Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Eat your breakfast,” Colonel Lurcanio told her, as if she were a child asking something whose answer had to be too hard for it to understand. But then he shook his head, a gesture aimed more at himself than at Krasta. “Things are not easy these days,” he said slowly. “I do not know when they will be easy again. I do not know if they will ever be easy again. But I tell you this: if Algarve goes down, we shall go down fighting. Do you doubt it, even for a moment?”

  “No.” Krasta shivered, though the day already promised considerable heat.

  “We shall go down fighting,” Lurcanio repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. “We shall put sticks in the hands of the veterans left alive from the Six Years’ War, and in the hands of fourteen-year-old boys still sore from their circumcisions. For if we lose this war as we lost the last one, what shall be left for Algarve?”

  For once in all the time they’d spent together, Krasta wanted to go around the table and comfort him. But she didn’t. She just sat where she was. She wished the baby inside her would let her drink brandy, even so early in the day. But the mere thought made her belly clench.

  Lurcanio shrugged and smiled, as if deliberately pushing worry to one side. “Well,” he said, “the evil time has not yet come for us. And, while it may come, it also may not. I intend to do what I can to enjoy myself in the meanwhile.”

  No, the evil time hasn’t come for the Algarvians yet, Krasta thought. What about for the Kaunians of Forthweg? What about for Kaunians all over Derlavai?

  She couldn’t ask Lurcanio that question. That she couldn’t ask it of him was probably the most important reason she hadn’t got up and gone around the breakfast table to him. She was, in an odd way and with certain gaps, truly fond of him. But he was an Algarvian, and she had yellow hair. Walls would always stand between them, whether he fully realized it or not.

  He rose and bowed to her. “And now I needs must go do what needs doing, to hold the evil time at bay as best I can. If you will excuse me”—one of his eyebrows twitched—”or even if you will not…” He bowed again and left.

  He sits at a desk, but he fights for Algarve, just as much as if he had a stick in his hand. Krasta had known that for four years, but knowing it and having it hit home were two different things. He’s worth even more than an ordinary soldier, because he can do things no ordinary soldier can do.

  And you… may have his baby inside you. No matter what Lurcanio would do to her if she bore a blond, Krasta hoped with all her heart the child was Valnu’s.

  After the impressers hauled Garivald into King Swemmel’s army, he hadn’t got much in the way of training. He hadn’t got any training, as a matter of fact. They’d given him a uniform and a stick and told him to obey the officers and underofficers set over him if he knew what was good for him. Then they’d taken him to the front in northern Unkerlant, stuck him in a squad there, and thrown him at the Algarvians. He still had trouble recalling that his name was supposed to be Fariulf.

  And now, less than a month after he’d followed a behemoth over and through the Algarvian trenches when the assault began, he found himself a corporal, and a corporal in a foreign kingdom at that, for his regiment had pushed into Forthweg a couple of days earlier. Forthwegian peasant villages didn’t look much different from their Unkerlanter equivalents, except that the locals painted their houses in brighter colors and that the men wore beards.

  No, another difference: there were a lot of men in the villages. That took some getting used to. “When the redheads came through, these Forthwegians knuckled under,” one of Garivald’s squadmates said. “They didn’t fight back, not like we did.”

  And so more of them are left alive, Garivald thought. He kept that notion buried down deep; getting a name for the subversive kind of grousing might have proved fatally inefficient. What he did say was, “The redheads put up a tougher fight down in the south than they’re doing up here.”

  “That’s ‘cause half the Grelzers are traitors,” another trooper said, which wasn’t quite true but came too close to truth for comfort. The fellow went on, “Besides, what do you know about it, Corporal? Even if you did get promoted, you’re a new fish.”

  Garivald started to answer that. He’d seen plenty of fighting down in Grelz, even if not formally as one of King Swemmel’s soldiers. His irregulars—Munderic’s, till he took over the band—had harassed the Algar-vians and their Grelzer puppets … and even a few Forthwegians, the ruffians in the outfit called Plegmund’s Brigade.

  But, in the end, Garivald kept his mouth shut and let the question go with just a shrug. He didn’t want people knowing Corporal Fariulf was really Garivald, the fellow who’d led irregulars and written songs and done other things to draw the unfriendly notice of people in Cottbus. King Swemmel and those who followed him trust no one who’d fought the redheads on his own. After all, such people might turn and fight him one day, too.

  Dragons streaked by overhead, flying east. They were all painted the rock-gray of Garivald’s tunic. “Haven’t seen many Algarvian dragons lately,” he remarked. That seemed a safe enough way to change the subject.

  “Don’t miss those bastards, either, not even slightly.” Two soldiers said it at the same time, in almost identical words. Garivald hadn’t had to worry about Algarvian dragons down in Grelz. Mezentio’s men hadn’t had so many that they bothered using them against irregulars. Almost every beast they put in the air flew against King Swemmel’s main army.

  But now Garivald was part of that main army. If the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, they would be flying them at his comrades and him. But if the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, swarms of Unkerlanter dragons would try to knock them down. Garivald had never seen so many dragons in his whole life. He’d never imagined that so many dragons could be gathered together and fed and flown over one stretch of the front.

  “Halt! Who comes?” a sentry called as someone approached their camp-fire. The answer came back in Forthwegian. Some Unkerlanters, especially those from the northeast, could make sense of the related language, but it was just tantalizing noise to a Grelzer like Garivald. The sentry was a northern man. When he said, “Come ahead, then,” in his dialect of Unkerlanter, the Forthwegian must have been able to follow him, for he approached the fire.

  Except, as he got close, he proved not to be a Forthwegian. Oh, he had dark hair and a dark beard, as Forthwegian men did, but he was tall and slim and had blue eyes and a short, straight nose, nothing like the beaks belonging to Forthwegians and their Unkerlanter cousins. And, instead of a sensible knee-length tunic, he wore a short tunic and trousers, garments Garivald had heard of but, till now, had never seen.

  “Corporal?” he asked Garivald: that was a word nearly identical in Forthwegian and Unkerlanter. When Garivald nodded, the local bowed low before him, as if he were at least a colonel rather than a junior underofficer. He said something that might have been Thank you or might as easily not have been. Then he jabbed a thumb at his own chest and said, “I—Kaunian.”

  “Kaunian?” Garivald said. “I thought Kaunians were blond.” He didn’t think a whole lot of Kaunians were left alive in Forthweg, either, but saying that didn’t strike him as the best way to make this fellow his friend. As things turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered, for the local plainly didn’t understand his dialect. In some exasperation, Garivald called out to the sentry: “Come back here and translate for me, Rivalin.”

  “Aye, Corporal,” Rivalin said. “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all you can do,” Garivald agreed. “Ask him why his hair isn’t yellow if he’s one of these Kaunian buggers.”

  Rivalin spoke in his own dialect, exaggerating some of the sounds and slurring others till Garivald could scarcely make out what he was saying. The Kaunians seemed to get it, though, and answered quickly. Too quickly: He and Rivalin had to go back and forth a couple of times before the sentry turned to Garivald again. “Corporal, he says he is a blond, only he dyed his hair for s
ome kind of a magical disguise he had that made him look like a Forthwegian so the redheads wouldn’t grab him.”

  “Oh.” Garivald started to nod, then checked himself. “Wait a minute. If he had this magical disguise, why did he need to dye his hair? Wouldn’t the magic take care of that for him?”

  More back-and-forth between Rivalin and the Kaunian. At last, Rivalin returned to a brand of Unkerlanter Garivald could readily understand: “Corporal, I think he’s saying he did it on account of his hair would turn yellow again if it got cut while he had the spell on, but I’m not quite sure.”

  “Oh,” Garivald repeated. “All right, now ask him why he decided to quit his disguise and start wearing those silly clothes.”

  When Rivalin translated that, the Kaunian spoke with considerable heat—so much heat that the Unkerlanter sentry had to ask him to slow down several times. When the torrent of words finally ebbed, Rivalin answered, “I don’t think he’s got a whole lot of use for Forthwegians.”

  “Powers above,” one of the troopers behind Garivald said, “I haven’t got a whole lot of use for Forthwegians, either.” Garivald shrugged. Except for the men of Plegmund’s Brigade, these were the first Forthwegians he’d ever seen.

  The Kaunian spoke again. “He says he wears those clothes on account of those clothes are what Kaunians wear,” Rivalin reported. Garivald shrugged again. Forthweg was a lot warmer than the Duchy of Grelz. Why anybody would want to wear trousers up here … Even the Algarvians weren’t so foolish. And then, through Rivalin, the Kaunian said, “He wants to know how to join up with us, Corporal. He wants to start killing Algarvians. Says it’s his turn now.”

  “I can’t do anything about that. You know I can’t,” Garivald said, and Rivalin nodded. Garivald went on, “Take him to Lieutenant Andelot. Maybe he’ll figure out what to do with him—and he’ll be out of our hair.”

  “Right.” Rivalin grinned at him. “You haven’t been a corporal very long, Fariulf, but you know eggs is eggs.” He led the Kaunian away.

  “I should hope I know eggs is eggs,” Garivald said. “I know we need a new sentry, too.” He named another man and sent him out to take Rivalin’s place.

  When Rivalin came back, he looked astonished. “I think they’re going to recruit that whoreson,” he said.

  “Why not?” Garivald said. “He wants to blaze some redheads. If he gets a couple before they get him, that’s a bargain for us. And even if he doesn’t, they blaze him instead of an Unkerlanter. That’s a bargain, too.”

  Rivalin eyed him. “You sure the impressers just scooped you off your farm?”

  “Too right I am,” Garivald answered. “I wish I were back there now, getting my crop in.” He paused. “Part of me wishes that, anyway. The rest… Well, it’s not like I don’t owe the Algarvians anything.”

  Heads solemnly went up and down. A lot of the newer soldiers in Swemmel’s army came from lands regained from the redheads. They’d seen how the Algarvians ruled the countryside they held. A lot of them had kinsfolk missing or dead, the way Garivald did. And a lot of them fought as if the war were a personal struggle against Algarve. In some fights, not a great many captives got taken.

  More behemoths came up during the night. Before dawn the next morning, they rumbled forward, tearing a hole in the Algarvian line through which footsoldiers swarmed. Garivald had done that again and again. He almost got the feeling he—or rather, the Unkerlanter army—could do it any time.

  Almost. He’d already seen that Mezentio’s men, even when outnumbered and outflanked, fought hard for every foot of ground. And they didn’t fight with sticks and behemoths alone. He’d heard about the magic that shook the ground and tore fissures and sent lambent purple flames shooting up from it. Now his squad met that magecraft at first hand.

  Men screamed when the earth opened and then closed on them. Men whom the flames caught had no chance to scream, and simply ceased to be. One burst of flame not only charred a behemoth but also touched off the eggs it carried, spreading ruin through the footsoldiers closest to it.

  But then the magic ebbed, almost as swiftly as it had sprung up. Lieutenant Andelot happened to be crouched by Garivald as it faded. The officer said, “That’s our mages, sacrificing our people to beat down their wizardry.”

  “Is there any other way to beat it?” Garivald asked.

  “If there is, we haven’t found it yet,” Andelot answered. “Life energy gives mages a lot of force to work with.”

  Life energy: a bloodless way to say killing people. Garivald found exactly what it meant that afternoon, when he and the survivors from his squad pushed past the sacrifice the Algarvian mages had made to try to stop them: row upon row of blond men and women, all blazed through the head. “No wonder that Kaunian wanted to join up,” Garivald said. “If the Algarvians had done this to us, I’d want to kill every Algarvian ever born.”

  “No wonder at all,” Rivalin said. Like Garivald’s, his eyes kept coming back to the dead blonds in sick fascination.

  But then Garivald reflected that Mezentio’s men hadn’t lined up Unkerlanters row on row and sacrificed them. Their own mages had done that. He wished he hadn’t thought of it in such terms. They only do it because the Algarvians are killing these blonds. That was true, but eased his mind only so much. They were doing it, and why counted little. Sooner or later, a day of reckoning would have to come… . Wouldn’t it?

  Whenever Bembo went out on the streets of Eoforwic these days, he found himself looking west. That was the direction rain came from, not that rain was likely in the Forthwegian capital in the middle of summer. But, despite heat and bright blue skies and dazzling sun, a storm was brewing in the west, and he knew it.

  The Algarvian constable noticed he wasn’t the only one glancing that way. With a distinct effort of will, he turned his gaze away from the west and onto his partner. “It’s on your nerves, too, eh, Delminio?” he said.

  “Aye,” Delminio answered, not needing to ask what it was. “Who would’ve thought things could just fall apart like that?”

  “Not me,” Bembo said. “And tell me, what difference will it make to the cursed Unkerlanters, powers below eat ‘em, if I’m toting a long stick like a soldier and not the regular short one? This miserable thing is heavy.” He could always find something to complain about, even though he’d carried an army-issue stick going into the Kaunian quarter.

  Despite the long stick slung on his own back, Delminio had no trouble shrugging an elaborate Algarvian shrug. “No, it probably wouldn’t make much difference to Swemmel’s bastards, if they ever get here,” he allowed.

  “Powers above grant that they don’t,” Bembo said. “Powers above grant that the army stops ‘em somewhere, anywhere.” He’d never imagined sounding plaintive and worried about the Algarvian army, but that was how he felt.

  Delminio went on as if he hadn’t spoken, repeating, “It won’t matter much to the Unkerlanters, no. But suppose these Forthwegian whoresons here in town start feeling frisky. Wouldn’t you rather be toting something that’ll knock ‘em over from more than a hundred feet away?”

  “Urk,” Bembo said, and meant it most sincerely. “D’you think it’ll come to that?”

  “Who knows?” Delminio shrugged again. “But I’ll tell you this: there’s an awful lot of Forthwegians walking around with their peckers up because they know we’re hurting. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

  He sounded as if he hoped Bembo would tell him he was just imagining things. Bembo wished he could do that, but he couldn’t. Before, the Forthwegians on the streets had scrambled out of the way when they saw constables coming. They might not have loved them (Who ever loves a constable? Bembo wondered, not wasting a chance for self-pity), but they feared them, which would do.

  Now … If they weren’t laughing behind the constables’ backs, Bembo would have been astonished. Some of them had the nerve to laugh in the constables’ faces. Bembo wouldn’t have minded teaching them a lesson, but he didn’t. Orders were not
to do anything that might touch off a riot. The Algarvians had enough to worry about in Forthweg these days without adding the Forthwegians to the mix.

  Delminio’s grunt might have meant he thought Bembo’s silence proved his point. Since Bembo thought the same thing, he didn’t push his partner. The stinking Unkerlanters were getting close to the Twegen River, the stream that flowed north to the sea right past the western edge of Eoforwic.

  “Do they think they’ll have a happy time if Swemmel’s whoresons take this place away from us?” Bembo asked no one in particular. “Not likely.”

  “No, not likely at all,” Delminio agreed. “Other question is, do they care? And that’s not likely, either. Most of’em don’t think about Unkerlanters one way or the other, except that Swemmel’s men are giving us a hard time. They think King Penda will come back if they throw us out, and they’ll all be happy again.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Bembo said. “Wasn’t Swemmel about ready to boil somebody alive because whoever it was wouldn’t hand Penda over to him?”

  “Tsavellas of Yanina had him,” Delminio said.

  Bembo snapped his fingers. “That’s right. Thanks. I’d forgotten who it was. When I was back in Tricarico, reading about all this stuff in the west in the news sheets, it didn’t seem to matter so much.”

  “Only goes to show, you can’t tell ahead of time,” Delminio said, and Bembo nodded. He hadn’t thought much about Forthweg at all, not in the days before the war started. He’d never imagined he would have the bad luck to get stuck in this miserable kingdom for years.

  A Forthwegian with a gray-streaked black beard reaching halfway down his chest came out of his shop and shouted at the constables in bad Algarvian: “When you catch villains who theft from me? How I make living, they theft my trunks?”

  “Well, however you make a living, it won’t be as an elephant,” Bembo answered. Delminio snickered.