Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  But looking at Xavega was more pleasant than looking at King Donalitu of Jelgava, whose presence aboard the Habakkuk occasioned the band. Donalitu was pudgy and graying. Neither his face nor his body seemed to match the splendid, dazzlingly bemedaled uniform he wore.

  Xavega sneered at King Donalitu, too. Lagoas might be at war with Algarve, but that didn’t mean Lagoans loved and admired folk of Kaunian blood, any more than they loved and admired Kuusamans. As far as Leino could see, Lagoans loved and admired nobody but other Lagoans, and often not too many of them.

  He didn’t love or particularly admire Xavega. All I want to do is get it in, he thought. She started to glance toward him. He looked away. He didn’t want to see her sneer aimed at him. He knew it would be, but he didn’t want to see it.

  Captain Brunho, who commanded the Habakkuk, was also a Lagoan, which meant he towered more than half a head over Leino. He led King Don-alitu up to the Kuusaman mage and spoke in classical Kaunian: “Your Majesty, I present to you Leino of Kajaani, one of the sorcerers who designed and created this ship here.”

  Leino bowed. “I am honored to meet you, your Majesty,” he said. It was at least theoretically true.

  The exiled King of Jelgava looked him over. By Donalitu’s expression, what he saw didn’t much impress him—he could have given Xavega lessons in sneering. He said, “So you will help me get my throne back? You will help drive the filthy, barbarous usurper from the high place that is not his?”

  “Uh, I will do what I can, your Majesty,” Leino said. Beside Donalitu, Captain Brunho turned a dull red: the color of hot iron. When Donalitu called Algarvians filthy barbarians, he also indirectly called Lagoans—his protectors, and another Algarvic people—filthy barbarians. He seemed unaware that might prove a problem. Odds were he’d been unaware of it ever since going into exile. Leino had no intention of being the one to enlighten him.

  Donalitu said, “What good is this big icy boat? I hope I shall not catch cold here.”

  Now Leino suspected he was turning a dull red. By all appearances, no one had ever taught Donalitu anything resembling manners. Maybe kings didn’t need them, though Leino had his doubts about that. Keeping a careful grip on his temper, he replied, “Habakkuk can carry many more dragons than any ordinary ship, your Majesty. This ship is also harder to damage than any of the ordinary sort.”

  “But it will melt,” Donalitu exclaimed.

  Patiently, Leino said, “Not if we have mages refreshing the ice—and we do.” Maybe no one had ever taught King Donalitu to think, either.

  Donalitu turned to Captain Brunho and said, “I shall be glad to go back aboard a proper ship, a natural ship, when this inspection is done.”

  “Aye, your Majesty.” Brunho’s face and voice were wooden.

  Leino held his face straight, too, though it wasn’t easy. Donalitu assumed an iron ship was a natural ship. What kind of sense did that make, when ice floated and iron sank? He almost said as much, but somehow managed to keep his mouth shut.

  Captain Brunho led the King of Jelgava off to inspect the dragonfliers and their mounts. With any luck at all, a dragon will bite off his head, Leino thought. That would do his kingdom some good. As soon as King Donalitu was out of earshot, or perhaps rather sooner, Xavega said something in Lagoan. The mages who spoke her language snickered. Not wanting to be left out, Leino asked, “What was that?” in classical Kaunian.

  “I said, ‘What a horrid, stupid little man,’ “ she replied in the same tongue. In her loathing of Donalitu, she was willing to treat Leino as an equal. It was the first time she’d done that since the Algarvian leviathan-rider planted an egg on the Habakkuk. Plainly, she needed something drastic.

  After what seemed like forever, King Donalitu left the iceberg—turned-dragon-hauler. He went down a rope ladder into a little patrol boat that took him back to the ley-line cruiser—the iron ship, the natural ship, Leino thought with amusement—in which he’d come out to visit Habakkuk. The cruiser sped away.

  Leino waved after it. “Good-bye!” he called in classical Kaunian. “With any luck, we shall never see you again. Good-bye!”

  “May it be so!” Xavega said. She beamed—she actually beamed—at Leino. His hopes, or something close to his hopes, rose. Common sense quashed that. Xavega’s smile wasn’t likely to show how much she liked him. It would show how much she despised Donalitu of Jelgava.

  Captain Brunho came up behind them. “That will be enough of that,” he said. “That will be more than enough of that, in fact.”

  “He insulted you, he insulted the ship, he insulted all of us, he is a moron,” Xavega snarled. “Are we supposed to put our lips on his posterior?”

  “He is a king. He is an ally. He deserves respect,” Brunho said formally.

  “Powers below eat him,” Xavega said. “Even Leino here could tell he is more like a leg of mutton than a proper man.”

  A leg of mutton? Leino wondered. Maybe it was a Lagoan insult, translated literally. Maybe it just meant Xavega’s command of classical Kaunian wasn’t quite so good as she thought it was. Whatever it was, Leino felt he had to say something, and did: “The land of the Seven Princes would be ashamed to have him as one of the Seven.”

  “You are welcome to your opinion,” Brunho said. “You are not welcome to express it on my ship, not where others can hear it, not where it can affect the morale of my crew.”

  “You would not have a ship—you would not have this ship—if it were not for us mages,” Xavega pointed out.

  “That is true. But I do have it now.”

  Maybe such relentless precision made Brunho a good captain. For his sake, for Habakkuk’s sake, Leino hoped so. Nevertheless, he observed, “Bringing King Donalitu aboard will do more to hurt morale than I could if I talked for a month.”

  Xavega laughed and clapped her hands and nodded. Captain Brunho stared down at Leino out of cold green eyes. “This was done at the command of my sovereign, King Vitor. I prefer his opinion to yours.” He swung that disapproving stare toward Xavega. “King Vitor is your sovereign, too, in case you have forgotten.”

  “I remember perfectly well,” she snapped. “But if he approves of that Donalitu creature, he has less in the way of taste than I would have thought.” She flounced off. Leino watched her do it. He watched carefully.

  Captain Brunho was made of stern stuff—he kept his attention on Leino. “You mages are an insubordinate lot,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Leino answered. Whatever Brunho had been expecting by way of a reply, that wasn’t it. He spun on his heel—carefully, so as not to fall on the icy deck of the Habakkuk—and stalked away.

  Before long, Leino went below to serve a shift fighting Habakkuk’s unfortunate tendency to melt. That tendency was more in evidence than ever lately, as the ship cruised the ley lines in warmer, more northerly waters. Without constant attention from mages, Habakkuk would have ceased to be. We aren‘t too insubordinate to keep you from swimming, Captain Brunho, Leino thought.

  Xavega was also part of this anti-melting shift. The magecraft, by now, was routine, though it hadn’t been when Leino helped develop it down in the land of the Ice People. The sorcerers didn’t need to give it all their attention; they could gossip while they worked.

  “A pity we have Donalitu for an ally,” Xavega said. “He would make a much better enemy.”

  “He does think the world of himself, does he not?” Ramalho said, shaking his head. The Lagoan mage continued, “He thinks the world spins around him, too.”

  “If you told him that back in Jelgava, you would have ended up in one of his dungeons faster than you could blink,” Essi remarked. Her hands never faltered in the passes she needed to support the spell.

  “All the more reason for throwing him into one of those dungeons himself.” Xavega stopped reviling Donalitu in classical Kaunian long enough to chant her portion of the spell that kept Habakkuk solid—also in classical Kaunian.

  “He is a useful tool against Algarve,” Ram
alho said. “His countrymen dote on him.”

  “Which only goes to prove Jelgavans are not so smart as they would have other people believe,” Leino said.

  The other mages chuckled. Xavega said, “No one who has Donalitu for a king could be very smart. And if our precious Captain Brunho cannot see that, may the powers below eat him.” To Leino’s surprise, she nodded his way. “You could see it, whether Brunho could or not. Thank you for trying to get him to be sensible.”

  “Er—you are welcome,” Leino answered in some surprise. She’d actually talked to him in friendly fashion. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. For a moment, he couldn’t imagine why she’d done it. But that didn’t take long to figure out. He’d agreed with her about Donalitu, and he’d said as much to Captain Brunho’s face. What could be more calculated to endear him to her than agreement? Nothing he could think of offhand.

  As if to confirm that calculation, Xavega went on, “I had not realized you were such a sensible man.” The look she gave him was frankly appraising.

  “I do my best to hide it,” Leino said, which made her laugh out loud. If I’m so sensible, why do I want to flip up her kilt? But there was more than one kind of sense, and he knew it. Bedding a good-looking woman needed no fancy justifications. It was its own best argument.

  He performed his share of the maintenance spell with casual competence.

  His eyes kept sliding Xavega’s way. Hers kept meeting his, and she wasn’t looking at him as if she wanted to go wash her hands afterwards any more, either. Was it really that easy? he wondered. Did I just have to make her think I thought she was right, to make her forget I’m a Kuusaman? He wasn’t used to people who responded so simply.

  Do I really want anything to do with somebody who responds so simply? If Pekka were here … If Pekka were there, Xavega wouldn’t have done anything but amuse him. He was sure of that. But Pekka was far away, and had been for quite a while. Every time Leino looked at Xavega, and every time he caught her looking at him, he was reminded of just how long he’d been away from his wife.

  Xavega was never one to beat around the bush. When the shift ended, she waited for Leino in the corridor. “I was wrong about you,” she announced.

  “Oh?” His heart pounded. “How?”

  “I never thought Kuusaman men could be so … interesting,” she said.

  Sure enough, I agreed with her, Leino marveled That was all I needed to do. It was probably all he should have done, too. Part of him knew it, anyhow. But that wasn’t the part that said, “Now that we have spent all this time keeping Habakkuk solid, will you come to my cabin and see how much ice we can melt?”

  She couldn’t very well misunderstand that. If she didn’t care for it, she’d slap him across the icy hallway. Instead, she said, “Aye,” and set her hand in his. I’ll be sorry for this later, Leino thought. But that would be later. Now … Now he hurried toward the cabin, Xavega at his side.

  “Leave?” The Algarvian lieutenant stared at Sidroc. “You want leave?”

  “Aye, sir,” Sidroc answered stolidly. Speaking the redheads’ language, he had to be stolid; he wasn’t all that fluent. “I have had none since I came to Unkerlant more than a year and a half ago.”

  “Have any of your comrades had leave?” his company commander asked, and Sidroc had to shake his head. The Algarvian went on, “There are two ways to stop fighting here in the west. You can be wounded. Then you stop long enough for them to repair you. Or you can die. But if they could call you back from that, believe me, they would. Now go back go your squad and stop troubling me with foolish notions. Have you got that?”

  “Aye, sir,” Sidroc repeated. Back to his squad he went.

  Ceorl was stirring the stewpot. He looked up. “Well?”

  “Two ways to get leave,” Sidroc reported. “You can get wounded, or you can get killed. Otherwise, forget it.”

  “Told you so,” Sergeant Werferth said. “They’re going to use us up. That’s what we’re here for. I’d hate it even worse if they didn’t treat their own soldiers the same way.”

  “Wonderful.” Speaking Forthwegian, Sidroc had no trouble sounding as sarcastic as he pleased. “I want to go home for a while, curse it. I’d come back.”

  “Of course you would,” Werferth said. “It’s not like anybody except our own kin loves us back there—and even some of them don’t.”

  “Futter ‘em all,” Ceorl said, giving the pot another stir.

  “Futter ‘em all is right,” Sidroc muttered. The trouble was, Werferth was also right. Most Forthwegians had no great use for either the Algarvians or the men from Forthweg who’d taken service in Plegmund’s Brigade. “Ungrateful whoresons. If it weren’t for the redheads, we’d still be stuck with all those stinking Kaunians back in our own kingdom.”

  “Well, that’s the truth.” Ceorl always sounded surprised when he agreed with Sidroc. He tasted the stew and nodded. “It’s as good as it’ll get, not that that’s saying much.”

  Sidroc dug out his mess kit. Ceorl filled the tin tray with carrots and turnips and onions and bits of meat. “What is this stuff?” Sidroc asked, prodding one of those bits with his spoon. “Unicorn? Horsemeat?”

  “No, it’s mutton,” Ceorl said. Sidroc laughed in his face. The ruffian grinned back, unabashed. “Well, close, anyhow. It’s goat.”

  After tasting and chewing—after chewing for quite a while—Sidroc nodded. “All right, I’ll believe that. It must have been in the pot a good long time. It’s not too gamy, and it’s all the way down to tough.”

  Werferth methodically emptied his mess kit. “Next to some of the stuff we’ve eaten, this is downright good. Remember that behemoth that had gone over?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust.

  “Which one?” Sidroc asked. His own tin was almost empty, too. “It’s not like we’ve only done it once.”

  Werferth laughed. So did Ceorl. After a moment, so did Sidroc. Werferth said, “Ah, the happy stories we’ll have to tell our grandchildren.”

  That made Ceorl laugh harder than ever—harder than the joke deserved, as far as Sidroc was concerned. He asked, “What’s so funny?”

  “Grandchildren,” Ceorl answered. “Who’s dumb enough to think we’ll live long enough to have kids, let alone grandchildren?”

  “Oh.” That brought Sidroc back to earth—to the muddy earth of Unkerlant—with a bump. It wasn’t that Ceorl was wrong. Ceorl was too likely to be right. Sidroc turned to Werferth. “See, Sergeant, there’s another reason I need leave. I should have told the lieutenant. How am I going to meet a girl in this miserable country?”

  “Drag one down on the floor and have a couple of your pals hold her,” Werferth said. “It’s not like we haven’t done that before, either.”

  “Curse it, that’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Sidroc said. “Even if we do father brats on these Unkerlanter women, we’ll never find out about it. I want to meet a nice girl, settle down—if I live, I mean.”

  “If you don’t, you won’t have to worry about it, that’s bloody sure.” Ceorl laughed again, nastily, showing off bad teeth.

  And Sergeant Werferth let out the grunt he used to show his patience had run short. “Powers above, Sidroc, you come home from the war, what in blazes makes you think a nice girl’d want anything to do with you?”

  This time, Ceorl practically wet himself, he thought that was so funny. Sidroc started to scowl at Werferth, then carefully made his face blank instead. You’ll pay for that, Sergeant, powers below eat you—and they will. Aye, you’ll pay. It’ll look just like an accident, or like the Unkerlanters got you. Plenty of chances to make that happen.

  He went off to a little stream not far away to clean out his mess kit. By the time he got back, his face wasn’t even blank any more. He looked like his usual self instead. If he seethed inside, nobody needed to know it. In fact, Werferth needed not to know it, or Sidroc wouldn’t get his chance. Werferth hadn’t lived long enough for gray to streak his beard by bein
g careless.

  “Behemoths!” The cry made everybody in Plegmund’s Brigade who heard it grab for his stick. Sidroc was no slower than any of his comrades. He might want to make something unfortunate happen to Sergeant Werferth, but he didn’t want the Unkerlanters to make anything unfortunate happen to him.

  Here came the thump of the great beasts’ feet against the ground, the rattle and clank of their chainmail. Panic seized him—the noise came from the east, from the direction he’d thought safe. If Swemmel’s soldiers had managed to bring behemoths into the rear of Plegmund’s Brigade … If they’ve done that, we ‘re all dead men right now, and I won’t have to worry about killing Werferth because they’ll take care of it for me—and they’ll get me while they’re at it.

  Then somebody let out another shout, this one holding nothing but relief: “They’re our behemoths, powers above be praised!”

  Sure enough, the behemoths that tramped into the clearing had Algarvians atop them. The redheads looked as nervous about encountering the men of Plegmund’s Brigade as the Forthwegians did at their unexpected appearance. “You boys look too much like Unkerlanters for your own good,” one of them called.

  “Your behemoths look too much like Unkerlanter beasts for your own good,” a trooper retorted.

  Sidroc nodded, but then hesitated—that proved true only at first glance. It wasn’t only that Algarvian behemoth armor differed from what the Unkerlanters used. But the behemoths themselves seemed different. After a moment, he figured out how and why. “They’re young beasts,” he blurted.

  An Algarvian on one of those behemoths heard him and nodded. “If the world were a perfect place, we’d leave ‘em on the farm for another year— maybe for another two years,” he said. “But the world’s not perfect. Ready or not, they’re got to go into the fight.”

  Thinking back on all the behemoths Algarve had left dead on the field on both sides of the Durrwangen bulge, Sidroc nodded. True, the Unkerlanters had also lost a lot of behemoths there. But Unkerlant seemed to have plenty left. The same didn’t hold true for Algarve.