Jaws of Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “Those people are crazy,” Orosio declared.

  Since Sabrino thought he was right, he didn’t argue. In fact, he waved Orosio to silence: A Yaninan was trotting toward them. In accented Algarvian, the fellow called, “Colonel Sabrino to tent of crystallomancers.”

  “I’m coming.” Sabrino hurried after the fellow. He wondered what had gone wrong now. He also had to do his best not to laugh at the way the pompoms on the Yaninan’s shoes bounced up and down. Algarvians always had a hard time taking their Yaninan neighbors seriously.

  All but a couple of the crystallomancers inside the tent were Yaninans. For some reason or other, Sabrino had trouble getting Algarvian replacements. He had to admit the little swarthy men did know their business. Their specialists—which also included dragonfliers—were pretty good. Their army as a whole …

  He sat down at the crystal to which a Yaninan waved him. “Sabrino here.”

  An Algarvian face looked back at him. “Hello, Colonel. I am Major Ardalico. I want to let you know that I am establishing a special camp a couple of miles to the rear of your position.”

  “A special camp?” Sabrino repeated tonelessly.

  “That’s right.” Ardalico’s voice was bland. Even the Algarvians who slaughtered Kaunians from Forthweg for the sake of their life energy weren’t comfortable about saying that straight out. Special camp was their favorite euphemism.

  “Why are you setting up a special camp back there?” Sabrino asked.

  Major Ardalico’s image in the crystal gave him a large, hearty, false smile. “Because I’ve been ordered to, sir.”

  “Thank you so much,” Sabrino said, and the major’s smile got larger and falser. “Now be so good as to tell me why you were ordered to put that camp there.”

  “Sir, I wouldn’t care to speculate about that.” Ardalico was smooth. He was so smooth, he was downright greasy. Colonel Sabrino hated him on sight.

  “Powers below eat you, you miserable little turd,” Sabrino ground out. “You’re going to tell me the truth, or I’ll get my dragons in the air and knock that camp down around your ears. And if you don’t think I’ll do it, you can bloody well think again.”

  He’d succeeded in knocking the smug, self-satisfied smirk off Ardalico’s handsome face. “You wouldn’t dare,” blurted the officer in charge of the special camp.

  “Sonny boy, you just go ahead and try me,” Sabrino said. “I’m already under a cloud in Trapani. What can King Mezentio do to me? Send me to the west to fight the Unkerlanters? I’ve been here since you were in diapers. Now are you going to talk to me, or do I pay you a visit on dragonback?”

  He wasn’t bluffing. Some few of his own men might balk, but the Yaninans would surely follow him. For one thing, it would infuriate Algarve. For another, the idea of sacrificing Kaunians appalled them. They weren’t really hard enough to fight in a war like this, but what choice did they have when they found themselves sandwiched between Mezentio and Swemmel?

  Major Ardalico licked his lips. He wasn’t stupid, except in the particular way that had let him become an officer heading up a special camp in the first place. He had to realize Sabrino meant what he said. But he tried one last delaying tactic: “What was it you wanted to know?”

  “Why are you running up that bloody murder manufactory of yours?” Sabrino demanded. Ardalico winced; thinking of it as a special camp probably helped him sleep at night. Sabrino didn’t care. He had his own worries. Most of them—the ones that weren’t centered in Trapani—lay due west of him. He went on, “Are you putting it up because it looks like the Unkerlanters are going to mount an attack in these parts, and we need some way to stop them?”

  “I shouldn’t be speaking of this by crystal,” Ardalico said unhappily. Sabrino drummed his fingers on the tabletop. The motion drew Ardalico’s eyes: Sabrino could see as much from his image. More unhappily still, the young major said, “Aye, there is some fear of that.”

  Although Sabrino heard the words, he didn’t want to believe them. “How?” he whispered. “With everything they’re doing up in the north, where can they find the men and the beasts to strike another blow against us down here, too?”

  “It’s a big kingdom, Unkerlant is,” Ardalico answered, which meant he didn’t know how Swemmel’s men were doing what they were doing, either. The Algarvians hadn’t believed Unkerlant would be able to fight back so strongly when they first launched their attack against Swemmel’s kingdom. Here more than three years later, Sabrino’s countrymen still had trouble believing it, which doubtless went a long way towards explaining why the tide of war flowed against them.

  “If they do attack, can we stop them?” Sabrino asked: the one question besides which none of the others mattered.

  Major Ardalico said, “Having a special camp in the neighborhood will give us a better chance.”

  Sabrino’s laugh held knives of bitterness. “Oh, aye, all the Kaunians we’ve killed so far have done just what we wanted. That’s why we marched into Cottbus week before last, isn’t it?” He had the satisfaction of watching Ardalico’s image wince. Instead of shouting, he went on in a small, quiet, deadly voice: “You stupid clot, don’t you see the Unkerlanters will kill as many of their own as they need to to block whatever you do?”

  “If the camp weren’t here, Colonel, the Unkerlanters would still kill their own,” Ardalico replied. “And then where would you be?”

  That held enough truth to make Sabrino wince in turn. Even so, he said, “If we hadn’t started it, Major, they wouldn’t have.” Every interrogation record he’d seen confirmed that. The Unkerlanters hadn’t imagined using large-scale murder for the sake of life energy as a weapon of war, not till the Algarvians showed them the way. But they hadn’t stepped back from learning, either.

  “Which may be true and which may not, sir, but which has nothing to do with what will happen—not with what may happen, mind you, but with what will happen—if King Swemmel’s buggers do hit this section of our line,” Ardalico said.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Sabrino admitted. “As you know, we’re rather short of footsoldiers hereabouts. Shall I try to see if I can bring in a few companies from the Phalanx of Valmiera to protect your special camp?”

  For a moment, he thought Ardalico would nod. But the younger officer only gave him the look any junior officer gives his senior when the latter has just told a joke that is anything but funny. “Good day, sir,” Ardalico said, and broke the etheric connection. Light flared in the crystal before which Sabrino sat. When it faded, the crystal was for all practical purposes inert once more.

  With a grunt, Sabrino got to his feet and left the crystallomancers’ tent. He strode over to the nearby tent in which Major Scoufas made his headquarters. The Yaninan looked up from the papers on his folding table. “Good day, sir,” he said. “I hope you will forgive me for saying so, but you do not look like a happy man.”

  “I’m not.” Like any Algarvian, Sabrino had spent a fair amount of time sneering at Yaninans. But he wouldn’t have traded Major Scoufas for a company of Ardalicos.

  “Will this help?” Scoufas produced a jar of the local spirits and a couple of mugs. “Not much for flavor, but it numbs the brain.”

  “I could use some numbing, thanks.” But Sabrino went on before he’d had anything to drink: “They’re putting in a special camp in this sector. You know about special camps?”

  “I know of them, aye.” The Yaninan dragonflier’s dark eyes were particularly unfathomable. “A filthy business.” He waited to see how Sabrino would respond. When Sabrino nodded, Scoufas continued, “And not a good sign, if one is coming into being here.” Sabrino nodded again. The two officers proceeded to get very drunk.

  Ilmarinen came up to Fernao in the hallway and poked him in the chest with a bony forefinger. When the elderly theoretical sorcerer didn’t say anything and did keep poking, Fernao poked back. For a moment, they might have been fencing with fingers. Since Fernao was much younger and had a longer reach, he got th
e better of the duel. Ilmarinen said, “You deserve it, you cursed Lagoan.”

  “What have I done now?” Fernao was only too sure Ilmarinen would come up with something scandalous.

  And the Kuusaman mage did: “You turned out to be right, you miserable, unprincipled son of a whore.”

  “Oh?” That wasn’t an admission Fernao heard from Ilmarinen every day. “Right about what?”

  “About expanding that one series,” Ilmarinen answered. “You really can’t do it the way I tried. I’m not saying my notion is impossible, mind you, but my spell wouldn’t have worked. If you want my thanks for stopping me, you can have ‘em.”

  Fernao shrugged. “I’m glad the energy release didn’t happen. That spell would have released … a lot of energy.” He hadn’t tried to calculate how much. Now, in an offhand way, he did. “You know, if we wanted to, we could try to turn it into a weapon, too.”

  “Aye, I suppose we could.” Ilmarinen shrugged. “I’d sooner try to turn it into a spell that does what I want it to do.” He was incorrigible. He reveled in being incorrigible. Now he waited for Fernao to pitch a fit.

  The best way to frustrate him was not to do what he wanted. With a shrug of his own, Fernao said, “With everything else going on, you probably won’t have time to work on it. If you aren’t busy here, something is badly wrong.”

  Ilmarinen grunted. “You only think you’re joking.” Fernao shook his head. He didn’t think he was joking at all. Catching him with his defenses down, Ilmarinen poked him again. As he yelped, the Kuusaman mage added, “One of these days, I may even forgive you.”

  “For being right?” Fernao asked.

  “For being right,” Ilmarinen agreed. With a last poke—he had a sharp fingernail, too—he went past Fernao and down the hall.

  “If you want to thank somebody, thank Linna,” Fernao called after him. “She was the one who let Pekka and me know where you’d gone.”

  “I’ve already thanked her,” Ilmarinen said over his shoulder. “Believe me, it was much more fun than thanking you ever could be.” He turned a corner and disappeared. Fernao stared after him, then shook his head and started to laugh. Trying to get the last word against Ilmarinen was a losing battle.

  Laughing still, Fernao went back to his own chamber and looked without much warmth on the report he was drafting for Grandmaster Pinhiero. The first Lagoan mages had finally come to the research station in the barren Naantali district. They weren’t doing so well as either Fernao or Pinhiero had hoped. Language problems were part of the reason: they were less fluent in Kuusaman than they needed to be. And, even more than Kuusaman mages, they had trouble accepting that One Law lay under the Two with which they’d long been familiar.

  Fernao cast about for a way to say that without making his countrymen sound like imbeciles. Morons, perhaps, but not imbeciles, he thought. He’d just inked his pen when someone knocked on the door. He suspected it would be Ilmarinen, coming back for the word after the last word.

  He put the pen down even so. Listening to Ilmarinen’s impudence was bound to prove more entertaining than explaining to the head of the Lagoan Guild of Mages why some of the sorcerers he’d sent weren’t measuring up. But when he opened the door, Ilmarinen wasn’t standing in the hallway. Pekka was. “Oh,” Fernao said in surprise, and then, recalling himself, “Come in.” He stepped aside.

  “Thank you.” Pekka’s voice wasn’t quite steady. The small quaver in it alarmed Fernao more than a scream from another woman might have. She sat down on the stool he’d been using to draft his report—sank down onto it, really.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as he sat down on the bed. Something obviously was. One possibility sprang to mind right away: “You told me you weren’t with child. Were you wrong?”

  “What?” Pekka’s eyes widened. To his vast relief, she shook her head. “No, it’s not that, powers above be praised. I’m just… upset, that’s all.”

  “Why?” he said, and then, before he could stop himself, “Why come to me?”

  Pekka chose to answer the second question first: “Because whatever else we are, we’re friends.” He nodded, though his lips tightened. Because that was true, they’re not being lovers any more hurt all the worse. Pekka went on, “I just got a letter from Leino. He’s left Habakkuk so he can join in the fighting in Jelgava.”

  “Has he?” Fernao said. Now Pekka nodded, miserably. Fernao made himself say what needed saying: “I hope he stays safe.” Did he mean it? Part of him did, anyhow, the larger part, the part not centered on his crotch.

  “You know the spells the Algarvians use,” Pekka said. “They’ve never used them against ships. They use them on land whenever they can scrape together enough Kaunians to kill. I’m frightened for him. I wish he hadn’t done it.”

  “He should be all right.” Fernao want to take her in his arms to comfort her. Did part of her want that, too? Was that why she’d come here? He wished it were, but he didn’t believe it. He also wished he were better at fooling himself. With a sigh, he went on, “If the news sheets are right, Mezentio’s men aren’t putting up much of a fight in Jelgava, so you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “I don’t trust the Algarvians,” Pekka said, which made good, hard sense. “They can’t just go on retreating through Jelgava. If they do too much more retreating, they lose the war.”

  That also made sense. The same thought had crossed Fernao’s mind. If it had crossed the minds of the people who wrote news sheets, they did their best not to let it show. Their best was quite good; the news sheets had a tone of giddy euphoria that sometimes made Fernao want to gag.

  Leaning on his stick, he heaved himself to his feet once more and limped over to set a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t flinch, but she didn’t turn toward him, either. He sighed again. He didn’t see a wish coming true. “He’ll be fine,” he repeated.

  Pekka rose, too. “Thank you, Fernao,” she said. “You are a good friend. I shouldn’t have troubled you with this.”

  You’re right—you shouldn’t have, went through his mind. But, again, that wasn’t altogether true. Aloud, he said, “It’s all right. We are friends … whatever else we are, as you said.” Becoming lovers was destructive of friendships. He knew that. He was glad it hadn’t—quite—happened here.

  “Do you ever want to go and fight the Algarvians yourself?” Pekka asked. Comparing him to her husband? Then she went on, “Sometimes I have all I can do, just staying here and working on this sorcery. It doesn’t seem enough.”

  Fernao lifted his cane into the air. For a moment, he stood on two legs, one good, one bad. The cane was the point of the exercise. Pekka realized as much. As her eyes followed its motion, she turned red. Fernao said, “They already have as much of me as I care to give them, thank you very much.”

  “Oh,” Pekka said softly. “I was foolish. I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged, which made his bad arm and shoulder twinge, but only for a moment. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and then, almost as romantic as an Algarvian, “If Mezentio’s men hadn’t ruined me for anything strenuous, Grandmaster Pinhiero probably wouldn’t have sent me here, and then I wouldn’t have been lucky enough to meet you.”

  Pekka blushed once more. Not looking at him, she said, “You’re being difficult again, Fernao.”

  “Am I?” He thought about shrugging again, and promptly thought better of it. “Well, maybe I am.”

  “I’d better go,” she said quickly, and, as quickly, did. Fernao listened to her fading footsteps in the hall. If she hadn’t gone quickly, what would she have done? Thrown herself into his arms after all? Or found the nearest blunt instrument and hit him with it because he’d chosen to be difficult again?

  How much would you give to know the answer to that? he wondered, but he didn’t have to keep wondering very long. Everything I have. Everything I could conjure up or borrow or steal.

  He limped over to the desk, and to the report he’d been drafting for Pinhiero. With a g
rimace, he pushed it away. How was he supposed to pay attention to it when he had really important things on his mind? If Pinhiero had to wait a day or two longer for his answers, the world wouldn’t end, especially since he wouldn’t like them when he got them.

  Another knock on the door. Fernao jumped. Inside him, his heart jumped, too. Was that Pekka coming back? At a sort of shambling trot, he hurried across the chamber and opened the door. “Oh,” he said dully. It wasn’t Pekka. It was, in fact, one of the Lagoan mages who’d come to the Naantali district to learn the new sorcery. After so long using Kuusaman and classical Kaunian, he had to make a conscious decision to speak his own language: “Come in, Viana.”

  “Thank you,” she answered. She was perhaps a year or two older than he, nicely shaped but on the plain side, earnest, hard-working. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all,” he answered, limping back to the desk to flip the papers so she couldn’t read them. “What can I do for you? Sit down. Make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you,” Viana said again. “I wanted to ask you some questions about what we were doing here and how we would use the sorcery in the field.”

  “Go ahead,” Fernao said. Viana did, one question after another. Some of them were things she already should have known, but none was downright foolish. Mechanically, he answered them all.

  After what seemed like forever and was in fact something above an hour, she said, “I’ve taken up enough of our time. Things are much clearer now. I appreciate your patience.” She got to her feet.

  So did Fernao, using good leg, good arm, and cane to return to vertical. “It’s all right,” he said. After that session, he looked forward to getting back to work on the report for Grandmaster Pinhiero. It would have to be more interesting. With a last polite nod, Viana left.

  And Fernao did start writing again. Halfway down the second leaf of paper after he did, his pen abruptly stopped scritching. He looked out the window and scratched his head. I wonder if Viana came here trying to find out something that didn’t have anything to do with those spells. She must have known—mustn’t she?—the answers to a good many of the questions she’d asked. Was she trying to find out if I were interested in her?