Would I?” Pekka asked. Very solemnly indeed, Elimaki nodded. So did Pekka. “Well, it’s the truth. It’s how I feel. I know it’s not the way I’m supposed to feel, but I do.”

  “I don’t know whether to be green with envy of you or to want to hit you over the head with a brick,” Elimaki said. “These things usually don’t have happy endings, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” Pekka said. “At least we aren’t Algarvic people, where they go to knives sometimes instead of solicitors.” And then, even before her sister could say anything, she remembered Fernaowas of Algarvic blood. That gave her something brand new to worry about. As if I didn‘t have enough, she thought.

  Behind Garivald-who was getting used to thinking of himself as Fariulf- lay the Twegen River. Behind him also lay a good many artificers frantically repairing the bridges over the Twegen the Algarvians had knocked down with their sorcerously guided eggs. Ahead of him, to the east, were the rest of Forthweg and all the redheads trying to keep his countrymen and him from taking any more of it.

  To the north, smoke rose from the burning city of Eoforwic. Garivald supposed the Algarvians could have given this bridgehead even more trouble than they had if they weren’t trying to put down the rebellious Forthwegians in their capital.

  That didn’t mean Mezentio’s men were idle here. Garivald wished it would have. Eggs started bursting not far away. They were of the plain, ordinary, unsteered variety, but if one burst in the hole where he crouched it would kill him just as dead as the fanciest product of inventive Algarvian sorcery. The eggs kicked up great, choking clouds of brown dust. Coughing a little, Garivald marveled at that. Down in the Duchy of Grelz, it would have been raining now-the fall mud time-with snow on the way. Here, rain fell mostly in the late fall and winter, and snow was uncommon. So he’d been told, anyhow. He had trouble believing it, but it looked to be true.

  “Stay alert!”LieutenantAndelot shouted. “They like to attack after they plaster us with eggs. They think that’s an efficient way to do things. Our job is to show ‘em they’re wrong.”

  “That’s right,” Garivald said. From what he’d seen of Algarvian soldiers, they were alarmingly efficient, but he had to back up his officer. That was part of what being a corporal was about. And he spoke the absolute truth when he added, “We’ve got to hold on to this bridgehead, no matter what.”

  A moment later, somebody else let out a frightened yell: “Here they come!”

  Garivald quickly looked every which way. There were the kilted Algarvians loping forward. Some of them shouted, “Mezentio!” as they ran. They still acted as much like world-beaters as they had when they overran his home village of Zossen. True, they’d been driven out of Unkerlant, but that didn’t seem to be because they were bad soldiers, only because there weren’t quite enough of them to overwhelm the larger kingdom.

  Every which way also included behind Garivald. He’d learned as an irregular to know where he would retreat before he had to fall back. He’d had that lesson brutally reinforced in Swemmel’s regular army, too. A soldier who didn’t think ahead wouldn’t get many chances to think at all.

  “Mezentio!” Aye, the redheads still knew their business. As soon as the Unkerlanters started blazing at them, some of them dove for cover and blazed back. Others scrambled forward. Then they flopped down in turn, while the troopers in back of them ran past them and toward the Unkerlanter front line.

  “Get up there, curse it!” Garivald yelled at a soldier too deep in his hole to fight. “You’ve got a better chance if you blaze at them, too.”

  The soldier couldn’t have been older than sixteen. He’d had his father yelling at him back in his home village, not an underofficer with all the savage weight ofKingSwemmel ’s army behind him. His father, losing his temper, might beat him. A corporal, losing his temper, could do or cause to be done far worse than that. Garivald didn’t think he could ever make himself give a man over to the inspectors for sacrifice, but the youngster didn’t need to know that.

  And his curses did what they were supposed to do: they got the kid up and fighting. He might want to blaze Garivald along with or instead of the Algarvians, but he was blazing at them. Garivald blazed at one of them, too. The fellow kept running, so he must
have missed. He cursed again, this time at himself.

  He looked back over his shoulder. If the redheads kept coming, he’d have to scurry back toward that next hiding place. He hoped no one else had marked it-it wouldn’t hide a pair of men.

  Just as he was about to jump out of his hole and fall back, what seemed like all the eggs in the world descended on the Algarvians. The Unkerlanters had moved a lot of egg-tossers into the bridgehead. A crystallomancer must have reached the men who served them, and the efficient way they responded would have warmedKingSwemmel ’s heart-assuming anything could.

  Whatever such efficiency would have done to Swemmel’s heart, it wreaked havoc on the Algarvians. Their onslaught petered out, smashed under a blizzard of bursts of sorcerous energy. The ground shook under Garivald’s feet-not as it would have when one side or the other started sacrificing, but simply because so many eggs were coming down close to him.

  “Take that, you whoresons!”LieutenantAndelot screamed at the redheads. He was only a youngster himself. This probably seemed like a great lark to him.

  “We ought to go after the stinking buggers,” somebody said.

  But, youngster or not, Andelot knew how to follow orders. “No,” he said. “For the time being, we’re just supposed to hold this bridgehead.”

  “When do we break out, sir?” the soldier asked.

  “When the generals tell us to,” Andelot answered. Garivald found himself nodding. Sure enough, that was how things worked.

  Once driven off, the Algarvians didn’t resume their attack. From what the handful of surviving old-timers Garivald had talked with said, that was a change from the earlier days of the war. Mezentio’s men didn’t have the reserves of strength they’d once enjoyed. As far as he was concerned, they were quite bad enough as they were.

  Andelot came over to him. “What’s up, sir?” he asked cautiously. He didn’t like drawing official attention to himself.

  “Don’t worry, Fariulf-you’re not in trouble,” Andelot said, which did nothing to keep Garivald from worrying. “I just wanted to say you did a good job of handling that fellow who wasn’t blazing at the redheads.”