Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  But Oraste, whose temper was usually shorter than Bembo’s, shook his head. “I don’t think he knows anything,” he said—not the first time he’d expressed such sentiments about Pesaro. Now, though, he amplified them: “Look. He’s picking on other pairs, too.”

  “Probably going to shake down everybody.” Bembo’s voice remained bitter, as if he’d never shaken down anybody. But if Pesaro did have the goods on him, he knew he’d have to fork over: getting your sergeant angry at you wasn’t much different from having the powers below eat you.

  Along with the other constables, Bembo and Oraste trooped into Pesaro’s office. They crowded it to the point of overflowing; it was none too big to begin with. Sitting behind his rickety desk, Pesaro seemed almost trapped. “What’s up, Sergeant?” somebody asked—Bembo couldn’t see who.

  He had trouble seeing Pesaro, too. But the sergeant never had any trouble making himself heard. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s up. What’s up is, they need more people to hold the lid on over in Eoforwic. There’s a real live nasty Kaunian underground on the loose there, and Forthwegian rebels, and the Unkerlanters have been sending dragons over the place. And so you men are heading west. There’s a ley-line caravan leaving from the depot here an hour before noon. You’re all going to be on it.”

  “Eoforwic?” Half the constables in the crowded little office, Bembo among them, howled out the name of the Forthwegian capital in protest. But their hearts weren’t in it—or at least Bembo’s wasn’t. He didn’t much feel like packing up and going, but one Forthwegian town was likely to be much like another.

  For any of the constables who didn’t understand that, Sergeant Pesaro spelled it out: “Anybody who doesn’t care for the idea can go put on a different uniform and get shipped a lot farther west than Eoforwic.”

  Protest was cut off as if sliced by a knife. Nobody wanted to go fight in Unkerlant. Soldiers coming through Gromheort cursed the constables and envied them their soft jobs. Bembo didn’t envy the soldiers theirs, which were anything but soft.

  Into the sudden silence, Sergeant Pesaro said, “That’s better. You will be on Platform Three at the depot by an hour before noon. No excuses—not a chance. Anybody who misses the caravan will go straight to Unkerlant, and that’s a promise. Don’t bring anything more than you can carry, either. Questions?”

  “Why did you pick us, Sergeant?” someone asked.

  “Because you’re so sweet,” Pesaro growled. “Any more questions?” After that, there were none. Pesaro waved a hand. “Dismissed.”

  Bembo went back into the barracks and started loading a duffel bag. It got full long before he’d gone through everything around his cot. Cursing, he started editing his earthly goods. He needed three tries before finally deciding he could do no better. Even then, the canvas sack left him panting and sweating by the time he’d lugged it to the caravan depot.

  “What have you got in there?” demanded the Algarvian who checked his name off a list.

  “Your wife,” Bembo snarled. He and the fellow with a clipboard cursed each other till, grunting with effort, he hauled the duffel bag onto the caravan car.

  Oraste was already aboard. His sack held about a quarter as much as Bembo’s. “Have you got everything you need?” he asked.

  “No,” Bembo said. He would have flung his bag against the wall of the car, but it was too heavy to fling. He eased it over there and flung himself into a seat. Oraste, who laughed at very little, laughed at him. Bembo petulantly glared at his partner till the ley-line caravan glided west out of Gromheort.

  Before long, he was in country he’d never seen before. He took a while to realize it; the countryside didn’t look much different from that around Gromheort. Fields with growing wheat and barley slid past his window. So did groves of olives and almonds and citrus fruit. And so did villages full of whitewashed houses, some with red tile roofs, others—more and more as he got farther west—with roofs of thatch.

  War had touched the countryside only lightly. Peasants went about their business as they had when King Penda ruled Forthweg. As the ley-line caravan passed through towns—it stopped three or four times to pick up more constables—the ruined buildings nobody had bothered to repair stood out much more noticeably, as they did in Gromheort. Once the caravan got into the territory Unkerlant had occupied before Algarve went to war with her, the wreckage got fresher and worse. King Swemmel’s men had fought hard every inch of the way.

  Eoforwic surprised Bembo, who said, “I didn’t think this miserable excuse for a kingdom had such a big city.”

  “It’s still full of Forthwegians,” Oraste replied with a shrug. “Them and Kaunians.” He made as if to spit on the floor of the caravan car, but reluctantly thought better of it. When the car stopped at the depot, he shouldered his sack and hurried out. Bembo’s duffel bag hadn’t got any lighter while it lay there. Swearing, bent almost double under it, he followed his partner onto the platform.

  Another cheerful fellow with a clipboard checked his name off a list. Then the other Algarvian said, “We’ve got carriages waiting for you people, to take you to your barracks.”

  “Oh, powers above be praised!” Bembo said fervently. “I was afraid I’d have to walk.” He carried his duffel bag with jauntier style, not least because he knew he wouldn’t have to carry it far. They did things with class here in the capital.

  That impression lasted till he got to the barracks, which were every bit as crowded and gloomy as the ones in Gromheort. He got an iron cot in the middle of a room full of constables—a room full, mostly, of strangers.

  Someone called his name in a loud voice. “Here,” he answered, and then, seeing the pips on the other constables’ shoulder boards, “Here, Sergeant.” He wondered what sort of a new boss he was getting.

  “I’m Folicone,” the sergeant said. He was younger and skinnier than Pesaro. Of course, even Bembo was skinnier than Pesaro, so that didn’t say much. Folicone went on, “I’m going to partner you with Delminio here.” He nodded toward a constable whose cot stood only a couple of spaces away from Bembo’s.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Delminio said, and clasped wrists with Bembo. He wore bushy red side whiskers, and mustachios and chin beard waxed to spikes.

  “Pleased to meet you, too,” Bembo answered. But then he turned to Folicone and said, “Sergeant, Oraste and I, we’ve been partners a long time, you know what I mean?”

  “And maybe you will be again, in a while,” Sergeant Folicone said. “But I want you with somebody who knows the ropes here while you’re breaking in.”

  That made too much sense for Bembo to argue with it. He nodded and said, “No offense,” to Delminio.

  “It’s all right,” Delminio answered. “Getting a new partner is a funny business. I know that.” He eyed Bembo the same way Bembo was eyeing him. What sort of partner will you be? “You want to go into the Kaunian quarter with me?” Delminio asked. He hesitated. “You do know about the business with the Kaunians?”

  “Oh, aye,” Bembo said, and Delminio visibly relaxed. Bembo added, “I’m not what you’d call happy about it, but what can you do? It’s wartime.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got some sense,” Delminio said. Sergeant Folicone nodded. Bembo beamed. He’d made a good first impression. Delminio went on, “Just come with me. The quarter isn’t far.”

  Bembo went past the same sorts of warning signs he would have seen in Gromheort. The Kaunian district here looked much the same as Gromheort’s, too, though it was larger. He watched Kaunian women’s backsides, as the blonds went around in trousers. So did Delminio. They noticed each other doing it, and they both grinned. “I think I can manage here,” Bembo said. His new partner nodded. Bembo wondered if he could find a Kaunian wench for himself. It might not be too hard.

  Up till the time when the redheads swept through the Kaunian quarter of Eoforwic, Vanai had been through only one roundup. And back then, she hadn’t even known what the Algarvian constables were doing when they took Kau
nians out of Oyngestun. They’d told soothing lies then: they’d said they were sending people west as laborers. Some of her fellow villagers had even gone with them of their own free will.

  It wasn’t like that anymore. The surviving Kaunians knew the Algarvians wanted them for one thing and one thing only: their life energy. And so, when the redheads swarmed into the Kaunian district, the blonds did their best to hide.

  The roundup, of course, came without warning. Anyone the hunters caught on the street was simply nabbed and grabbed and hauled away. But the captured Kaunians’ cries of despair and the Algarvians’ shouts of triumph warned others of the raid. Like any hunted animals, most of the Kaunians who weren’t caught in the open had holes in which to hide.

  Vanai was no exception. After she was captured and brought into the Kaunian district, she’d expected something like this to happen sooner or later—probably sooner. And so she’d gone exploring in the block of flats where the redheads had put her. Waiting quietly in her flat for them to come get her and take her away … She shook her head. By the powers above, I’m not going to make it easy for them, she thought.

  Exploring had been easier because so many of the flats stood empty. She didn’t like to think about that. But it gave her a lot more choices than she would have had otherwise.

  She’d found a good spot in a vacant ground-floor flat: a closet that had a lot more room than it seemed to, and one where a searcher peering in, even with a lamp, wouldn’t be able to spy her. He would have to step all the way into the closet to notice it took an unexpected dogleg. Whoever’d made it that way might have had a hidey-hole in mind.

  When the first terrified cries rang out, Vanai knew at once what they meant, what they had to mean. She wasted not an instant. She had to get downstairs and into her hiding place before constables started swarming through the building. If she didn’t, she was ruined. The baby she carried made her awkward and slow, but she forced herself to hurry downstairs anyhow.

  More Kaunians, many more, were going up than down. “You fool, it’s death on the streets!” a man said as she pushed past him, moving against the tide.

  He was bound to be right, of course. But Vanai wasn’t heading for the streets, though she didn’t say so. She burst out of the stairwell and went down the hallway toward that empty flat at a lumbering trot.

  Just outside the open door, panic nearly froze her. What if someone else has found this place, too? It won’t hold two, and I won’t have time to go looking anywhere else.

  Almost moaning in terror, she dashed back to the closet. No one cried out in fear even greater than hers, believing her to be one of the hunters rather than the hunted. And no one shouted for her to go away, either. She still had the place to herself.

  “Powers above be praised,” she gasped, making herself as comfortable as she could in the little hidden niche.

  Only then did another bad thought strike her: if this hiding place was so splendid, why did this flat stand empty? The redheads must have caught whoever had been living here before. Would constables come casually walking in, check the closet, and take her away? She couldn’t run, not any more. It was too late for that.

  Footsteps in the hallway and loud Algarvian voices said she had indeed made her choice. Now she would have to live—or die—with it. “Miserable blonds,” a man growled, his voice sounding as if it came from right outside the doorway to the flat in which she cowered. “Finding the lousy buggers is getting to be like pulling teeth.”

  “We’ve got to do it, though,” another Algarvian answered. He might have been talking about any hard, not particularly pleasant job … till he went on, “The Forthwegians here won’t miss them, anyhow.”

  “Well, of course they won’t,” the first constable said, as if his friend were belaboring the obvious. And then that first redhead’s voice came from inside the flat: “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Vanai shivered. She forced herself to stop—it might make a noise. She tried not even to breathe.

  “Not bloody likely we’ll flush anybody out of this place—Kaunians usually like to run upstairs, not hide down low.” The second Algarvian spoke now as the voice of experience.

  “I know, I know,” his pal said. “We’ve got to go through the motions, though.” A piece of furniture went over with a crash. The Algarvian grunted. “Nothing there. Let me check this closet here, and then we can go on upstairs, like you said.”

  He spoke his last few words just outside the closet where Vanai hid. The baby growing inside her chose that moment to kick. The unexpected motion within her made her want to jump. It made her want to scream. She did neither. She bit down hard on her lower lip and waited in dark, dusty silence.

  Then she wanted to scream again; for the silence, while it remained dusty, was no longer so dark. That Algarvian had a lamp, which he used to illuminate as much of the closet as he could from the entrance to it. Just for a moment, light touched the tip of Vanai’s right shoe. She started to jerk it back, but checked herself. Motion and sound could betray her, too.

  “Anything?” the second Algarvian asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” the first one answered. The hateful light receded. “Now we can go on upstairs and get down to business.”

  “Right,” his friend said, “Here, I’ll paint a cross on the front door to keep anybody else from wasting his time.” The two sets of footsteps receded.

  I’m safe, Vanai thought dizzily. For a little while, I’m safe. Now she could shake. Once she started, she discovered she had a hard time stopping.

  And, just because she’d escaped the roundup for the time being didn’t mean the other Kaunians in the block of flats were so lucky. She heard Algarvians hauling them downstairs, heard men cursing and begging, heard women shrieking in despair. Neither curses nor pleas nor shrieks had the slightest effect on the constables, except to annoy them. Then Vanai heard bludgeons striking flesh—which, if they didn’t quiet the curses and pleas, did turn them to shrieks.

  “Well, that’s not a bad bag,” one Algarvian said to another in the ground-floor hallway.

  “Not too bad, anyhow,” his companion agreed. “How close to quota are we?”

  “How should I know?” the first man answered. “You think our officers tell me anything more than they tell you?”

  “Fat chance,” the second man said. “Screw ‘em all.”

  They’re just doing their job, Vanai thought again. They don’t much like the people who give them the work, but they do it. How can the? I don’t understand. Could anyone understand?

  Silence returned. Vanai didn’t dare move. They’d said they were done with this block of flats, but had all of them left? If she came out before they had, she was sure they would be happy enough to scoop her up. How would she know? When could she be sure? She shook her head. She couldn’t be sure. When would she have to take a chance?

  She wished she had some way to gauge things inside the closet. She feared her guesses weren’t worth much. It already seemed as if she’d been trapped inside here forever.

  She was about to come out and see if she could sneak upstairs when she heard new voices in the hallway. An Algarvian spoke in his own language: “Look at the crosses on the doorways, sir. They’ve already searched this building.”

  The fellow who answered did so with aristocratic scorn: “You are looking with your eyes. I look with more than that. I look with senses you haven’t got. And I shall find what you’ve missed, too—you wait and see.”

  A mage, Vanai thought, with terror dulled only because she’d already been through so much other terror. She wasn’t warded. She hadn’t imagined she would need to be warded. If he started incanting—no, when he started incanting—she was ruined. It’s not fair. That was probably true, but it would do her no good at all.

  Out in the street—Vanai thought it was out in the street, anyhow—a shout rang out: the same word, repeated over and over. Hidden in the blind dogleg closet, she couldn’t make out what the word was. Neither could the Alga
rvian mage. “How am I supposed to concentrate with this racket?” he snapped, his voice peevish.

  “You don’t need to concentrate, sir,” the constable with him answered. “They’re yelling that they’ve got their quota. They don’t need any more blonds this time around.”

  “Oh,” the mage said. “Is that so? Well, if I don’t have to work, I’m bloody well not going to work. That’s fair enough—better than fair enough, by the powers above.” He began to whistle. His footsteps, along with those of the constable who’d come into the block of flats with him, faded in the distance as the two men left again.

  Vanai didn’t move for a long time. By then, she wasn’t sure she could move. At last, a bladder that threatened to burst drove her to her feet.

  She came out of the closet ever so cautiously. She came out of the flat even more cautiously. When she saw someone come up the stairs and into the block of flats, she almost jumped out of her skin. But it was only another Kaunian. He waved to her. “So I’m not the only one they missed here, eh?” he said, sounding more cheerful than he had any business doing. “Well, good.”

  He saw Vanai, who’d survived the roundup, and resolutely didn’t see all the people who hadn’t. She couldn’t think like that.

  When she went back up to her flat, she found that the Algarvians had turned it inside out. She wasn’t upset; she’d expected nothing less. She had little that could be broken, and even less that she minded losing. Before long, she had the flat set to rights again.

  And, before long, just as if the roundup hadn’t happened, bells clanged in the Kaunian quarter, summoning the blonds who’d come through uncaught to get their food so they could stay strong and healthy till the Algarvians needed more of them. Vanai didn’t go, in case it turned out to be another trap, another betrayal. The Algarvians who’d gone through the flat had been after her person, not the couple of small chunks of stale bread and dried fruit she’d secreted there. She didn’t have a lot to eat, but she had some.