Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  The shopkeeper, who sold luggage, didn’t speak Algarvian well enough to get the joke. “Elephant? What you talk about, elephant?” he said. “Powers below eat elephant. Go catch thefts. What you good for? All you Algarvians, you nothing but crazy peoples.”

  Bembo swept off his plumed hat and bowed, as if at a compliment. “Thank you,” he said. Delminio snickered again. The shopkeeper said something in sonorous, guttural Forthwegian. Whatever it was, Bembo didn’t think it was praise. The fellow turned around and stumped back into his shop.

  “If the bugger who stole from him starts selling those trunks, maybe we’ll nab him,” Delminio said. “If he doesn’t, how can we get our hands on him?”

  “And why should we care?” Bembo added. “You think I want to work hard for somebody who calls me names? If he’d dropped a little silver, now, that’d be a different story.”

  “Sure enough,” Delminio agreed. “Far as I’m concerned, the powers below are welcome to all these Forthwegians. I wouldn’t shed a tear if we started shipping them west along with the blonds.”

  “Trouble with that is, it’d really spark off an uprising,” Bembo said.

  After pondering for a couple of paces, Delminio nodded. “Aye, you’re probably right.” He took another step. “Of course, the uprising’s liable to come anyway. If it does, these buggers ought to be fair game, you ask me.”

  “You talk like Oraste,” Bembo said.

  “Who?” Delminio waggled a finger. “Oh, your old partner. He seems like a pretty good man to have at your back.”

  “He is.” Bembo let it rest there. Along with being a good man to have at one’s back, Oraste believed the way to settle problems was to settle the people who made them—by choice, permanently.

  The shift was long and slow and dull. Another argument with a Forthwegian right at the end made it even longer. Delminio was furious, and didn’t even try to hide it. He was all for arresting the local, who was unhappy because somebody’d flung a rock through a window he’d just replaced. Bembo didn’t want to arrest him. He wanted him to shut up and go away. Then his partner and he could go back to the barracks and relax.

  “If we drop on him, we have to drag him over to the gaol and fill out all the cursed forms,” he said. “That always takes hours, and we’re already late getting back, and I’m hungry.” He patted his belly. To him, that argument, like the belly in question, carried considerable weight.

  In the end, it carried weight for Delminio, too. He contented himself with taking hold of his stick and starting to swing it toward the Forthwegian. That stopped the argument in the middle of the ley line: the Forthwegian turned pale and fled. “We ought to ship him west,” Delminio said. “Nobody’d miss him a bit.”

  “Powers below eat him,” Bembo said. “Let’s go home and see if there’s anything left in the refectory. Those other greedy buggers better not eat everything in sight.” He was almost hungry enough to hurry back to the barracks to make up for lost time—almost, but not quite.

  He and Delminio were still three or four blocks away, and squabbling good-naturedly over what the evening’s entree would be, when a great roar ahead staggered them both. The ground shook under Bembo’s feet. Windows shattered without rocks pitched through them.

  Bembo listened for the bells that warned of Unkerlanter dragons, but didn’t hear them. He had trouble hearing much of anything. “They somehow snuck one through, the bastards,” he shouted, and even had trouble hearing his own voice.

  Delminio’s words came to Bembo as if from very far away: “Was that the barracks?” Bembo’s eyes opened wide. He hadn’t thought of that. He and Delminio started to run.

  When they rounded the last corner, Bembo skidded to a stop. Broken glass and pebbles skritched under his boots. The whole front of the barracks was gone. Not far from him, a big chunk of stone had come down on someone—a Forthwegian, by his tunic. The result wasn’t pretty.

  “This must have been an enormous egg.” Delminio had to shout it two or three times before Bembo’s battered ears caught it.

  He nodded. “Too big for a dragon to carry, you’d think.” He had to do some shouting of his own to get his partner to understand. “And I still don’t hear any warning bells.” Someone came staggering out of the barracks: an Algarvian, badly burned and bleeding. How anyone could have lived through that blast of sorcerous energy was beyond Bembo, but he ran toward the other constable to give him what help he could.

  Before he reached his countryman, the fellow clapped both hands to his chest and toppled. He might almost have been blazed. Then a beam burned the ground by Bembo’s feet, and he realized the other Algarvian had been blazed.

  He wasn’t a soldier. He’d never been a soldier. He had no interest in becoming a soldier. He had a great deal of interest in never becoming a soldier. All of which, when someone started blazing at him, meant exactly nothing. He dove for cover as if he’d been fighting in the west against the Unkerlanters for years.

  “Get down!” he shouted to Delminio, who still stood there staring as if he hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on. Maybe Delminio didn’t. A moment later, Bembo’s partner clutched at his shoulder and went down, so he’d got his lesson. Bembo hoped it wouldn’t prove too expensive.

  Other shouts started piercing the ringing in Bembo’s ears. They weren’t in his language, but in raucous Forthwegian. He couldn’t understand a word of them. No, that wasn’t true after all. One word he understood very well: Penda.

  Stupid buggers have gone and risen up, sure as blazes, he thought, peering out from behind the smoking rubble in back of which he sprawled. They’ll pay for that. Oh, how they‘ll pay.

  Someone in a half-shattered building across the street from the barracks moved. Bembo didn’t know exactly what the motion was or just who’d made it. Whoever it was, though, was bound to be a Forthwegian, which meant— which suddenly meant—an enemy. Bembo raised his stick to his shoulder and blazed. He heard a shriek. He heard it very clearly, and shouted in fierce triumph. All at once, he was delighted he had that long, heavy army-issue stick.

  “You want us, you’ll have to pay for us!” he yelled. A beam seared the air inches above his head. He smelled thunder and lightning. Exultation trickled out of him as he realized the Forthwegian rebels were liable to be willing to do just that.

  Saxburh wailed in her cradle. Vanai hurried to pick up the baby and put her on her breast. That was what Saxburh wanted. Her cries ceased. She sucked and gulped contentedly. Vanai stroked her fine, soft hair. It was dark, as Ealstan’s was, but the baby’s skin was too fair, too pale, for a full-blooded Forthwegian’s. Sure enough, Saxburh showed both sides of her family.

  Eggs burst, not far away. The windows rattled. They hadn’t shattered yet; powers above only knew why. Vanai felt like shrieking, too, but who would comfort her if she did? No one she could think of. Not even Ealstan could do that.

  Vanai cursed softly, desperately. Was Ealstan here, staying close by her side while she took care of their daughter? She shook her head. “He had to go fight,” she told Saxburh. “He had to try to kick the redheads out of Eoforwic. He thought that was more important.”

  Her daughter stared up at her out of eyes darkening from blue toward brown. The baby had just learned how to smile. She tried to smile and nurse at the same time. Milk dribbled down her chin.

  “He’s a fool,” Vanai went on in classical Kaunian, dabbing at Saxburh’s face with a rag. “He’s nothing but a fool. He thinks the Algarvians will go away just like that.” She snapped her fingers. The sound startled the baby, who jerked her head—and tried to take Vanai’s breast with it. Vanai yelped. That made Saxburh look back toward her, again without letting go. Her moving that way hurt less.

  After a little while, Saxburh grunted and made a mess in her drawers. Vanai changed them, cleaned the baby off and rubbed olive oil on her bottom, and then nursed her some more. Saxburh’s eyes sagged shut. Vanai slid the nipple out of her mouth, hoisted the baby to her shoulder, a
nd got a sleepy belch out of her. A couple of minutes later, she set Saxburh back in the cradle and closed the toggles on her tunic.

  She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of wine. Nursing always left her thirsty. As she drank, she looked out the window. She wasn’t afraid anyone on the street would recognize her as a Kaunian. For one thing, the Forthwegians held this part of Eoforwic. And, for another, her masking spell worked as well as it always had, now that she wasn’t pregnant any more. She looked like a Forthwegian, and she would for hours yet.

  Dark brown bloodstains marred the gray slates of the sidewalk. Vanai couldn’t tell which ones came from Algarvians and which from Forthwegians. No Algarvians were left alive hereabouts, not now.

  Smoke’s sharp scent filled the air. So did the nastier dead-meat stench from unburied bodies. Looking west, Vanai saw fresh smoke rising from a dozen fires inside Eoforwic and even more smoke, huge black columns of it, on the far side of the Twegen River. The Unkerlanters were closing in on Eoforwic, moving so fast that not even the news sheets, which had to give forth with Algarvian lies, could cover up the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen Mezentio’s men here in the north.

  Vanai’s mouth twisted. If the Unkerlanters hadn’t come so far so fast, the Forthwegian underground wouldn’t have risen up. Vanai didn’t much care whether Forthwegians or Unkerlanters gave orders in these parts—anyone but Algarvians suited her fine.

  But Ealstan cared. Though he differed from most of his countrymen in his views about Kaunians, Ealstan was a Forthwegian patriot. He wanted King Penda back. He wanted the Forthwegians to free their own kingdom, or as much of it as they could. And he was willing—no, he was horribly eager— to risk his life to help bring that about.

  “He’s an idiot,” Vanai whispered—she didn’t want to disturb Saxburh. But she meant it all the way down to the depths of her soul. The baby was real. The baby was there. Set against Saxburh’s reality, what did the kingdom of Forthweg matter? Nothing, not so far as Vanai could see. But Ealstan thought differently.

  Men are stupid, went through Vanai’s mind, not for the first time. She’d done everything she could to keep Ealstan here in the flat. Nothing had worked: not argument, not pleading, not tears. Pybba told him there was going to be a fight, and after that he might as well have been deaf and blind. Vanai had no trouble at all hating the pottery magnate.

  More eggs burst, all in one sector of the city north of the flat. Vanai cursed again, in classical Kaunian and in Forthwegian. The Algarvians had far more egg-tossers than Pybba’s ragtag and bobtail. True, Mezentio’s men needed everything they could scrape together against the Unkerlanters, but they also couldn’t afford to lose Eoforwic. They were fighting back hard.

  Footsteps in the hallway. Vanai’s heart beat faster. She didn’t have to fear Algarvian constables, not for a while. That thudding heart meant hope. And, at the coded knock, she jumped in the air and squeaked for joy.

  Carrying a stick with the Algarvian green-red-and-white shield enameled on near the touch-hole, Ealstan strode into the flat. His tunic was filthy. So was he. He wore an armband, also grimy now, that said FREE FORTHWEG—as close as the irregulars came to having real uniforms. “Home for a little while,” he said around a yawn. “Then I have to go back.”

  Despite the dismay stabbing through her at that, and despite his not having bathed for days, Vanai threw her arms around him and kissed him. Then she said, “There’s hot water on the stove. I can pour some in a basin. If you want to clean up while I get you something to eat…”

  “Aye,” Ealstan said, and yawned again. He pulled off his tunic, his shoes and socks, and his drawers, and stood there in the kitchen careless of his nakedness. Vanai just smiled and hurried to get the hot water. A few years before, she would have been shocked. What her grandfather would have said … I don’t care what my grandfather would have said, she thought firmly. This is my husband.

  She gave him bread and oil and cheese and olives and onions: all sorts of food that would keep. She wished they had a rest crate for meat and other perishables. They could have afforded one, but they’d never got around to buying it. Now they had to do without. Ealstan sat down, still naked. He wolfed down everything in sight and looked around for more.

  “When did you eat last?” Vanai demanded.

  “Yesterday?” he said vaguely. “Aye, yesterday, I think. It’s been busy out there.” He shook his head; a few drops of water sprayed out from his hair and his beard. “We’re doing what we have to do—so far, anyway. How’s the baby?”

  “She’s fine,” Vanai said, which drew a grin from Ealstan. She got up and filled his mug with wine once more. A moment later, it was empty again. Vanai went on, “She really is starting to smile.”

  “That’s good. That’s very good,” Ealstan said. “Here’s hoping we’re able to give her something to smile about.” As if to underscore his words, more eggs burst. He grimaced. “Powers below eat the Algarvians. They don’t care if they knock Eoforwic flat, as long as they get rid of us.”

  “Will the Unkerlanters help us?” Vanai asked.

  “Who knows what the Unkerlanters will do?” Ealstan said. “Who cares what they’ll do? This is our kingdom, curse it. It doesn’t belong to Swemmel any more than it belongs to Mezentio.”

  “Which is all very well,” Vanai said, “but will Swemmel pay any attention if you tell him that?”

  “I doubt it.” Ealstan spoke with a bitter cynicism Vanai had heard from other Forthwegians talking about their kingdom’s unhappy history. “When have our neighbors ever paid any attention to us?”

  Vanai got up, walked around the table, stood beside Ealstan, and set her hands on his bare shoulders. “I’ll pay attention to you, if you wouldn’t sooner fall asleep.”

  He laughed as he looked up at her, but hesitated even so. “Will you be all right if we do?”

  “I think so,” she answered. “It should be long enough—and I’ve missed you, too, you know.” She kissed him. That might have been a cue in a farce: Saxburh started to cry. Instead of getting angry, Ealstan laughed again. Vanai hurried off to tend the baby. Saxburh turned out to be both wet and hungry. She also turned out to be wide awake and full of smiles.

  “Maybe I will just fall asleep,” Ealstan said after a while.

  “Whatever you like.” Vanai knew she would be up a couple of times in the night. Saxburh hadn’t quite got the idea of sleeping through it yet. In a way, having the baby in the flat was an advantage; it left her so tired, the din of fighting outside seldom disturbed her rest.

  After a couple of hours, Saxburh went back to sleep again. Vanai set her in the cradle. Ealstan, to her surprise, was still awake. “I must be important to you,” she said as she got undressed.

  “You think you’re joking,” he said.

  “No.” Vanai shook her head. “I don’t. I know what being tired means, too.”

  Ealstan soon proved he wasn’t too tired. Vanai straddled him, carefully lowering herself onto him. It hurt. She wasn’t surprised that it did, not after a baby had gone through there. It hurt almost as much as her first time had. She did her best not to let Ealstan see that. She took no pleasure from it. No, that wasn’t true. She took no sensual pleasure, but she did enjoy pleasing Ealstan. He moved slowly and carefully, doing his best not to hurt her, even when he groaned and clutched her backside and spent himself.

  She leaned down and kissed him. “Go to sleep now, sweetheart. Nothing’s going to happen till the morning.” Saxburh would, inevitably, wake up between now and then, but Ealstan couldn’t do anything about that.

  When the baby did wake up, Ealstan didn’t even hear her cries; he kept on breathing deeply, not quite snoring, in the bed beside Vanai. His breathing didn’t change when she slid out of bed. She shook her head in bemusement. Back in the days when he’d gone to work and she’d had to stay in the flat for fear of being seized as a Kaunian, he’d often risen without waking her. Now the shoe was on the other foot.

  O
ccasional flashes of light came through the shutters as Vanai changed Saxburh’s wet linen and put the baby to her breast: bursts of sorcerous energy, along with the fires those bursts could start. Those flashes meant men shrieking and buildings crashing to ruin, but they looked and sounded like nothing so much as a thunderstorm without the drumming rain.

  Saxburh nursed. She burped. She went back to sleep without much fuss. Vanai laid her in the cradle, then lay down beside Ealstan. All sorts of questions filled her mind. Would this uprising do Forthweg any good? If it did, would Ealstan come through safe? The second mattered more to her than the first. If anything happened to Ealstan, she didn’t care what happened to Forthweg.

  And then she fell asleep herself. No matter how worried about Ealstan she was, she couldn’t hold her eyes open another moment.

  When she woke, it was beginning to get light outside. She found herself alone in bed. She hurried out to the kitchen. Ealstan had left a note behind. / hope I see you again soon, he’d written in classical Kaunian. Whatever happens, I shall love you as long as I live. She stared at that. Tears filled her eyes.

  Saxburh chose that moment to wake up with a yowl. Vanai scooped her out of the cradle and sat down to give her her breakfast. As the baby began to nurse, they were both crying.

  Ealstan wondered whether he’d been wise to go home during the lull in the fighting. He loved Vanai, and wanted to see her as much as he could. His new little daughter entranced him. But seeing them, while it reminded him of why he was fighting, also reminded him of how much he had to lose. He didn’t need that reminder, not if he was going to lay his life on the line against the redheads.

  Leofsig did it, he thought. That brought his fury up to the proper pitch. If it hadn’t been for the Algarvians, his cousin Sidroc never would have quarreled either with him or with his brother. Ealstan hoped Sidroc was dead these days. If he wasn’t, he was still fighting in Plegmund’s Brigade on the Algarvian side. Recruiting broadsheets for Plegmund’s Brigade remained on some walls, though the Forthwegian rebels who held most of Eoforwic had whitewashed the greater number of them.