Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  “Only a lieutenant?” Leudast gaped. That wasn’t how he looked at it-just the opposite, in fact. “Sir, you’ve got to remember-I come out of a peasant village. I didn’t expect to be anything but a common soldier after the impressers got. . uh, after I joined King Swemmel’s army. I got to be a sergeant because I was lucky enough to stay alive when a lot of people didn’t, and I got to be an officer because I was the fellow-well, one of the fellows-who nabbed the false King of Grelz when he was trying to get away.”

  “In my regiment,” Dagaric muttered. Leudast stifled a sigh. His superior hadn’t paid any attention to him. He didn’t know why he was surprised. Superiors didn’t have to listen to subordinates. Not having to listen was part of what made them what they were. Every so often, an exception came along. Leudast tried to be one himself, but knew he didn’t always succeed.

  He glanced east, toward the riverbank. Rathar squatted there behind what was left of the stone fence, just as he and Dagaric had done a few minutes before. The marshal showed both nerve and good sense in coming up to the front alone. The Algarvians had no idea he was there. He got the look he wanted and then came away. Leudast sighed with relief. He couldn’t imagine the war without the marshal.

  Eight

  Colonel Sabrino led his wing-what was left of it-down to a landing on a makeshift dragon farm outside the little town of Pontremoli, a few miles east of the Scamandro. Some of the dragon-handlers on the ground knew what they were doing; others were boys and old men from a Popular Assault regiment, doing the best they could at jobs they’d never expected to have to handle.

  Once Sabrino’s dragon was chained to an iron spike driven deep into the muddy ground, he climbed down and wearily made his way toward the tents that had sprouted to await the wing’s arrival. Captain Orosio’s dragon had landed not far away. Orosio looked as worn as Sabrino, but managed a nod and a wave.

  “Almost full circle,” Sabrino said.

  “Sir?” The squadron commander scratched his head. In the five and a half years he’d flown in Sabrino’s wing, his hair had retreated a good deal at the temples. Sabrino wondered how much older he looked himself these days. He felt about ninety.

  He waved to the east-not so very far to the east. “If we fall back any more, we’ll be flying out of the dragon farm near Trapani, the one we left when we went to war against Forthweg.”

  “Oh.” Orosio thought that over, then nodded. “By the powers above, you’re right.” He looked around. “Not fornicating many left who set out with us that day. You, me, two or three others-that’s it. Sixty-four dragonfliers, and all the rest dead or maimed.” He spat. “And how much longer d’you think we’ll last?”

  “As long as we do, that’s all,” Sabrino answered with a shrug that tried for typical Algarvian brio but didn’t come up with much. “I have no fear any more, and I have no hope, either. We do what we do as long as we can keep doing it, and then …” He shrugged again. “After that, what difference would it make, anyhow?”

  “Not much.” Orosio pointed to the road that led east out of Pontremoli. “They don’t think what we’re doing now makes much difference, either.”

  Algarvians poured east in a steady stream, carrying whatever they could. In earlier days, in happier days, Sabrino had watched from the air as Unkerlanters fled west before King Mezentio’s men, clogging the roads for King Swemmel’s soldiers. Now the shoe-when the refugees had shoes-was on the other foot. His dragonfliers had flamed refugee columns in Unkerlant and dropped eggs on them. Now the men who flew dragons painted rock-gray had their turn with Sabrino’s countrymen.

  “Maybe some of them will get away,” Sabrino said, fighting to keep despair from overwhelming him altogether. “Maybe they’ll get to parts of the kingdom the Lagoans and Kuusamans are overrunning. That should keep them alive. The islanders don’t kill for the sport of it, anyhow.”

  How many dead Kaunians? he wondered. How long would other kingdoms throw that in Algarve’s face? Generations, probably. And who could blame them? I tried to talk Mezentio out of it, Sabrino thought. As far as people in Algarve go, that gives me clean hands. Powers above help us all.

  Orosio said, “You think it’s lost, then? You think we have no chance, no matter what King Mezentio says?”

  “Aye, I think that,” Sabrino answered. “Don’t you?” Reluctantly, the squadron commander nodded. “All right, then,” Sabrino said. “What do we do next?”

  “Fight as hard as we can as long as we can,” Orosio said. “What else is there?”

  “Nothing I can see,” Sabrino told him. “Not a single fornicating thing.” As Orosio had, he spat into the muck. “And I’m not doing it for King Mezentio. This for King Mezentio.” He spat again. “If it weren’t for what Mezentio did back in the first autumn of the war with Unkerlant, we’d have a better chance now-and nobody would hate us quite so much.”

  Had Orosio taken that back to the ears of men who cared about such things-to King Mezentio’s equivalent of inspectors, Sabrino thought scornfully- the wing commander would have found himself in trouble … as if trying to keep up the fight against the Unkerlanters weren’t trouble enough. But Sabrino knew his squadron commander well enough to be sure Orosio would sooner be flamed out of the sky than betray him. What Orosio did say was, “Well, if it’s not for the king and it’s not for the kingdom, why not just pack it in?”

  “Who says it’s not for the kingdom?” Sabrino looked back toward that unending stream of Algarvians fleeing eastward. “The longer we keep going, the longer we hold back Swemmel’s whoresons, the more people will have the chance to get away. That’s worth doing, curse it.”

  “Ah.” Orosio didn’t need long to think it over this time. “You’re right, sir. We’ve got to do what we can.”

  “However much that is-or however little.” Sabrino raised his voice to call to the chief dragon-handler: “Sergeant! A word with you, if you please.”

  “Aye, sir?” The fellow hurried up to him. “What can I do for you, sir? We were just going to feed the beasts.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Sabrino said. “Did that shipment of cinnabar you were talking about ever get down here from the north? Without it, our dragons are only flaming half as far as the ones the Unkerlanters fly.”

  “Oh. That. Sorry, sir. No.” The sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think we can expect any more, either. I heard today Swemmel’s men have overrun the mines south of Bonorva. That was about the last cinnabar we had left, sir, and we had to try and parcel it out amongst all the dragons we’ve still got in the air.”

  “The last of the cinnabar.” Sabrino didn’t know why it surprised him. He’d seen this day coming when the Algarvians were driven out of the cinnabar-rich austral continent-after their murderous magic went wrong there, as foreign magic had a way of doing, and wrecked their own army-and especially after they didn’t swarm past Sulingen and into the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills in southern Unkerlant. He’d seen it coming, and seen it coming. . and it was finally here.

  Orosio put the best face on things he could: “Well, sir, our job just got a little harder, that’s all.”

  Their job, for most of the past two years, had been impossible. Orosio surely knew that as well as Sabrino did. Sabrino let out another weary sigh. “Fishing without a net or a line, that’s what we’ll be doing. How many minnows can we grab out of the water with our bare hands?”

  “Fish, sir?” The sergeant of dragon-handlers looked confused. A solid, capable man when doing what he knew how to do, he wouldn’t have known a metaphor had one strolled up wagging its tail. Sabrino almost envied him. He wished he were more ignorant himself these days.

  He ducked into his tent. A meal of sorts waited there: rye bread and a little crock of butter and a jug of spirits. Sabrino shook his head. Change the spirits to ale and his barbarous ancestors would have eaten like this in the days before they ever dreamt of challenging the might of the Kaunian Empire.

  New barbarians at the g
ates now, Sabrino thought. He wondered whether he meant the Unkerlanters or his own people. He shrugged a fine, flamboyant Algarvian shrug. What difference did it make, really? He drank more of his supper than he ate, and went to bed with wits whirling.

  When he woke up the next morning, his throbbing head seemed altogether in keeping with the general state of the world, or the Algarvian portion thereof. His head would eventually improve. He had his doubts about the Algarvian portion of the world.

  Bread liberally smeared with butter did nothing to beat back his hangover. They did grease his stomach so the slug of spirits he poured down after them didn’t hurt so much. When the spirits mounted to his head, he felt human again, in a melancholy way. How any Algarvian could feel anything but melancholy these days was beyond him.

  The day was cool and cloudy, with a threat of rain in the air. Sabrino wouldn’t have wanted to face bright sunshine just then. He started over to the crystallomancers’ tent to find out where along the tattered front his dozen or so dragons could do the most good. Before he got there, someone called his name. He turned.

  He knew he stared. He couldn’t help it. The smiling young fellow striding toward him might have come out of the early days, the triumphant days, of the war. It wasn’t so much that his uniform tunic and kilt were clean and new and well pressed, though at this stage of things that seemed a minor prodigy to Sabrino of itself. But the stranger’s expression and bearing seemed to say the past two years and more had been nothing but a bad dream. Sabrino wished it were so. Unfortunately, he knew better.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel,” the younger man said, holding out his arm. As he and Sabrino clasped wrists, he went on, “I have the honor to be called Almonte, sir.”

  He wore a major’s rank badges and, prominent on his left breast, a mage’s insigne. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Sabrino echoed, though anything but sure he was pleased. “What can I do for you?”

  “No, Colonel, it’s what I can do for you.” Almonte was excessively glib; he put Sabrino in mind of a commercial traveler peddling silver spoons that would show the brass beneath inside a month. He had plenty of brass himself; he continued, “How would you like to lick the Unkerlanters all the way back to their own kingdom?”

  “If I could lick them back half a mile, I’d be tolerably pleased,” Sabrino answered. In Algarve’s hour of desperation, all sorts of maniacs were getting their chances, for how could they make things worse? “What have you got in mind?”

  “Riding with you to smite the enemy from the air with a new, particularly potent sorcery I’ve devised,” Almonte answered.

  “Have you tried it before?” Sabrino asked. “If you have, how did it go?”

  “I’m still here,” Almonte answered.

  “So are the Unkerlanters,” Sabrino said dryly.

  Almonte gave him a reproachful stare. “I am but one man, Colonel. I do what I can for King Mezentio and Algarve. I hope you can say the same.”

  If he thought he would make Sabrino feel guilty, he erred. “Futter you, Major,” the wing commander said, not bothering to raise his voice. “I fought on the ground in the Six Years’ War, and I’ve been at the front in this one since the day it started. I don’t owe Algarve any more than I’ve already given. Before I decide whether I want you on a dragon with me, suppose you tell me just what your precious spell is and what you think it can do to the Unkerlanters.”

  Biting his lip in anger, Almonte plunged into his explanation. He plainly didn’t know how technical to be; sometimes he talked down to Sabrino, others his words went over the dragonflier’s head. What he aimed to do was clear enough: loose horror and destruction on Swemmel’s men from the air. How he proposed to go about it…

  Sabrino didn’t hit him. Afterwards, he wondered why. His stomach lurching as if his dragon had dived without warning, he said, “Get out of my sight this instant, or I’ll blaze you where you stand. This makes killing Kaunians clean by comparison.”

  “Desperate times take desperate measures,” the mage declared.

  King Mezentio had said the same thing, just before the Algarvian wizards started butchering blonds. Sabrino hadn’t been able to stop him. He was the king. This fellow. . “If you want to try that, Major, I’d sooner see the Unkerlanters smash us down,” Sabrino said.

  “I shall return with orders from your superiors,” Almonte snapped.

  “Fine,” Sabrino said. “You can go up on my dragon, or on any dragon in this wing, but there’s no guarantee you’ll come down.” Almonte stalked off. He didn’t come back. Sabrino hadn’t thought he would.

  In the blockhouse not far from the hostel in the Naantali district, Pekka spun a globe. Globes and maps were more than just pictures of the world; as even the sages of the Kaunian Empire had realized, they were also, in their own way, applications of and invitations to the law of similarity. Pekka looked from one of her colleagues to another. “This is our last great test,” she said, and they all nodded. “If everything goes as it should, we can use this sorcery against any place in the world from here.”

  They all nodded: Raahe and Alkio, Piilis-and Fernao. Pekka did her best to treat him the same way she treated the other theoretical sorcerers. He didn’t like that; his eyes, so like a Kuusaman’s, showed as much. She hadn’t been in his bed-she hadn’t wanted to be in anyone’s bed-since learning of Leino’s death.

  But for a couple of trips back to Kajaani to see her son and her sister, she’d thrown herself into her sorcery, using work as an anodyne where someone else might have used spirits.

  He couldn’t very well complain, not here in front of everyone. What he did say was, “The blockhouse seems empty today, compared to so many of the things we’ve done. No secondary sorcerers here, for instance-just a crystallomancer.”

  “We don’t need secondary sorcerers, not for this.” Pekka waved at the bank of cages full of rats and rabbits. “We’ll be sending the energy we release from the beasts so far away, we can safely keep the cages here.”

  I want to send the energy to Trapani, she thought savagely. I want to lash the capital of Algarve with a whip of fire, till nothing there still stands. But what good would that do? It wouldn’t bring Leino back to life. Nothing could do that. A day at a time, she was realizing the finality of death.

  “Shall we begin?” Raahe asked quietly. She was holding Alkio’s hand. She and her husband were ten or fifteen years older than Pekka, but smiling like a couple of newlyweds.

  “Aye,” Pekka said: one harsh word. Whom have I? she wondered. Not Leino, not any more, not ever. I did have Fernao. I could have him again. Is he what I really want, or was he just someone to keep me warm while Leino was far away? She didn’t know. She was afraid to find out.

  I’m also too busy to find out. She recited the Kuusaman ritual words that preceded every spell save one cast in an emergency. Then she spun the globe again. This time, she purposely stopped it. Her fingernail tapped what looked like a fly speck in the eastern Bothnian Ocean. “Becsehely.” She pronounced the Gyongyosian name as best she could. “Everyone is supposed to be off the island.”

  “Everyone had better be off the island,” Fernao said. “Anyone who stayed behind would be very sorry.”

  “I begin,” Pekka said, and started incanting. After so many runs through spells like this, she cast another one with almost as much confidence and aplomb as if she were a practical mage herself. No, that’s Leino, she thought, and felt again the hole in her life. That was Leino. But she couldn’t dwell on it, not now. The spell came first.

  She felt the sorcerous energy building inside the blockhouse. The animals in the cages felt it, too. They scurried this way and that. Some tried to get out. Some tried to bury under the shavings and sawdust on the cage floors, to hide from what was happening. That wouldn’t help them, but they didn’t know it wouldn’t.

  Pekka chanted on. The passes that went with the incantation were second nature to her now. The other theoretical sorcerers stood by, lendin
g strength and standing ready to rush to her aid if, in spite of everything, she faltered. That had happened before. She missed Master Siuntio-dead at the Algarvians’ hands, too-and Master Ilmarinen. Fernao had saved her before. She didn’t want to think about that, and, again, she didn’t have to.

  The animals were growing frantic now, the rats squeaking in fear and alarm. Pekka knew an abstract pity for them. Better you than so many Kaunians or Unkerlanters or even Gyongyosians who are proud to volunteer their throats to the knife. Glowing blue lines of sorcerous energy stretched between cages of young beasts and their grandparents. Those lines grew brighter by the moment, brighter and brighter and. .

  All at once, they flashed, intolerably brilliant. Pekka’s eyes were closed against the glare by then, but that flash pierced her to the quick even so. When she opened her eyes afterwards, green-purple lines seemed printed across the world. Slowly, slowly, they faded.

  Corruption’s ripe reek filled the blockhouse, but only for a moment. The older rats and rabbits in the cages aged so catastrophically fast, they went past rotting to bare bones far quicker than the blink of an eye. The younger ones, by contrast, were propelled backwards chronologically, back to the days long before they were born. Had they ever truly existed, then? The mathematics there were indeterminate. But for sawdust and shavings, the cages that had held them were empty now.

  “Divergent series,” Pekka murmured. Sure enough, that was how to get the greatest release of sorcerous energy.

  “We did everything as planned,” Raahe said. “Now we find out if our calculations were right.”

  “That’s the interesting part, or so Ilmarinen would say,” Pekka replied. She hoped the cantankerous old master mage was all right. Losing him on top of all the other disasters of war would have been almost too much to bear. Deliberately forcing the thought from her mind, she turned to the crystallomancer. “Make the etheric connection to the Searaven.”