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Rulers of the Darkness

Page 60

by Harry Turtledove


  All at once, as if drawn by a lodestone, his head swung to the left, toward the south. He stroked the leviathan, commanding it to stay up on its tail longer so he could get a better look. At first, his hand went to the rubber pouch he wore on his belt—he intended to get out his crystal and scream a warning to the fleet. Of all things the ships didn’t need, a great, drifting iceberg in their midst was among the worst.

  After a moment, though, he realized the iceberg wasn’t drifting. Instead, it glided east along the ley line under at least as much control as a cruiser. Its upper surface wasn’t sharp and jagged, as it would have been in nature, but low and smooth and flat. Even as Cornelu watched, a dragon landed on the ice and two more, both painted in Lagoan scarlet and gold, took off. A chunk of ice that size could carry a lot of dragons—aye, and their handlers, too.

  For a couple of heartbeats, Cornelu simply gaped at that. Then he remembered a name he’d heard on his journey down to the mages’ base at the eastern edge of the land of the Ice People. “Habakkuk!” he exclaimed. He didn’t know that that name went with the iceberg-turned-dragon-hauler, but it struck him as a good bet. What else but ice would those mages have been working on, down there on the austral continent?

  He still had no idea why they’d had him bring egg casings full of sawdust to their base. If I ever see one of them again, I’ll have to ask, he thought.

  Right now, he had more urgent things to worry about. He let his leviathan slide back down into the sea, which it did with an indignant wriggle that told him it thought he’d made it stand on its tail far too long. “I am sorry,” he told it. “You. don’t understand how strange that iceberg is.”

  The leviathan wriggled again, as if to say, An iceberg is an iceberg. What else can it be? Up till he’d seen this one, Cornelu would have thought the same thing. Now he saw that the question had a different answer, but it wasn’t one he could explain to his mount.

  With a snap of its toothy jaws, the leviathan gulped down a squid as long as his arm. Then it swam on. Did it think Cornelu had arranged the treat? He didn’t know—it couldn’t tell him—but it didn’t complain when, a few minutes later, he ordered it to lift its head, and him, high out of the water again.

  Sigisoara island was closer now, close enough to let him see flashes of light and puffs of smoke as eggs burst near its south- and east-facing beaches. Boatloads of Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers were leaving the transports and making for those beaches. Cornelu yelled himself hoarse as the leviathan sank back into the sea.

  Tears stung his eyes, tears that felt more astringent than the endless miles of salt water all around. “At last,” he murmured. “By the powers above, at last.” He wished the Sibians could have freed themselves. That failing, having others—even having Lagoans—restore their freedom struck him as good enough. He shook a fist to the northwest, in the direction of Trapani. Take that, Mezentio, he thought. Aye, take that and more besides.

  Here and there, eggs burst among the oncoming boats. Some of the Algarvians still on Sibiu were trying to give rather than take. An Algarvian dragon swooped down on a landing boat, flamed all the Lagoans in it, and left it burning on the water. A couple of Kuusaman dragons drove the enemy beast away, but too late, too late.

  Still, Mezentio’s men weren’t putting up much of a fight. More than a year and a half before, Cornelu had been part of the force that raided Sibiu to distract the Algarvians while another fleet carried a Lagoan army to the land of the Ice People. Then the enemy had hit back hard. Had that raid been an invasion, it would have failed miserably.

  Now … Now the Algarvians didn’t seem to have so much with which to strike the invaders. Cornelu had seen as much on his last trip to Sibiu on leviathanback. His laugh was hard and cold. “That’s what you get for taking on Unkerlant,” he said, and laughed again.

  Algarve had been recruiting Sibians to help fight its battles when he was there. He supposed they would mostly have gone to Unkerlant, too, the fools. How many of them crouched low in holes in the ground along with their Algarvian overlords, looking at vengeance here out on the ocean? However many traitors there were, Cornelu wished he could kill them all himself. Since he couldn’t, he hoped the dragons overhead, the eggs tossed from the warships ashore, and the soldiers landing on the beaches would do the job for him.

  He’d had his hopes dashed too many times in this war: his hopes for how the war would go, his hopes for his kingdom, his hopes for his marriage and his happiness. He was afraid to have hopes any more, for fear something would go wrong and ruin them anew.

  Did King Burebistu have hopes? Like Gainibu of Valmiera, he’d been an Algarvian captive the past three years and more. Like Gainibu, he probably counted himself lucky that Mezentio hadn’t booted him off the throne and replaced him with some Algarvian royal relative he wanted to get out of his hair. What was the King of Sibiu doing now? Something useful? Rallying the people in the palace against the Algarvian occupiers? Maybe. If Sibiu was lucky, just maybe.

  But then Cornelu stopped worrying about Burebistu or anything farther away than the Algarvian ley-line frigate sliding down from the north toward the landing boats. Its egg-tossers and heavy sticks tore at the invaders; no Lagoan or Kuusaman warships were close enough to deal with it right away.

  “I am,” Cornelu said, and then, to his leviathan, “We are.” He urged his mount forward. The frigate was faster than the leviathan, but if he could get to the ley line ahead of the ship’s path and wait … If he could do that, he might give a good many of Mezentio’s men a very thin time of it indeed.

  He slid under the leviathan’s belly, ready to loosen the egg slung there and fasten it to the frigate’s hull. But he reached the ley line just too late; the frigate had already glided past. He couldn’t even curse, not underwater, but red rage filled his thoughts.

  As much from rage as for any other reason, he ordered the leviathan after the ley-line frigate. As long as the frigate kept going, it would leave the leviathan behind; it was, after all, steel and sorcery, not mere flesh and blood. But the frigate slowed when it got in among the landing boats. With so many targets all around, its captain wanted to make sure he missed none. Eggs started bursting near the frigate from ships that had seen the danger to the soldiers, but none struck home.

  If one of those eggs burst too close to the leviathan, it could do as much harm as if the Algarvians tossed it. That was Cornelu’s first thought. His second was, If one of those eggs bursts too close to me … But he had his duty, and a fine warm hatred of Mezentio’s men to boot. He urged the leviathan forward.

  “Now,” he muttered, and tapped out the intricate signal that ordered the animal to dive deep and come up under the frigate’s hull. When it did, he was waiting. He freed the egg from its sling and attached it to the Algarvian warship. Sorcery and lodestones held it to the ship. He sent the leviathan away as fast as it would go.

  More eggs burst close by, which frightened it into swimming faster. He was glad it did. That meant it had got plenty far away when the egg he’d affixed to the frigate burst. It was a larger egg than the ones being tossed; Cornelu had no doubt which one it was. He urged the leviathan to the surface and looked back. When he saw the ley-line frigate sinking with a broken back, he pumped a fist in the air and shouted, “Take that, you son of a whore!”

  A moment later, a puff of steam roiled the seawater by him, and then another and another. Soldiers in the surviving landing boats were blazing at him, not sure whose side he was on and not inclined to take chances finding out He ordered the leviathan to submerge once more. He didn’t suppose he could blame the Kuusamans and Lagoans bobbing on the sea. Blame them or not, though, he didn’t want them killing him.

  They blazed at him again when the leviathan surfaced once more, but by then he was too far away for their beams to be dangerous. And by then, he was cheering again, for boats were beaching themselves on Sigisoara and soldiers scrambling out of them. He approved of the soldiers, as long as they were going after the Algarvian
s and not him.

  More Algarvian patrol boats came forth, these from the harbor at Lehliu, the port on the southeast coast of Sigisoara. None got close enough to do the landing boats any harm, though their crews pressed the attack with typical Algarvian dash and courage. Kuusaman dragons sank a couple, while well-positioned warships wrecked the rest.

  As the day drew to a close, Cornelu used his crystal to call the Lagoan officer in charge of leviathan patrols: the very man, as it happened, who’d introduced the plan for the attack on Sibiu to him and his fellow exiles in the Admiralty offices in Setubal. “How do we fare, sir?” Cornelu asked. “I am not going to approach a ley-line cruiser to try to find out. The sailors would slay me before they bothered asking questions.”

  “You think so, eh?” the Lagoan said—in Algarvian, which probably gave his security mages nightmares. “Well, you’re probably right. We fare very well, as a matter of face. Mezentio’s men weren’t expecting us—weren’t expecting us at all, by every sign we can gather. Sigisoara and Tirgoviste are ours already, or near enough as makes no difference. We’ll hold all five islands by this time tomorrow, and we’ll be able to hold them against anything Algarve is likely to throw at us. As far as I can see, Commander, your kingdom’s on the way to being free.”

  Would Sibiu truly be free, with Lagoan and Kuusaman soldiers holding the Algarvians at bay? It was bound to be freer. For now, that would do. “Powers above be praised,” Cornelu said. “I can go home again.” He could, aye. He needed a moment to remember that he might not want to.

  An early fall rain—early for Bishah, at any rate—had turned the road between Hajjaj’s estate in the hills and the capital of Zuwayza to mud. The foreign minister was almost perfectly content to stay where he was. His contentment would have been complete had the roof not developed a couple of what seemed like inevitable leaks.

  “There ought to be an ordinance against roofers, as against any other frauds and cheats,” he fumed. “And, of course, they can’t come out to fix the damage till the rain stops, at which point no one needs them anymore.” He was content to be isolated from Bishah, aye. He didn’t care so much to have Bishah isolated from him.

  His majordomo didn’t point that out. Instead, Tewfik said, “Well, young fellow, it’s not so bad as it could be. When you get as old as I am, you’ll realize that.” Hajjaj was no youngster himself—was anything but a youngster, in fact. But he was likely to be dead by the time he got as old as Tewfik. The family servitor looked ready to go on forever.

  A younger, sprier servant came up to them and told Hajjaj, “Your Excellency, your secretary would speak to you by crystal.”

  “I’m coming,” Hajjaj said. “Run on ahead and tell him I’ll be right there.” The servant, perhaps a third of Hajjaj’s age, hurried away. The Zuwayzi foreign minister followed at a more stately pace. Stately, he thought. That’s a pretty-sounding word old men use when they mean slow.

  Hajjaj’s back twinged when he sat down on the carpet in front of the crystal. “Hello, your Excellency,” Qutuz said from out of the globe of glass. “How are you today?”

  “Fine, thanks, except that my roof leaks and the roofers are thieves,” Hajjaj replied. “What’s come up?” Something had to have, or Qutuz wouldn’t have called him. On the crystal, unlike in person, he didn’t have to go through long courtesies before getting to the point.

  Qutuz said, “Your Excellency, I have waiting on another crystal Minister Hadadezer of Ortah. He wishes to speak with you, and was disappointed to learn you hadn’t come down to the palace today. I have a mage waiting to transfer his emanations to your crystal there, if you give me leave.”

  “By all means,” Hajjaj said at once. “Talking with the Ortaho is always a treat.” Because of the swamps and mountains that warded Ortah, it had always been all but immune to pressure from the outside, even though it lay between Algarve and Unkerlant. Ortaho foreign relations were a luxury, not a necessity as they were in the rest of the world. Hajjaj couldn’t help wishing Zuwayza might say the same. He asked, “Do you know what he has in mind?”

  “No, your Excellency.” Qutuz shook his head. “But just let me give the word to the mage here, and you can find out for yourself.” He turned away and said, “Go ahead,” to someone Hajjaj couldn’t see.

  A moment later, Qutuz’s image faded from the crystal. But light didn’t flare from it, as it would have were the etheric connection broken. After a pause of a few heartbeats, a new image formed in the crystal: that of a man whose long white beard began to grow just below his eyes, and whose hairline was hardly separable from his eyebrows. Most savants reckoned the Ortahoin cousins to the Ice People of the austral continent.

  Hajjaj gave Hadadezer a seated bow. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said in Algarvian, a language the Ortaho minister also used. “As always, it is a privilege to speak to you. I should be delighted to enjoy the privilege more often.”

  “You are too kind,” Hadadezer replied. “You will, I hope, remember our conversation this past winter.”

  “Aye, I do indeed,” Hajjaj said. Sulingen had been on the point of falling then. “It was a worrisome time.”

  “Worrisome.” The minister from Ortah nodded. “The very word. It surely was. You may perhaps also remember the concerns of my sovereign, King Ahinadab.”

  “I do recall them,” Hajjaj agreed soberly. “You are perhaps wise not to speak of them too openly. It is probably that no one but ourselves is picking up these emanations, but it is not certain.” Ahinadab had worried that, for the first time in generations, war might bear down on his kingdom in the aftermath of the Algarvian defeat. To Hajjaj, that proved the King of Ortah was no fool.

  Now, speaking like a man in mortal torment, Hadadezer said, “What King Ahinadab feared has now come to pass. Algarvian soldiers have begun retreating into Ortah to escape the Unkerlanters, and King Swemmel’s men are hard on their heels.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” Hajjaj said, as he had the winter before when Hadadezer spoke of his sovereign’s concern. “Do I understand, then, that Ortah lacks the strength to keep them out?”

  Ever so mournfully, the Ortaho minister nodded. “King Ahinadab has sent protests in the strongest terms to both Trapani and Cottbus.” His eyebrows—they were separate from his hair after all—bristled in humiliated fury. “Ortah is a kingdom, not a road.” More bristling. “But neither Mezentio nor Swemmel pays the least attention. Each, in fact, demanded that we declare war on the other.”

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” Hajjaj said again. Zuwayza lacked Ortah’s natural defenses, and had had to suffer some generations of Unkerlanter overlordship. But King Shazli didn’t have to worry about getting attacked by both sides at once. With real curiosity, Hajjaj asked, “What will your sovereign do?”

  “I do not know,” Hadadezer answered. “King Ahinadab does not yet know, either. If we say aye to either kingdom, we put ourselves in that king’s hands and make an enemy of the other.”

  “And if you say no to both kings, you make enemies of them both,” Hajjaj said.

  “My sovereign is only too painfully aware of that as well,” Hadadezer said. “As I told you last winter, I am no skilled diplomat. Ortah has no skilled diplomats. We have never needed skilled diplomats: the land is our shield. But with so many behemoths and dragons about, with so much more strong magecraft loosed in this war, we cannot be sure the land will ward us anymore.”

  “I think you are wise to worry,” Hajjaj agreed. “In this war, men have taken nature by the neck and not the other way round, or not nearly so much as when men knew less than they do today.”

  Oh, nature could still work its will, and he knew as much. Every Algarvian who’d fought through an Unkerlanter winter would have agreed with him, too. So would the Unkerlanters who’d invaded desert Zuwayza. Still, what he’d said was more nearly true than not.

  Hadadezer said, “Because we of Ortah are no diplomats, my king bade me ask you, the finest of the age, what you would do in his place.”
r />   “You do me too much honor,” Hajjaj murmured. As he had when Hadadezer’s image first appeared before him, he bowed where he sat. The Ortaho minister inclined his head in turn. Carefully, Hajjaj said, “I am not in your king’s place, nor can I be.”

  “I understand that. He also understands it,” Hadadezer replied. “He makes no promises to follow what you propose. Still, he would know.”

  “Very well.” Now Hajjaj spoke with some relief. He wouldn’t have wanted the responsibility for the Ortahoin blindly obeying whatever he said. After he thought for a bit, he started ticking off points on his fingers: “You could fight as best you can. Or you could flee into the most rugged parts of the land and let the rest be a road.”

  “No,” Hadadezer said firmly. “If we did that, we would never recover the land we gave up once the fighting ended.”

  What makes you think you will keep it all anyhow? Hajjaj wondered. But he said, “That could be. You could stay neutral and hope for the best. Or you could pick one side or the other. If you choose the winner, you may not be devoured afterwards. If you pick the loser … well, with your landscape, you still may not be devoured afterwards. That is better luck than most kingdoms have.”

  Hadadezer said, “We have been at peace a long time. All we ask is to be let alone. But who will hear us when we ask it? No one. Not a soul. The world has become a cruel, hard place.”

  “I wish I could say you were wrong, your Excellency,” Hajjaj answered sadly. “But I fear—worse, I know—you are right. I also fear things will get worse before they get better, if they ever get better.”

  “I fear the same,” the Ortaho minister said. “You will give my king no advice?”

  “I have set forth the courses he might take,” Hajjaj said. “In propriety, I can do no more than that.”

  With obvious reluctance, Hadadezer nodded. “Very well. I understand how you might feel that way, though I would be lying if I said I did not wish you to go further. Thank you for your time and for your patience, your Excellency. I bid you good day.”

 

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