Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  "It is indeed," Pesaro said, as if Almonio weren't there. "But then, he's the tender-headed one, remember? Almonio wouldn't hurt a fly, or even a Kaunian."

  That made Bembo laugh. It made Almonio furious. "I keep trying to behave like a human being, in spite of what the war is doing to all of us," he snapped.

  "Like a drunken human being, a lot of the time," Bembo said. Almonio really didn't have the stomach for rounding up Kaunians. He poured down the spirits whenever he had to do it, to keep from dwelling on what he'd done.

  But he was sober now, sober and angry. "I still don't know what the two of you are talking about," he said, that edge still in his voice.

  "Like a stupid human being," Pesaro said, which only made Almonio angrier. Pesaro, though, was a sergeant, so Almonio couldn't show that anger so readily, not if he had the slightest notion of what was good for him. With a sigh both sad and sarcastic, Pesaro went on, "He really doesn't get it."

  Almonio threw his hands in the air. He just missed knocking another constable's mess tin out of his hands, which would have given the other fellow reason to be angry at him. "What is there to get?" he demanded. "All I want to know is how the battle turned out, and the miserable news sheets won't tell me."

  "A natural-born innocent," Bembo said again, to Pesaro. Then he gave his attention back to Almonio. "My dear fellow, if you really need it spelled out for you, I'll do the job: if the news sheets don't give us any news, it's because there's no good news to give. There. Is that simple enough, or shall I draw pictures?"

  "Oh," Almonio said, in a very small voice. "But if the Unkerlanters have beaten us down at Durrwangen, if they've beaten us in the summertime…" His voice trailed away altogether.

  "We're constables," Sergeant Pesaro said, perhaps as much to reassure himself as to make Almonio (and, incidentally, Bembo) feel better. "We've got a job to do here, and an important job it is, too. Whatever happens hundreds of miles away doesn't matter a bit to us. Not a bit, do you hear me?"

  Almonio nodded. So did Bembo. He wasn't so sure his sergeant was right, but he wanted to think so. Anything else was too depressing to contemplate. The wine the refectory served with breakfast was nasty, sour stuff, but he had an extra mug anyhow. Almonio had an extra two or three; Bembo wasn't keeping close track.

  When he went out on patrol with Oraste, he found his partner in a dour mood. Oraste was often dour, but more so than usual today. At last, Bembo asked him, "What's gnawing at you?"

  Oraste walked on for several paces without answering. Bembo thought he wouldn't answer, but after a bit he did: "How in blazes are we supposed to win the war now?"

  "What do you think I am?" Bembo demanded, so fiercely that even rugged Oraste gave back a pace. "A general? King Mezentio? I don't know anything about that business. All I know is, the bigwigs in Trapani will come up with something. They always have. What's one more time?"

  "They'd better," Oraste growled, as if he'd hold Bembo responsible if they didn't. "That was what should have happened in this big battle. It didn't. How many more chances do we get?"

  "As long as they're fighting way inside Unkerlant, I'm not going to worry about it," Bembo said. "If you've got any sense, you won't worry about it, either. You're the one who was always saying that if I didn't like it here, I could get a stick and go fight the Unkerlanters. Now I'll tell you the same cursed thing."

  "Powers below eat you, Bembo," Oraste said, surprisingly little rancor in his voice. "You were supposed to say something funny and stupid, so I could stop brooding about the way things are going. But you don't like it any more than I do, do you?"

  Instead of answering that straight out, Bembo said, "I had to explain the facts of life to Almonio this morning. He couldn't figure them out for himself."

  "Why am I not surprised? That one…" Oraste grimaced. "The other question is, how come I'm jealous of him?"

  Bembo didn't answer that at all.

  Shouts from around a corner made them both yank out their sticks and start to run. Bembo was amazed at the relief with which he ran. Catching thieves and robbers was why he was here in Gromheort. As long as he was doing his job, he wouldn't have to worry about anything else.

  "What's going on here?" he yelled when he got to the two shouting Forthwegians.

  Of necessity, he spoke Algarvian. Both Forthwegians looked as if they understood the language. They were middle-aged, and had probably had to learn it in school back in the days before the Six Years' War; this part of Forthweg had belonged to Algarve then. After glancing at each other, they spoke together: "Why, nothing."

  "Don't get wise with us," Oraste said. "You'll be sorry if you do." If he could pummel or blaze a Forthwegian or two, he wouldn't have to think about the way things looked in Unkerlant.

  One of the Forthwegians said, "It was nothing, really."

  "We were just having a bit of a disagreement," the other one said. "Sorry we got so loud."

  Bembo put away his stick, but drew his bludgeon from its loop on his belt and thwacked it into the palm of his left hand. "You heard my partner. Don't get wise with us. We're not in any mood to waste time with Forthwegians who want to act cute. Have you got that?" On reflection, Bembo wondered if he should have put it that way. What it meant was, We're jumpy as cats because the war against Unkerlant isn't going the way we'd like. The Forthwegians didn't have to be theoretical sorcerers to figure that out, either.

  But Bembo and Oraste had clubs. They had sticks. They had the power of the occupying authority behind them. Even if the Forthwegians were privately contemptuous, they didn't dare show what they were thinking. One of them said, "Sorry, sir." The other one nodded to show he was sorry, too.

  "That's better," Bembo said. "Now, I'm going to try this one more time, and I want a straight answer. What in blazes is going on here?"

  "We're both oil merchants," one of the Forthwegians said. "Olive, almond, walnut, flax-seed, you name it. Oil. And we were arguing about which way prices were going to go on account of…" He paused. The pause stretched. He'd just admitted knowing things weren't going so well for Algarve. That wasn't very smart. Lamely, he finished, "…on account of the way things are."

  "I'll tell you what you were doing," Bembo said. "You were disturbing the peace, that's what you were doing. Creating a disturbance. That happens to be a crime. We'll have to haul you up before a judge."

  Both Forthwegians looked appalled, as he'd known they would. "Isn't there some other arrangement we might make?" asked the oil merchant who'd done most of the talking.

  "Aye," Oraste rumbled. "We might not bother with a fornicating judge. We might whale the stuffing out of you ourselves instead." He sounded as if he'd enjoy pounding on the Forthwegians. The reason he sounded that way, as Bembo knew perfectly well, was that he would enjoy it.

  Unlike Oraste, Bembo didn't usually beat people for the sport of it. He said, "Maybe you boys might find some reason why we wouldn't want to do that."

  The oil merchants found several interesting reasons. Those reasons clinked in the constables' belt pouches as they went back to walking their beat. Oraste reached out and hit Bembo in the belly- not much of a punch, but the flesh gave a good deal under his fist. "You're soft," he remarked. "Soft in more ways than one."

  "You just want to smash everything flat," Bembo answered. "They're oil merchants. They greased our palms. That's what they're for, right?"

  "Funny," Oraste said. "Funny like a man with a wooden leg."

  Bembo sent him an injured look. "When we get back to Tricarico, we'll be rich, or close to it, anyway. It's not like we've got a lot to spend our money on here. The wine and the spirits are cheap, and nobody wants to go to the brothel every night."

  "Speak for yourself," Oraste said- like any Algarvian, he was vain about his manhood. "The whores here aren't as expensive as they are back home." His lip curled. "Of course, they aren't as pretty as they are back home, either."

  Oh, I don't know. Bembo almost said it, remembering his steamy passage with Dold
asai. He was vain about his manhood, too. But then he remembered he couldn't talk about that. Nobody'd grabbed her or her mother and father when the Algarvians raided the Kaunian quarter in Gromheort. From that, Bembo figured the blonds had got and used the sorcery that let them look like Forthwegians and slipped out of the quarter before the raids. Nobody'd ever said anything about their disappearance where he could hear, but some high-ranking officers wouldn't be happy that they weren't enjoying what he'd had once. Keeping his mouth shut came no easier for him than for any other boastful Algarvian, but a keen sense of self-preservation made him do it.

  Their remaining time on the beat passed easily enough. When they got back to the constabulary barracks, Bembo pounced on the latest edition of the news sheet. "Ha!" he said. "Here's news of the fighting, or of some fighting, anyway."

  "What's it say?" Oraste asked.

  "I'll read it." Bembo did, in a deep, artificial, portentous voice: " 'In severe defensive struggles southeast of Durrwangen, Algarvian forces inflicted severe casualties on the foe. Despite heavy bombardment by egg-tossers and fierce attacks from Unkerlanter dragons and behemoths, his Majesty's forces withdrew to already prepared rearward positions, yielding only about a mile of ground and shortening their lines in the process.' " He returned to his normal tones to ask Oraste, "What do you make of that?"

  His partner pondered, but not for long. "Sounds like a demon of a lot of dead soldiers to me."

  "Ours or theirs?"

  "Both," Oraste said.

  Bembo gave forth with a theatrical sigh. "I was hoping you'd tell me something different, because that's what it sounds like to me, too."

  ***

  "Where is everyone?" Krasta demanded of Colonel Lurcanio as the carriage pulled up in front of Viscount Valnu's house. She gave her Algarvian lover a peeved look. "Are you sure you got the date right?" She hoped- oh, how she hoped- Lurcanio had got it wrong. If he had, she'd never let him live it down.

  But he nodded and pointed through the gloom. "A few carriages are there- do you see?" Even so, his voice was doubtful as he added, "I admit, I expected a good many more."

  "Is someone else giving another entertainment?" Krasta asked.

  Lurcanio shook his head. In dark night, with no street lamps, Krasta could barely see the motion. He said, "No. I would have heard of that. And if by some chance I did not, you would have."

  He was right; Krasta realized as much at once. "We'll just have to find out, then, won't we?" she said as the carriage pulled to a stop. "Where everyone else has gone, I mean."

  "Aye. So we will." Now Lurcanio's voice had an edge to it. "Perhaps people have not gone anywhere. Perhaps they have simply chosen not to come."

  "Don't be ridiculous." Krasta didn't wait for him to hand her down, but descended from the carriage herself and hurried toward Valnu's house. Over her shoulder, she added, "Why would anybody be as stupid as that?"

  Lurcanio caught up with her faster than she might have wanted. "There are times when you can be quite refreshingly naive," he remarked.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said in some annoyance.

  "I know. It's part of your charm," Lurcanio answered. Krasta would have snapped at him some more, but he'd already rung the bell. A moment later, the door swung open. One of Valnu's servants let them into the front hall. He closed the door behind them before opening the dark curtains at the end of the hallway that kept light from leaking out.

  Krasta blinked at the bright lights the curtains revealed. She also blinked at Viscount Valnu, who stood just beyond the curtains. His tunic and kilt were of cloth-of-gold that caught the lamplight and glittered. She wouldn't have wanted to wear such material herself- too gaudy. But Valnu brought it off, not least by appearing to reject the possibility that he might do anything else.

  "My lady!" he cried when he saw Krasta. He took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek. "So good to see you here."

  "Spare me your embraces," Lurcanio said dryly as Valnu turned to him. Valnu had been known to kiss him on the cheek, too: Valnu was never one who did anything by halves.

  "I obey," he said now, and bowed himself almost double. Krasta had to blink again because of the reflections coruscating from his costume. Then he bowed again, as if intent on showing himself to be even more ceremonious than the average Algarvian. Speaking with unwonted seriousness, he went on, "I am in your debt, your Excellency, and I am not ashamed to own it. Were it not for your good offices, I would probably be languishing in some nasty cell."

  "I had little to do with it," Lurcanio answered. "Some of your friends" -he put a certain ironic emphasis on the word- "undoubtedly helped you more."

  Valnu didn't pretend to misunderstand him. "But you, sir, unlike they, were known to be disinterested."

  "Disinterested? No." Lurcanio shook his head. "Uninterested? There I must say aye. A nice show of the difference in meaning between the two words, eh?"

  "Your Excellency, you speak my language with a scholar's precision," Valnu said.

  "I beg leave to doubt it," Lurcanio replied. But he didn't sound displeased. He took Krasta's arm and led her past their host. Krasta gave Valnu a bright, even a glowing, smile. She kept trying to forget about the trouble in which she'd landed herself for trifling with him and letting him trifle with her. She probably would have succeeded, too, had Lurcanio not found such a fitting way to punish her. Few lessons stuck with her for long, but that one, at least, had left her cautious.

  As for Valnu, his long, lean face stayed sober. Maybe he really did think he owed Lurcanio a debt. Or maybe he didn't feel like taking the chance of getting caught again, either.

  His cook and his cellarer had set out an elegant and lavish display, as they always did. Krasta hadn't eaten supper. Even so, she hesitated to go over and get anything. The guests already here left her dismayed. Oh, not the Algarvian officers and their Valmieran mistresses: she was used to them. But the few Valmieran nobles who'd come were either of the fierce and brutal sort or else were those who fawned on the Algarvians the most extravagantly.

  "Where are all the interesting people?" Krasta murmured to Lurcanio.

  Her Algarvian lover had also been surveying the crowd- not that it unduly crowded Valnu's reception hall. Lurcanio sighed. "Fair-weather friends, most of them."

  "What do you mean?" Krasta asked.

  "What do I mean? I mean that too many of them are wondering about their choices." Lurcanio let out a scornful sniff. "Mark my words, my dear: no one can recover his virginity as easily as that."

  He was being obscure again. Krasta hated it when he wouldn't come out and say what he meant. Powers above, she thought. I always say what I mean. But she'd already asked what he meant once. She had too much pride- and too much dread of his sharp tongue- to embarrass herself by asking again.

  With another sigh, Colonel Lurcanio said, "We might as well drink. After a while at the bar, things may look better."

  "Why, so they may." Krasta had improved plenty of gatherings with enough porter or wine or, for severe cases, wormwood-laced brandy. This festivity, if that was what it was, looked like a severe case. Even so, she started with red wine, reasoning she could always move up to something stronger later on.

  Lurcanio raised an eyebrow when she gave the tapman her order. Maybe he'd expected her to drink herself blind in short order. She smiled at him over the top of her goblet. She didn't want to be too predictable. Smiling himself, a little quizzically, Lurcanio asked for red wine, too. "To what shall we drink?" he asked.

  That startled Krasta; he usually proposed toasts himself rather than asking her for them. She raised her goblet. "To good company!" she said, and then, under her breath, "May we find some soon." She drank.

  With a laugh, so did Lurcanio. Then the laughter slipped from his face. "I think we are about to have company, whether good or otherwise." He bowed to the Valmieran nobleman approaching him. "Good evening sir. I do not believe we have met. I am Lurcanio. I present to you also my companion here, t
he Marchioness Krasta."

  "Right pleased to meet you, Colonel," the Valmieran said in a backwoods dialect. "I'm Viscount Terbatu." He held out his hand. Lurcanio, in Algarvian fashion, clasped his wrist. Except for a brief nod, Terbatu ignored Krasta. That suited her fine. He looked more like a tavern brawler than a viscount: his nose bent sideways, and one of his ears was missing half the lobe. She drank more wine, content to let Lurcanio deal with him.

  "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, your Excellency," Lurcanio said, polite as a cat. "And what can I do for you?" By his tone, he assumed Terbatu would want him to do something.

  "Fight," Terbatu growled.

  "I beg your pardon?" Lurcanio said. And then, though he remained a polished gentleman, he showed he was polished steel. Drawing himself a little straighter, he asked, "Do we need to continue this conversation through friends? If so, I shall make every effort to give satisfaction."

  By that, even Krasta understood him to mean, I'll kill you. She thought he could do it, too, and without breaking a sweat. Terbatu put her in mind of a bad-tempered hound barking at a viper. He was liable to be dead before he knew it.

  But he shook his close-cropped head. "No, no, no. Not fight you, sir- not that at all. Fight for you, I meant. Valmierans fighting for Algarve. I've tried to get your people to let me raise a regiment and go hunting Unkerlanters, but nobody wants to pay any attention to me. Who do I have to kill to make you wake up?"

  Lurcanio rocked back on his heels. To Krasta, who knew him well, that showed astonishment. To Terbatu, it might have shown nothing at all. Krasta was astonished, too, and not so good at hiding it as Lurcanio. "You want to fight for the redheads?" she blurted, careless of her lover beside her. How could any man of Kaunian blood want to do that when Mezentio's men were murdering the Kaunians from Forthweg for the sake of their life energy?

  Terbatu said, "I'm not wild about the notion of fighting for Algarve." He nodded to Lurcanio. "No offense, your Excellency." Turning back to Krasta, he went on, "But the Unkerlanters, now, the Unkerlanters deserve smashing up. If ever a kingdom was a boil on the arse of mankind, Unkerlant's the one. Bloody big boil, too," he added, looking to Lurcanio again.