Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “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.”

  Where was 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 probabl
y 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 is?” 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?”

  “They’d better not be Yaninans,” Werferth said. “Ceorl’s right about that. I don’t want them on our flank, not with the itchy feet they’ve got. If they bug out, they leave us naked as a Zuwayzi for the Unkerlanters.”

  ‘‘Polinesso wouldn’t say the Yaninans fight like tigers.” Sidroc scratched his head again. “Powers above, he wouldn’t. The redheads haven’t got any use for Yaninans, either.”

  Werferth and Ceorl both grunted, but neither one argued, from which Sidroc concluded they thought he was right. Werferth said, “Maybe they’re Grelzers.”

  “Since when are Grelzers special in Grelz?” Sidroc asked, and again got no good answer.

  He found the truth two days later, coming in from another blessedly uneventful patrol. He paused to fill his water bottle in a stream not far from where his squad was camped. When he looked up, another soldier was filling a bottle on the other side of the stream. In careful Algarvian, the other fellow said, “You are from Plegmund’s Brigade, is it not so? We were told we would have Plegmund’s Brigade on our right hand.”

  “Aye, I’m from Plegmund’s Brigade.” Sidroc gave his own name, and added, “Who in blazes arejyow?”

  The other man’s uniform was dark green, almost the color of those the Grelzers who fought on Algarve’s side wore. But this fellow was no Grelzer: he was tall and slim and blond and wore trousers and short tunic with, sure enough, the Algarvian flag sewn to the left sleeve. He’s a Kaunian, Sidroc thought dazedly. He’s got to be a Kaunian. But that’s not what the redheads use Kaunians for…

  “I am Brusku,” the stranger said, which both did and did not sound like a Kaunian name—the ending was different from the s Forthwegian Kaunians used. Then he went on, “I am a soldier in the Phalanx of Valmiera.”

  “Ahh.” Sidroc slowly nodded. Now things grew clearer. The Algarvians didn’t massacre blonds from Valmiera and Jelgava, maybe for fear of touching off revolts in the east. But they were getting some use from them, anyway. Sidroc nodded again in a more friendly way than he’d thought he would show to any Kaunian. “Welcome to Unkerlant. You can’t go home again either, can you?”

  Brusku’s pale stare suddenly sharpened. “No,” he said after a moment. “So it is the same for you, is it? I did what I wanted to do. It is enough.”

  Sidroc had done what he wanted to do, too. Was it enough? Whether it was or not, he was stuck with it. He said, “Come back to my camp with me.” He pointed north. “You can meet my pals.”

  “All right.” Brusku splashed across the stream, which was no more than ankle deep. As Sidroc led the way, he thought about how strange it was to be fighting alongside a Kaunian. A few years before, though, he would have thought it strange to be fighting alongside Algarvians, too.

  “Greetings,” Ceorl called when he walked up to the fire. The ruffian pointed behind him. “Who in blazes is that?”

  “His name’s Brusku,” Sidroc answered—in Algarvian, so Brusku could follow. “He’s from the Phalanx of Valmiera—that’s the outfit Brigadier Polinesso said was going in on our left.”

  He wondered if Ceorl would make a crack about Kaunians escaping from Algarvian camps. That wouldn’t do anybody any good. Maybe the Valmieran Kaunians didn’t know what happened to their blond brethren from Forthweg. Maybe they knew and tried not to think about it. By the way the ruffian’s lips pursed, he thought about it. But then, visibly, he thought better of it. He said, “Let’s kill some Unkerlanters,” and let it go at that.

  “Aye,” Brusku said. “That is what we came for.”

  Sergeant Werferth passed the Valmieran his flask. “Here. Try this.”

  Brusku drank. He coughed a couple of times. “Unicorn piss and fire,” he said. “Is that what you Forthwegians drink?”

  “We drink wine and plum brandy when we’re home,” Werferth answered. “Down here, we drink anything we can get our hands on. I think the Unkerlanters brewed this stuff out of turnips.”

  Brusku looked at the flask as if he wanted to throw it away. Instead, he took another pull and handed it back to Werferth. Then he said, “I had better go, or my sergeant will come down on me.” He nodded to Sidroc and headed off in the direction from which he’d come.

  Once he was gone, Ceorl spat into the fire. “Fighting side by side with Kaunians? I’ve thought of a lot of strange things, but never any like that.”

  “I’ll tell you something, though,” Sidroc said: “I’d rather have them on my left hand than a pack of jumpy Yaninans.” He watched Ceorl weigh that. The ruffian didn’t take long to nod.

  Werferth said, “A good thing you boys didn’t talk about what happens to Forthwegian Kaunians. I’m going to tell everybody to keep quiet about that.”

  “What happens when the Phalanx of Valmiera—what in blazes is a phalanx, anyway?—finds out about it?” Sidroc asked. “Sooner or later, they will. They’re bound to.”

  “Good question,” Werferth said. “We’ll probably see before too long, like you say. And when we do … You know what it’s like when an egg bursts almost close enough for the sorcerous energy to kill you?” He waited. Sidroc nodded. Everybody who’d been in battle for a while knew what that was like. Werferth went on, “Whe
n they find out, it’ll be like that, only more so.

  Sidroc thought it over. How would he feel if the Algarvians started slaying Forthwegians to make their magic stronger? He could think of some Forthwegians he wouldn’t miss, starting with Ealstan and Hestan. Still… “Aye, you’re likely right.”

  Twelve

  Istvan proved less unhappy as a captive on Obuda than he’d expected to. He lived in a barracks no worse than the one where he’d lived while a Gyongyosian soldier on that same island. He was a good deal more comfortable than he’d been in the forests of western Unkerlant or in the trenches on the island of Becsehely. The food his Kuusaman captors fed him and his comrades wasn’t especially good, but it wasn’t especially bad, either, and there was plenty of it. He had no work harder than chopping firewood under the watchful eyes of the Kuusaman guards. It could have been far worse.

  When he said as much in line for breakfast one morning, Kun nodded and replied, “Aye, I thought they’d send us off to the mines or some such.

  This—it’s as if they’ve made Obuda into a crate, and they’ll keep stowing captives here till it fills up.”

  “Nothing to do but sit around and get fat,” Istvan agreed. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time. I don’t much mind being an old soldier for a while, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m with you,” Szonyi said from behind him. “Nobody’s trying to blaze me or drop an egg on my head. Anyone who thinks I’m sorry about that is plumb daft.”

  “Well, the two of you get no arguments from me,” Kun said. Watery island sunshine glinted off the gold frames of his spectacles. “I’ve never been what you’d call eager to have people trying to kill me. I leave all that up to you fierce country lads.”

  If he hadn’t fought bravely every time he had to, he would have condemned himself out of his own mouth there. Even as things were, Istvan spoke a little stiffly: “We are a warrior race.”