Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  “These buggers don’t know how to quit, do they, sir?” asked a young soldier named Noyt. His voice broke in the middle of the question; he didn’t need to scrape a razor across his cheeks to keep them smooth. He’d been a little boy when the war started.

  “They’re like snakes,” Leudast agreed. “They’ll fight you till you cut the head off-and if you pick up the head a couple of hours later, it’ll twist around and bite you even though it’s dead.”

  He rolled himself in his blanket and fell asleep-and woke again in short order when a mosquito bit him on the end of the nose. The Algarvians might not have many dragons left in the air, but Trapani lay in the middle of a marsh. Plenty of things with wings came forth to attack the Unkerlanters.

  When morning came, Leudast woke again, this time with the feeling something was badly wrong somewhere, even though he couldn’t put his finger on what. He was an officer these days, and entitled to sniff around and try to find out (he’d done the same thing as a sergeant, and as a common soldier, too, but fewer people could squelch him now). He walked up to Captain Dagaric and asked, “What’s going on, sir? Something is, sure as sure, and I don’t think it’s anything good.”

  “You think so, too, eh?” the regimental commander answered. “I hadn’t noticed anything myself, but I saw a couple of mages putting their heads together and muttering a few minutes ago.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Leudast said. “What are the fornicating Algarvians going to throw at us now?”

  “Who knows?” Dagaric said with weary cynicism. “We’ll have to find out the hard way, I expect. That’s what we’re for, after all.”

  “Huh,” Leudast said. “I’ve had to find out too cursed many things the hard way. Once in a while, I’d like to know ahead of time.”

  He went off in search of the mages his superior had seen, and found them under an oak whose trunk was badly scarred with beams. As Dagaric had said, they were talking in low voices, and both looked worried. Leudast stood around waiting for them to notice him. He waited more ostentatiously with each passing minute. At last, one of the sorcerers said, “You want something, Lieutenant?”

  “I want to know what the redheads are brewing up,” Leudast answered. “They’ve got something ready to pop, sure as blazes.” Both wizards wore captain’s rank badges, but he didn’t waste much military courtesy on them. They were only mages, after all, not real officers.

  They looked at each other. One of them asked, “Have you wizardly talent?”

  “Not that I know of,” Leudast said. “Just a bad feeling in the air.”

  “Very bad,” the mage agreed. “Something is coming, and we don’t know what. All we can do is wait and see.”

  “Can we send dragons to drop eggs on the heads of the whoresons cooking up whatever it is?” Leudast asked. “If they’re trying not to get smashed into strawberry jam, they can’t very well cast spells.”

  The wizards brightened. “Do you know, Lieutenant, that isn’t the worst idea anyone has ever had,” said the one who did the talking.

  “You boys are the ones to take care of it,” Leudast said, hiding a smile. “You’re the ones who deal with crystals and such.” The mages might outrank him, but he could see what needed doing. They sometimes put him in mind of bright children: they could come up with all sorts of clever schemes, but a good many of those had nothing to do with the real world.

  Whistles shrilled again. Leudast trotted away from the mages without a backwards glance. If the attack was heating up again, he needed to be with his men as they pushed on toward the heart of Trapani. But, as he moved forward, he suddenly discovered that he wasn’t going forward at all: his feet were moving up and down, but each new step left him in the same place as had the one before it.

  Cries of alarm said he wasn’t the only Unkerlanter soldier thus afflicted. He didn’t know how the Algarvian mages were doing this, but they plainly were. A glance told him the behemoths were similarly frozen in place. Unkerlanter soldiers started falling as hidden redheads blazed them.

  They could still run away from the heart of Trapani. Some of them did. Leudast discovered he could move sideways and, more important, that he could duck. “Get down!” he called to the men closest to danger. “Get into cover! You can do it.” Some people wouldn’t have figured it out for themselves, but would manage to do it once told they could.

  Scuttling behind a boulder, Leudast wondered if the entire Unkerlanter assault on Trapani, all the way around the Algarvian capital, had been frozen in its tracks. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Algarvian mages didn’t think small. They never had, not since they started killing Kaunians-and, very likely, not before then, either. Algarvians were flamboyant folk.

  Eggs kept on bursting deeper inside Trapani. “They can’t stop everything!” Leudast exclaimed. He’d had the right of it while talking with his own wizards. It was up to the fellows who served the egg-tossers now. If they killed or wounded or at least distracted the sorcerers who made the spell work, the attack could resume again. If not. .

  Leudast looked up. A couple of dragons painted Unkerlanter rock-gray hovered like oversized kestrels, unable to go forward no matter how powerfully they beat their great wings. Even as he watched, a beam from an Algarvian heavy stick tumbled one of them from the sky.

  He waited, every now and then blazing from behind that boulder. Maybe the eggs the Unkerlanters hurtled into Trapani finally did what they were supposed to. Maybe Mezentio’s mages could hold their spell for only so long. Maybe-though he wouldn’t have bet much on it-their Unkerlanter counterparts at last beat down their wizardry. Whatever the reason, shouts of, “Urra!” rang out when Swemmel’s soldiers discovered they could go forward again.

  Why are we cheering? Leudast wondered as he ran towards a house from which a couple of diehards were blazing. Now we’ve got another chance to get killed.

  One of the diehards showed himself at a window-only for a moment, but long enough for Leudast’s beam to cut him down. “Urra!” Leudast yelled. “King Swemmel! Revenge!” Maybe that one word said everything that needed saying.

  Aye, we might get killed, but we’ll do a lot of killing first. Before long, Trapani was going to fall. He intended to be one of those who helped bring it down. “Urra!” he cried again, and ran on.

  Not a lot of mail came to the hostel in the Naantali district. As far as most of the world was concerned, that hostel didn’t exist. Pekka and the other mages who labored there might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. Even relatives who knew the sorcerers were working somewhere didn’t usually know where, and relied on the post office to get letters where they needed to go.

  One envelope that got to Pekka did not, at first, look as if it had come to the right place. The printed design on the corner that showed postage fees had been paid was not Kuusaman. After a bit of puzzling, she figured out the letter was from Jelgava. I don’t know anyone in Jelgava, she thought. I certainly don’t know anyone in Jelgava who knows I’m here.

  Even the script challenged her. Printed Jelgavan used the same characters as Kuusaman, but the two kingdoms’ handwritings were quite different. Her name wasn’t on the envelope. A chill ran through her when she realized Leino’s was.

  She turned the envelope over. There on the back, in red, was a stamp in her own language: military post-deceased, forward to next of kin.

  Pekka’s lips skinned back from her teeth. That explained how she’d got the letter-explained it in more detail than she’d wanted. She opened the envelope. The letter inside was in Jelgavan, too. She had only a few words of the language, and could make out next to nothing of what it said.

  She found Fernao in the refectory at suppertime. He was demolishing a plate of corned venison and red cabbage. “Do you read Jelgavan?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pointing to his supper, she added, “That looks good.”

  “It is,” he said, and then asked, “Why do you need me to read Jelgavan? I can probably make sense of it-it’s as close
to Valmieran as Sibian is to Algarvian, maybe closer, and I don’t have much trouble with Valmieran.”

  “Here. I got this today.” Pekka gave him the letter. “I knew you were good with languages. Can you tell me what it says?” A serving girl came up. Pekka ordered the venison and cabbage for herself, too.

  “Let me see.” Fernao started to read, then looked up sharply. “This is to your husband.”

  “I know.” Pekka had destroyed the envelope with that hateful rubber stamp. “It got sent to me. What does it say?” She wondered, not for the first time, if Leino had had a Jelgavan lover. She could hardly be angry at him now if he had; it would go some way toward salving her own conscience.

  Even so, she started when Fernao said, “It’s from a woman.” He continued, “She’s writing about her husband.”

  Was the fellow angry at Leino? Pekka didn’t care to come right out and ask that. Instead, she said, “What does she say about him?”

  “Says he helped your husband when he was with the irregulars, but now he’s disappeared, and she’s afraid he’s been thrown into a dungeon,” Fernao replied. “She asks if Leino can do anything to get him out.”

  “A Jelgavan dungeon.” Pekka winced. Jelgavan dungeons had an evil reputation. Leino, she remembered, had met King Donalitu aboard the Habakkuk, met him and despised him. Helping anyone who’d fallen foul of his men seemed worth doing. She asked, “Who is this fellow?”

  “His name is Talsu. He’s from a town called Skrunda-whereabouts in Jelgava that is, powers above only know. I know I don’t, not without a book of maps,” Fernao said. “His wife’s called Gailisa.”

  That name meant nothing to Pekka. Talsu, on the other hand.. “Aye, Leino said something about him in a letter. He helped our men slip through the Algarvian lines in front of this Skrunda place.”

  “You probably ought to see what you can do for him, then,” Fernao said. Pekka smiled and nodded, glad he was thinking along with her. Leino had done a lot of that; if Fernao could, too-and if she could with him-that struck her as promising. Fernao’s next question was thoroughly practical: “Do you think you can do anything?”

  “By myself? No. Why should any Jelgavan want to listen to me? But I’ve got connections, and what good are they if I don’t use them?” Listening to herself, Pekka had to laugh. She sounded very much like a woman of the world, not a theoretical sorcerer from a town that looked southwest toward the land of the Ice People. She’d seen Fernao smile a couple of amused and tolerant smiles in Kajaani, though he’d done his best to hide them.

  He nodded vigorously now. “Good for you. At least half the time, knowing people counts for more than knowing things does.”

  Pekka’s supper arrived then. She ate quickly, for she wanted to get to the crystallomancers’ chamber as soon as she could. When she walked in, she said, “Put me through to Prince Juhainen, if he’s not too busy to talk.”

  “Aye, Mistress Pekka,” said a crystallomancer: the same woman who’d summoned her to this chamber to hear Juhainen tell her Leino was dead. Pekka tried not to think of that now. The crystallomancer went about her business with unhurried precision. After a couple of minutes, she looked up from the crystal, in which the prince’s image had appeared. “Go ahead.”

  “Hello, your Highness,” Pekka said. “I have a favor to ask of you, if you’d be so kind.”

  “That depends, Mistress Pekka,” Juhainen answered. “One of the things I’ve learned the past couple of years is not to make promises till I know what I’m promising.”

  “I’m sure that’s wise,” Pekka said, and went on to explain what Talsu’s wife had asked of her.

  “A Jelgavan dungeon, eh?” Prince Juhainen’s mouth twisted, as if he’d just smelled something nasty. “I don’t believe I would wish my worst enemy into a Jelgavan dungeon. And you say this Talsu fellow actually helped our men?”

  “That’s right, your Highness.” Pekka nodded.

  “And they’ve flung him into one of these miserable places anyhow?” Juhainen said. Pekka nodded again. The prince scowled. “That is not good,” he declared, which, from a Kuusaman, carried more weight than screamed curses from an excitable Algarvian. He continued, “Thank you for bringing it to my notice. I shall see what I can do.”

  “Will the Jelgavans heed you, sir?” Pekka asked.

  “If gratitude means anything, they will,” Juhainen answered. But his smile was wry. “As often as not, gratitude means nothing at all between kingdoms. Truth to tell, Mistress Pekka, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know whether anything will happen. But I do mean to find out.” He turned and nodded to someone: to his own crystallomancer, for the sphere in front of Pekka flared and then, to the eye, became once more nothing but glass.

  The crystallomancer on duty at the hostel said not a word. Of course she’d heard everything that passed between Pekka and Juhainen, but the secrecy inherent in her craft kept her silent, as it should have done.

  When Pekka went upstairs, she went to Fernao’s room, not to her own. “Well?” the Lagoan mage asked.

  “Pretty well,” Pekka told him. “Prince Juhainen says he’ll see what he can do.”

  “Good,” Fernao said. “If Donalitu and his flunkies will listen to anybody, they’ll listen to one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo.” His smile, though, had the same wry edge as Juhainen’s had. “Of course, they’re Jelgavans. There’s no guarantee they will listen to anybody.”

  “Ordinary Jelgavans aren’t bad. They’re just-people,” Pekka said. “I was up on the beaches of the north there once, on … on holiday.” The holiday had been her honeymoon with Leino. She felt an odd constraint-or maybe it wasn’t so odd-about talking too much with Fernao about her life with her husband.

  “Their nobles, though …” Fernao’s chuckle held little mirth. “Most hidebound people in the world, bar none. They make Valmieran nobles look like levelers, and that’s not easy.”

  “I hope Prince Juhainen can do something for that poor fellow,” Pekka said. “How terrible, to help his kingdom and end up in a dungeon anyhow.”

  “Donalitu and his bully boys root out treason wherever they think they see it,” Fernao replied. “My guess is, they root it out whether it’s really there or not. Sooner or later, they’ll end up breeding real treason that way, whether it would have sprung up without them or not.”

  “That makes more sense than what Donalitu’s doing,” Pekka said. “Leino wrote that some Jelgavans were fighting on King Mezentio’s side in spite of what Mezentio’s men were doing to Kaunians. Now that I hear what happened to this Talsu, that makes a little more sense to me.”

  “Donalitu is a bad bargain, and nobody could possibly make him better,” Fernao said. “The only thing I would give him is that he’s better than Mezentio.” He sighed. “I’m not altogether sure I’d give King Swemmel even that much. He’s a son of a whore, no doubt about it-but he’s a son of a whore who’s on our side.”

  “Any war that puts us on the same side as the Unkerlanters. .” Pekka shook her head. “But the Algarvians really have done worse.”

  “So they have.” Fernao didn’t sound any happier about it than Pekka had. “Worse than the Unkerlanters-if that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.” He changed the subject: “Are we going to go ahead with the demonstration out in the Bothnian Ocean?”

  “We certainly are,” Pekka said, also relieved to talk about something else. “That needs doing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “If it works, certainly. If it doesn’t. .” Fernao shrugged. “Well, it’s certainly worth trying, the same as getting this what’s-his-name-”

  “Talsu,” Pekka said.

  “Talsu,” the Lagoan mage echoed. “Getting him out of the dungeon. The demonstration’s a little more important, though.”

  “I should hope so,” Pekka exclaimed. “If the demonstration does what we want it to, it might even end this war.” The very words tasted strange to her. The Derlavaian War had gone on for almost six years (though Kuusamo had
been in the fight for only a little more than half that time): long enough for death and devastation and disaster to seem normal, and everything else an aberration. It had cost Pekka as much as she’d feared in her worst nightmares, and, a couple of times, all but cost her life.

  “When the war is over. .” Fernao didn’t sound as if he really believed in the possibility, either. “May it be soon, that’s all-and may we never have another one.”

  “Powers above, make that so!” Pekka said. “Another war, starting from the beginning with everything we’ve learned during this one? With whatever else we learn afterwards, too? I don’t think there’d be anything left of the world once we got through.”

  “You’re probably right,” Fernao said. “And do you know what else? If we’re stupid enough to fight another war after everything we’ve seen these past few years, we don’t deserve to live: the whole human race, I mean.”

  “I don’t know that I’d go quite so far.” But then Pekka thought about it for a little while. Deliberately inflict these horrors again, with the example of the Derlavaian War still green in memory? She sighed. “On the other hand, I don’t know that I wouldn’t, either.”

  Hajjaj stepped into the crystallomancers’ chamber down the hall from the foreign ministry offices in the royal palace. The crystallomancer on duty sprang to his feet and bowed. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said.

  “Good day, Kawar,” Hajjaj replied. The crystallomancer beamed. Hajjaj had long since learned how important knowing and recalling the names of underlings could be. He went on, “What is the latest word from the south?”

  “That depends on whose emanations you’re listening to, your Excellency,” Kawar said.

  “I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “Give me both sides, if you’d be so kind, and I expect I’ll be able to sort them out for myself.”

  Bowing, Kawar said, “Just as you require, sir, so shall it be. By what the Unkerlanters say, Trapani is surrounded, cut off from the outside world, and sure to fall in the next few days. Fighting in the rest of Algarve is dying down as the redheads realize resistance is suicide, and useless suicide at that.”