Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  "If we had a mage, we could get some use out of him," Garivald said after the irregulars' leader was out of earshot. "But we've got Sadoc instead."

  "I know," Obilot said. They exchanged wry smiles. Garivald knew a certain amount of relief. He'd quarreled with Obilot not so long before, too.

  I never wanted to quarrel with anybody, he thought. I just wanted to live out my life back in Zossen with my wife and my son and my daughter. But Zossen lay a long, long way to the west-fifty miles, maybe even sixty. He didn't know if he'd ever see his family again. Obilot was no great beauty, but she wasn't homely, either. He didn't want her angry at him.

  He'd been away from Annore for most of a year now. Had Obilot decided to slip under the blankets with him, he wouldn't have thrown her out. But she hadn't. She didn't slip under the blankets with anyone, and she'd knifed a man who tried too persistently to slip under the blankets with her. The other women in the band of irregulars acted much the same way. Garivald looked toward her, but glanced away before their eyes met. What'll you do next? he thought sourly. Start coming up with love songs?

  Obilot said, "Maybe nothing'll come of it." She didn't sound as if she believed that.

  "Aye. Maybe." Garivald didn't sound as if he believed it, either.

  A couple of days later, Munderic gathered the irregulars together in the clearing at the heart of their forest fastness. "We've got to go out and sabotage a ley line," he said. "There's heavy fighting around Durrwangen, south and west of here. If the regular army can take it back, they strike the Algarvians a heavy blow. And the redheads know it, curse 'em. They want to keep Durrwangen, same as they wanted to keep Sulingen. But they've got real supply lines into this place. The more we can do to keep men and behemoths and eggs from getting there, the better we serve Unkerlant. Have you got that?"

  "Aye," the irregulars chorused, Garivald among them.

  "We've found a stretch of ley line the Grelzer traitors don't guard well," Munderic went on. "We'll plant our eggs there. And we've got a new way of making sure the bastards who call Mezentio's precious cousin Raniero King of Grelz can't follow us. Sadoc will hide our tracks in the snow." He waved to the man who would be a mage.

  "That's right," Sadoc said. He was a bruiser himself, maybe as much a bruiser as Munderic. "I'm sure it'll work." He stared from one of his comrades to another, challenging them to disagree with him.

  Nobody said anything. Garivald wanted to, but Sadoc already knew what he thought of his magecraft. Maybe he won't make a hash of it this time, Garivald thought,

  his mind almost echoing Obilot's words. Unfortunately, it also echoed his own mournful coda. Aye. Maybe.

  When night came, the irregulars left the forest and crossed the farm country around it. Garivald hoped Munderic was right when he said he knew about a length of ley line that wasn't well guarded. Some of the men supposed to be serving King Raniero really stayed loyal to King Swemmel of Unkerlant, and aided them when and as they could. But others hated Swemmel worse than the Algarvians; those Grelzers, as he'd found to his dismay, made fierce, determined foes.

  Clouds scudded across the sky. Every so often, he got a glimpse of the moon, riding high in the northeast. Stars appeared, twinkled for a moment, and then vanished again. Obilot came up alongside Garivald. "Sadoc had better be able to hide our trail," she said in a low voice. "If he can't, the traitors will follow us home."

  Garivald nodded. The earflaps on his fur cap bobbed up and down. "I've been thinking the same thing. I wish I hadn't."

  Sometimes, the snow was deep, drifted. The irregulars had to bull through the drifts or else find a way around them. Garivald kept muttering under his breath. Even if Sadoc could sorcerously erase footprints, could he get rid of these signs of passage, too? Had Munderic thought about that? Had Munderic thought about anything but hitting the Algarvians a good lick? Garivald doubted it.

  If a Grelzer company on patrol caught them out here in the open, they'd get slaughtered. He hung on to his stick-which had once belonged to a redhead who now had no further use for it-and hoped that wouldn't happen.

  After what seemed like forever but the moon insisted was well before midnight, the irregulars came to the lines of shrubbery that marked the path of the invisible ley line. The shrubs kept men and animals from blundering into the path of an oncoming caravan. Garivald's heart thudded as the irregulars pushed through them. This time, no Grelzer guards shouted a challenge. Munderic had known whereof he spoke there, anyhow.

  Some of the irregulars carried picks and spades as well as their sticks. They started digging a hole in which to conceal the egg they'd brought to destroy the caravan. The ground was frozen hard; they had a demon of a time excavating. Garivald could have told them they would. They probably knew it for themselves, too, but had to do the best they could. They planted the egg and heaped snow over it. With luck, the Algarvians in the lead caravan car wouldn't see it till too late.

  "Let's go," Munderic said when the job was done well enough-and when he didn't feel like waiting anymore.

  "Back the way we came, as near as we can," Sadoc added. "I'll get rid of all the footprints at once."

  "He'd better," Garivald murmured to Obilot as they started off toward the forest. "We're in trouble if he doesn't, unless a blizzard blows up and sweeps our tracks away."

  "I don't think one's coming," she said. "This isn't a hard winter, the way last year's was. Just-cold." Garivald nodded. It felt the same way to him. That didn't mean he couldn't freeze to death out here, only that freezing would take longer.

  He was weary by the time the irregulars got back to the edge of the woods. Twilight hadn't touched the edge of the sky, but couldn't be far away. He hadn't

  heard the egg burst. Neither had Munderic, who was unhappy about it. "Something's gone wrong," the leader of the band kept saying. "Powers below eat me if something hasn't gone wrong."

  "Maybe the caravan got stuck in a snowdrift," someone suggested.

  "No, I'm sure something's buggered up somewhere," Munderic said fretfully. Garivald feared he was right. Munderic rounded on Sadoc. "Even if it didn't work, we don't want the foe to know we've been out. Get rid of those tracks, like you said."

  "Aye." Sadoc nodded. He stooped in the snow and began to chant. The tune was one children used in a hide-and-seek game. Did that mean Sadoc was a fool, or that he truly could hide the footprints? Garivald waited and hoped. Sadoc chanted and made passes. With a last dramatic one, he cried out in a loud, commanding voice.

  He'd gathered power to him. Garivald could feel it in the air, as if lightning were building. All at once, it was released-and every footprint, all the way back to the ley line (or at least as far as the eye could reach) began to glow with a soft, shimmering iridescence.

  Munderic stared, then howled like a wolf. "You idiot!" he roared. "You dunderhead, you turd-witted son of a poxed sow, you-" He leaped at Sadoc. The only thing that kept him from murdering the inept mage was realizing-after he'd been pulled off-that glowing tracks in the snow weren't too much more visible than ordinary ones. The irregulars fled for their shelters in the clearing. Their new tracks didn't glow, for which Garivald thanked the powers above. He didn't think Sadoc would be working more magic any time soon. He thanked the powers above for that, too.

  ***

  Krasta's foot came down on an icy patch on the sidewalk of the Avenue of Equestrians. She sat down on the pavement suddenly and very hard. An elderly Valmieran man started toward her to help her up, but she was cursing so foully, he beat a hasty, embarrassed retreat.

  Her curses didn't bother a couple of Algarvian soldiers on leave in Priekule. The kilted redheads hurried over to her and hauled her to her feet. "You being all right, lady?" one of them asked in Valmieran with a trilling Algarvian accent.

  "I am very well. And I thank you." Krasta was very conscious-even smugly conscious-of her own good looks. She was also very conscious that the redheads, given an inch, would cheerfully take a mile. If she were old and homely, they mig
ht well have walked right past her. Giving them her most haughty stare, she went on, "I am the Marchioness Krasta, and the companion to Colonel Lurcanio."

  Her own rank probably meant very little to the soldiers in kilts. The Algarvian colonel's rank meant they couldn't take any liberties. They weren't too drunk to realize it, either. "You being careful, milady," one of them said. They both bowed, sweeping off their broad-brimmed hats in unison. And then they went away, perhaps in search of a woman who had no way, polite or otherwise, to tell them no. They probably wouldn't have to search too far.

  Rubbing her tailbone, Krasta walked on in the opposite direction. The Avenue of Equestrians had always been Priekule's main shopping thoroughfare, with shops of all sorts catering to the most fastidious-and expensive-tastes. It still was, but now only a shadow of its former self. The Algarvian occupiers had methodically plundered Valmiera for more than two and half years. It showed.

  They'd been methodically doing other things for more than two and a half years, too. Another Algarvian soldier came by, his arm around the waist of a blond Valmieran girl. He, of course, wore a kilt. But so did she, one that didn't come close to reaching her knees. A lot of Valmieran women-and a fair number of Valmieran men-had adopted their conquerors' fashions.

  Krasta sniffed. She kept right on wearing trousers. She'd occasionally worn kilts before the war-as much to shock as for any other reason-but never since. Despite the Algarvians who used the west wing of her mansion as their own, despite an Algarvian lover, in some ways she felt her Kaunian blood more acutely these days than ever before. That was odd, especially since she'd long been convinced Algarve would win the Derlavaian War.

  From behind her, someone called, "Congratulations on still having any money to spend, milady!"

  She turned. Up the street toward her came Viscount Valnu. He was strikingly handsome, and would have been even more so had he not looked quite so much like a genial skull. He was one of the first men Krasta knew who'd started wearing kilts. She looked him up and down, then shook her head. "You've got knobby knees," she said in the tones of one passing sentence.

  Nothing fazed Valnu. His grin grew more impudent yet. "I've got a baby's arm holding an apple, too, sweetheart."

  "In your dreams," Krasta said with a snort; she knew the truth there. She waited for Valnu to come up to her. "And what are you doing here, if you haven't got any money?" Nobody came to the Avenue of Equestrians without money; the street offered poor folk nothing.

  Valnu patted her on the backside. She couldn't decide whether to slap him or start laughing. In the end, she didn't do anything. The viscount made outrageousness part of his stock in trade. Blue eyes flashing, he answered, "Oh, I manage to scrape a couple of coppers together every now and then. I have my ways, so I do."

  He might have meant he was a gigolo. He might have meant he was something with a harsher name; everyone who knew him knew his versatility. But he might just have meant he'd had a good run at dice, or that some rents from properties out in the provinces had come in. You never could tell with Valnu.

  Needling him a little, Krasta asked, "And what's new with the Algarvians?"

  "How should I know, darling?" he said. "You see more of them than I do. That house of yours is swarming with beefy redheads in kilts. Do you like their legs better than mine? Or will Lurcanio fling you in a dungeon if you even look at anyone but him?" He bared his teeth in happy, even friendly, malice.

  Since she couldn't tell what Colonel L urcanio might do, she was usually circumspect when she looked at anyone but him. "I don't invite them to grand, gruesome orgies at my mansion," she said.

  "You don't need to. They're screwing all the maidservants anyhow," Valnu answered. Krasta's chief serving woman had had a baby by Lurcanio's former adjutant, so she couldn't very well deny that. At least Valnu hadn't come right out and said that Lurcanio was screwing her. From him, that was unusual delicacy.

  Krasta had trouble holding her thoughts on any one thing. Her wave encompassed the Avenue of Equestrians and the whole city. "I'm so sick of dreariness!" she burst out.

  "Things could be better," Valnu agreed. He waited till a couple of more plump, staring Algarvian soldiers enjoying leave in the captured capital of Valmiera went by and got safely out of earshot before adding, "Things could be worse, too. Those fellows are probably in from Unkerlant, for instance. It's a lot worse there."

  Unkerlant, to Krasta, might as well have been a mile beyond the moon. "I'm talking about places where civilized people go," she said with a sneer.

  "Kaunians go to Unkerlant, the same as Algarvians do," Valnu said in a low voice, almost a whisper. "The difference is, some Algarvians come out again."

  The ice that ran through Krasta had nothing to do with the patch that had made her slip. "I saw that news sheet-broadsheet-whatever you want to call it." She shuddered. "I believe it. I believe everything it says."

  One of the reasons she believed the horrors the sheet described was that it was written in her brother's hand. She hadn't told Valnu about that, nor Lurcanio, either. A lifetime of cattiness had taught her the importance of keeping some things secret. Lurcanio was after Skarnu as things were.

  And you still let him sleep with you? she wondered, as she did every so often. But Algarve was stronger than Valmiera, and Lurcanio had proved himself stronger than she was-a shock that still lingered. What choice had she had? None she'd seen then, none she saw now.

  As if to rub salt in the wound, Valnu said, "The redheads keep on falling back in southern Unkerlant. I don't think Durrwangen will hold."

  "Where did you hear that?" Krasta asked. "It's not in any of the news sheets."

  "Of course it's not." Valnu bared his teeth, mocking her naïveté. "The Algarvians aren't fools. They don't want anybody here finding out things aren't going quite so well. But they know-and they talk among themselves. And sometimes they talk where other people can listen. Me, for instance." He struck a pose so absurd, Krasta couldn't help laughing.

  But that laugh congealed on her face as a couple of constables came up the Avenue of Equestrians toward Valnu and her. They weren't Algarvians; they were the same Valmierans who'd patrolled the city before the kingdom fell. They wore almost the same dark green uniforms they had then. Their cap badges, though, were crossed axes, and crossed axes were also stamped on the brass buttons that held their tunics closed. Something seemed stamped on their features, too: a hard contempt for their own kind. They glared at her as they tramped past.

  She glared, too, but only at their backs. Turning to Valnu, she complained, "They have no respect for rank." However angry her words, she didn't speak very loud: she didn't want those grim-looking men to hear.

  "You're wrong, my sweet," Valnu said, and Krasta gave him a sour look as well. He blithely ignored it, as he blithely ignored so many things. Wagging a finger in her face, he went on, "They do indeed respect rank. As far as they're concerned, the Algarvians have it, and everyone else is scum. The Algarvians agree with them, of course."

  "Of course," Krasta said dully. That wasn't too far removed from her own thoughts of a moment before. The Algarvians had strength, and if strength didn't give rank, what did? Blood, she thought, but the redheads had the strength to ignore that if they chose. "They will win the war, in spite of everything," she murmured. Now her glance toward Valnu was almost beseeching; she wanted him to tell her she was wrong.

  He didn't. He said, "They may. They may very well. They've already taken more knocks than they ever expected, but they're still strong, too. And their mages don't care what they do-we know about that. If they win, there's liable not to be a Kaunian left alive in Forthweg by the time they're through."

  Before the war, Krasta hadn't thought much about the Kaunians in Forthweg. When she did think of them, it was as backwoods bumpkins in a distant, backward kingdom. They were blood of her blood, aye, but distant cousins she would just as soon have forgotten. Poor relations. But the Algarvians seemed bound and determined to teach the lesson that even
poor relations were relations after all.

  Something crossed Krasta's mind. She didn't like thinking about these things- truth to tell, she didn't like thinking at all-but she couldn't help it. And she blurted forth the horrid notion as if to exorcise it: "What if they run out?"

  Valnu patted her on the head. "My occasionally dear, you must not say these things, lest you risk losing your proud reputation as a featherbrain." She let out an indignant squawk. He ignored her and leaned forward so that his mouth was right by her ear. He teased her earlobe with his tongue for a moment, then whispered three words: "Night and fog."

  "What?" The teasing tongue distracted her. She was easily distracted. "What's that got to do with anything?" She'd seen NIGHT AND FOG painted on the windows or doors of shops that suddenly closed for no reason anyone could find, but found no connection between the phrase and her own frightened question.