Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  After a little while, she said, "One of the secondary sorcerers told me you dragged me out of the blockhouse. Thank you."

  "I wish I could have carried you." Abrupt fury filled Fernao's voice. "If I could have moved faster, I might have got you out and then gone back in and got Siuntio, too, before the fire spread too badly. If…" He knocked back the brandy. In spite of it, his hand shook as he set down the empty glass.

  Pekka said, "Had you been standing closer to him than to me, you would have taken him first, and then you would have tried to come back for me." She reached into her belt pouch and took out a bottle full of the yellow decoction and a spoon. "It is not quite time for my dose yet, but I do not care. I do not wish to think about that." Fernao would have taken more, but he was bigger than she.

  The serving woman appeared at his elbow. He hadn't noticed her come up. There were a good many things he wasn't noticing right now. "Will I get you another, sir?" she asked.

  "No, thank you," he said, and she went away again.

  "How badly are we set back?" Pekka said.

  Fernao shrugged. "I think they are still sorting things out. Sooner or later, we shall have answers."

  "Answers of a sort," Pekka said. "But we shall never again have Master Siuntio's answers, and there are none better." She sighed, but then her pain-and grief-lined face softened. "The decoction works quickly. I can forget for a little while that my head belongs to me."

  "I know about that," Fernao said. "Believe me, I know about that." He also knew he would wish for some of the yellow liquid- or maybe one of the stronger ones- in the morning. He would wish for it, but he wouldn't borrow any from Pekka. After so long taking decoctions of one color or another, he'd had to get over a craving for poppy juice. He didn't want to bring it back to life. He hoped he would remember that when he went from drunk to hung over.

  Pekka said, "What will we do without Siuntio? How can we go on without him? He made this field what it is today. Everyone else walks in his footsteps- except Ilmarinen, who walks around them and pisses in them whenever he sees the chance."

  Fernao would have laughed at that even sober. Drunk, he thought it the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He laughed and laughed. He laughed so hard, he had to put his head down on the table. That proved a mistake, or at least the end of his evening. He never heard himself starting to snore.

  He never knew how he got into his bed, either. Most likely, the servitors carried him up, as they'd carried up Ilmarinen. Fernao couldn't have proved it. For all he could prove, it might as readily have been cockroaches or dragons.

  Whoever had done it, he wished they'd thrown him on the rubbish heap instead. His head pounded even worse than he'd thought it would. The wan sunshine of winter in southern Kuusamo seemed as bright as the Zuwayzi desert; he had to squint to see at all. By the taste in his mouth, he'd been sleeping in a latrine trench.

  He felt of himself, and made at least one happy discovery. "Powers above be praised, I didn't piss the bed," he said. Then he winced again. His voice might have been a raven's, a very loud raven's, harsh croak.

  Holding his head with his free hand, he limped into the commode with one crutch. Along with a water closet, it also boasted a cold-water tap. He splashed water on his face. He cleaned his teeth. After rinsing his mouth, he took a couple of sips of water. Even that was almost too much for his poor, abused stomach. He thought he'd be sick right there. Somehow, he wasn't.

  Groaning- and trying not to groan, because the noise hurt his head- he limped back to bed. He felt better than he had before he got up, which meant he was no longer actively wishing he were dead. He lay there for a while. Quiet and with his eyes closed, he did his best to wait out the hangover.

  Again, he didn't notice drifting off. This time, he fell into something close to real sleep, not sodden unconsciousness. He would have slept longer, but someone tapped on his door. The taps weren't very loud- except to his ears. He sat up, and winced. "Who is it?" he asked, and winced again.

  "I." Pekka's voice came through the door. "May I come in?"

  "I suppose so," Fernao answered.

  The door opened. Pekka carried a tray to his bedside. "Here," she said briskly. "Half a raw cabbage, chopped. And a mug of cranberry juice with a slug- a small slug- of spirits mixed in. Eat. Drink. You will be better for it."

  "Will I?" Fernao said dubiously. His own countrymen used fruit juice laced with spirits to fight the morning after, but cabbage was a remedy new to him. He didn't much feel like eating or drinking anything, but had to admit himself improved after he did.

  Pekka saw as much. "You will do," she said. "Ilmarinen is worse, but he will do, too."

  In an odd way, Fernao found himself agreeing with her. He would do. "How are you?" he asked, knowing sudden shame that he'd let her serve him. "You are the one who is truly hurt. This" -he patted his own forehead- "this will be nothing at all in a few hours. But you have real injuries."

  "My head hurts," Pekka said matter-of-factly. "I have a little trouble remembering things. I would not want to try to work magic right now. I do not think it is the yellow decoction. I think you are right. I think it is the blow to the head. As with you, time will set it right. With the yellow liquid, it is not too bad."

  He suspected she was making light of what had happened to her. If she wanted to do that, he wouldn't challenge her; he honored her courage. There was something he'd meant to tell her the night before. He was surprised he recalled it. He was surprised he recalled anything from the night before. But he realized now that it didn't matter. He couldn't say what he'd meant to, anyhow.

  Pekka went on, "Alkio and Raahe and Piilis will be coming here now. You will know of them, if you do not know them."

  "I met them in Yliharma," Fernao said. "Good theoretical sorcerers, all three."

  "Aye." Pekka nodded carefully. "And the first two, husband and wife, work very well together. Add up the three of them and they are… not too far from Siuntio."

  "May it be so." Fernao wondered if three good mages could match one towering genius.

  "And now, the Seven Princes will give us everything we need or might need or imagine we need," Pekka said. "If we have done enough to alarm the Algarvians, to make them strike at us, we must be doing something worthwhile- or so the Princes think. This assault may prove the greatest mistake Mezentio's mages ever made."

  "May it be so," Fernao repeated.

  "And Siuntio saved us," Pekka said. "He and Ilmarinen- had they not resisted as best they could, we would all have died in the blockhouse." Fernao could only nod at that. Pekka rose and picked up the tray. "I will not disturb you anymore. I hope you feel better soon."

  "And you," he called as she left the room. No, he couldn't very well tell her she'd made one small mistake. When the Algarvians assailed the blockhouse out in the wilderness, he'd been several strides closer to Siuntio than to her. But he'd turned one way, done one thing, and not the other… and now he and everyone else, everyone save poor Siuntio, would have to live with the consequences of that.

  ***

  Before he'd got blazed, Major Spinello had served in southern Unkerlant. Now he'd been sent to the north of King Swemmel's realm. He found he loathed this part of the kingdom at least as much as he'd despised the other.

  Blizzards seemed less common here, but cold, driving rain went a long way toward making up for them. Most of his regiment was holed up in a little town called Wriezen, with the rest on a picket line west of the place. Nothing would be coming at them quickly, not today- and not tomorrow or the next day, either. Here in the north, the muddy season lasted most of the winter.

  Naturally, Spinello had commandeered the finest house in Wriezen as his own. It had probably belonged to the firstman of the place, but he'd long since fled. Spinello turned to his seniormost company commander, a dour captain named Turpino, and said, "How do we give the Unkerlanters a good boot in the balls?"

  "We wait till the ground dries out, and then we outmaneuver them," Turpino answered
. "Sir."

  Spinello hopped in the air in annoyance. "No, no, no!" he exclaimed. "That isn't what I meant. How do we boot 'em in the balls now?"

  Turpino, who was several inches taller than he, looked down his nose at him. "We don't," he said. "Sir."

  Spinello carefully didn't notice how slow Turpino was with the title of respect. "Do Swemmel's men think we can't do anything in this mess, too?" he demanded.

  "Of course they do," Turpino answered. "They're no fools." By his tone, he wasn't sure the same applied to his superior officer.

  "If they think it can't be done, that's the best argument in the world for doing it," Spinello said. "Now we have to consider ways and means."

  "Excellent." Turpino gave him a stiff bow. "If you transform our soldiers into worms, they can crawl through the mud and take the Unkerlanters by surprise coming at them from behind."

  If I transform my troopers into worms, you'll be a bloodsucking leech, Spinello thought resentfully. "With the south in chaos, we ought to keep moving forward here in the north."

  "If the moves serve some strategic purpose, certainly," Turpino said.

  Spinello snapped his fingers to show what he thought of strategic purpose. Part of him knew the gloomy captain had a point of sorts. The rest, the bigger part, craved action, especially after so long flat on his back. He said, "Anything that throws the foe into confusion and either forces him back or forces him to shift troops here serves a strategic purpose, would you not agree?"

  Captain Turpino's face was a closed book. "I would rather answer a specific question than a hypothetical one."

  It was as polite a way of saying, You won't ask me a specific question, because you haven't got a real plan, as any Spinello had heard. If Turpino hadn't irked him, he might have admired the other officer. Instead, snapping his fingers again, he said, "What are the dominant features of the terrain at the present time, Captain?"

  "Rain," Turpino answered at once. "Mud."

  "Very good." Spinello bowed and made as if to applaud. "And how do we get around in the mud, pray?"

  "Mostly we don't." Turpino's responses were getting shorter and shorter.

  With another bow- sooner or later, Turpino would have to lose his temper- Spinello said, "Let me try a different question. How do the Unkerlanters get around in the rain?" He held up a forefinger. "You needn't answer- I already know. They have those high-wheeled wagons with the round bottoms that might almost be boats. If anything moves, those wagons do."

  "Miserable little things." Turpino's lip curled. "They don't hold much."

  "But what they do hold moves," Spinello said. "If we can get our hands on a hundred of them, Captain, we can move, too. And the Unkerlanters will never expect us to use those miserable little things." He didn't quite mimic Turpino's tone, but he came close. "What do you think?"

  Turpino grunted. "Aye, we might move," he said at last. "If we could lay hold of a hundred of them. Sir."

  By the way he sounded, he didn't think the regiment could do it. Spinello grinned at him. "You will provide the wagons for the regiment, Captain. You have four days. Gather them here, and we shall go west. Otherwise, we hold in place."

  This time, Turpino didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. Spinello had given him an order he disliked. If he failed to carry it out, nothing much would happen to the regiment or to him.

  Spinello's grin got wider. "If that attack goes in, my dear fellow, I intend to lead it in person. If I fall, the regiment is yours, at least for the time being. I can't promise you a pretty blond Kaunian popsy like the one I enjoyed back in Forthweg, but isn't that the next best thing?"

  Turpino still didn't smile. He was far more staid than most of his countrymen. All he said was, "I'll see what I can do."

  Four days later, 131 wagons clogged the muddy streets of Wriezen. "Commendable initiative, Captain," Spinello remarked.

  "Incentive," Turpino replied. "Sir."

  "Now, lads" -Spinello raised his voice to be heard through the rain- "Swemmel's men don't expect us to do a thing in this weather. And when we do things the Unkerlanters don't expect, they break. You've seen it, I've seen it, we've all seen it. So let's go give them a surprise, shall we?" He blew his whistle. "Forward!"

  Where anything else would have bogged down in the thick mud, the wagons did go forward. Along with commandeering them from the countryside, Captain Turpino had also made sure the regiment had plenty of horses and mules to draw them. He wanted the attack to go in after all. If it failed, and maybe even if it succeeded, the regiment would be his.

  The rain hadn't eased. That cut Spinello's visibility down to yards, but he didn't mind. If anything, it cheered him. He knew where the Unkerlanters were. This way, they wouldn't be able to see his men and him coming.

  A few eggs, not many, burst out in front of the wagons. Here in the north, not enough egg-tossers were stretched too thin along too many miles of battle line. Spinello hadn't even tried to get Turpino to gather them as he'd gathered the wagons. No one cared about funny-looking Unkerlanter wagons, but every Algarvian officer jealously clutched to his bosom all the egg-tossers he had.

  One slow step after another, the horse pulled Spinello's wagon forward. The rest of the wagons churned their way west along the road and through the fields to either side. With their tall wheels, they found bottom where any Algarvian vehicle this side of a ley-line caravan would have bogged down. Mucky wakes streamed out behind those wheels and sometimes behind the wagons, too, as if they were on a river rather than what was supposed to be dry land.

  Somebody up ahead shouted something at Spinello in a language he didn't understand. If it wasn't Unkerlanter, he would have been mightily surprised. He shouted back, not in Algarvian but in classical Kaunian, in which he was quite fluent. The odd sounds confused the fellow who'd challenged him. The stranger shouted again, this time with a questioning note in his voice.

  By then, Spinello's wagon had got close enough to let him see the other man: an Unkerlanter, sure enough. It had also got close enough to let him blaze the fellow in spite of the way the driving rain degraded his beam's performance. His stick went to his shoulder; his finger found the touch-hole. The Unkerlanter had been about to blaze at him, too. Instead, he crumpled back into his hole in the ground.

  Spinello whooped with glee. He blew his whistle again, a long, piercing blast. "Forward!" he shouted.

  Forward they went. They knocked over a few more pickets and then rolled toward a peasant village about a quarter the size of Wriezen. A couple of Unkerlanter soldiers came out of the thatch-roofed huts and waved to them as they came up. Spinello laughed out loud. Swemmel's men thought they were the only ones who knew what those wagons were good for.

  They soon discovered their mistake. The Algarvians swarmed out of the wagons and through the village, making short work of the little Unkerlanter garrison there. Before long, some high-pitched screams rang out. That meant they'd found women, and were making a different sort of short work of them.

  Spinello let them have their fun for a little while, but only for a little while. Then he started blowing his whistle again. "Come on, my dears," he shouted. "Finish them off and let's get back to work. They're only ugly Unkerlanters, after all- they're not worth keeping."

  Once his men, or most of them, were back in the wagons, the advance slashed forward again. Not far west of the village, they came upon three batteries of Unkerlanter egg-tossers. Again, they overran them without much trouble. The enemy didn't realize he was in danger till too late.

  "Turn them around, boys, turn them around," Spinello said, and his soldiers fell to work with a will. "Let's drop some eggs on the heads of our dear friends farther west."

  Captain Turpino squelched up to him. "You're not advancing any more?" he asked.

  "I hadn't planned to," Spinello answered. "We've done what we came to do, after all. Go too far and Swemmel's men will bite back."

  To his surprise, Turpino swept off his hat and bowed low. "Command me, sir!" he excl
aimed, his voice more friendly, more respectful, than Spinello had ever heard it. "You've proved you know what you're doing."

  "Have I?" Spinello said, and Turpino, still bareheaded, nodded. Spinello went on, "Well then, put your hat back on before you drown." Turpino laughed- another first- and obeyed. Spinello asked him, "Do you know anything about serving egg-tossers?"

  "Aye, somewhat," the other officer replied.

  "Good- you take charge of that business," Spinello said. "I'll make sure the Unkerlanters won't have an easy time throwing us back. I was down in Sulingen. I know all about field fortifications, by the powers above."

  "Mm." Turpino grunted again. "Aye, you would, down there. How'd you get out?" Before Spinello could answer, the captain pointed to the wound badge on his chest. "Is that when you picked up your trinket?"

  Spinello nodded. "Sniper got me a month or so before the Unkerlanters cut us off, so they were able to fly me out and patch me up." His wave encompassed the ground the regiment had taken. "Now we'll patch this place up and hold onto it as long as we can- or else move forward again if we see the chance." Would Turpino argue again? No. The senior captain just saluted. If he was happy, the rest of the officers in the regiment would be. To Spinello, that mattered almost as much as taking a worthless village and some egg-tossers away from King Swemmel's men. He'd made the regiment his. From here on out, it would follow wherever he led.

  ***

  Cockroaches scuttled across the floor of Talsu's cell. He'd given up stomping them not long after his captors put him in there. He could have stomped night and day and not killed them all. This one prison probably held as many of them as Jelgava held people.

  His stomach growled. These past few days, he'd started getting tempted to kill them again rather than doing his best to ignore them. They were food, or they could be food if a man were desperate enough.