Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  His captured Algarvian crystal started picking up emanations again. A couple of Mezentio's soldiers-Cornelu gradually realized they were brothers or close cousins-were comparing notes about their Valmieran girlfriends. They went into richly obscene detail. After listening for a while, Cornelu wasn't sleepy anymore. He didn't take notes on this conversation; he doubted the Lagoan officers who eventually got his slate would be amused.

  "Oh, aye, she aims her toes right at the ceiling, she does," one of the Algarvians said. The other one laughed. Cornelu started to laugh, too, but choked on his own mirth. Back in Tirgoviste town, some Algarvian whore-hounds like these two had seduced his wife. He wondered if Costache would present him with a bastard to go with his own daughter if he ever got back there again. Then he wondered how he would ever get back to Tirgoviste-or why he would want to.

  Along with frustrated lust, frustrated fury made sure he wouldn't fall asleep right away. At last, to his relief, the two Algarvians shut up. He lay atop his leviathan's back, rocking gently on the waves. The leviathan might have been dozing, or so he thought till it chased town and caught a good-sized tunny. He liked tunny's flesh himself, but baked in a pie with cheese, not raw and wriggling.

  Maybe the chase changed the emanations that reached his crystal. In any case, a new Algarvian voice spoke out of it: "Everything ready with this new shipment? All the ley lines south cleared?"

  "Aye," another Algarvian answered. "We've been leaning on the cursed bandits who make life such a joy. Nothing will go wrong this time."

  "It had better not," the first voice said. "We haven't got any Kaunians to spare. We haven't got anything to spare, not here we don't. Everything gets sucked west, over to Unkerlant. If we don't bring this off now, powers above only know when we'll get another chance, if we ever do."

  Cornelu wrote furiously. He wondered if the Lagoans back in Setubal would be able to read his scrawl. It didn't matter too much, as long as he was there along with the notes. Mezentio's men were planning murder, somewhere along the southern coast of Valmiera-murder doubtless aimed across the Strait of Valmiera at a Lagoan or Kuusaman coastal city.

  Then a new voice interrupted the Algarvians: "Shut up, you cursed fools. The emanations from your crystals are leaking and someone-aye, someone-is listening to them."

  If that wasn't a mage, Cornelu had never heard one. And the fellow would be doing everything he could to learn who and, even more important, where the eavesdropper was. Quickly, Cornelu murmured the charm that took the crystal down to dormancy again. That would make the Algarvian mage's work harder for him. Cornelu was tempted to throw the crystal into the sea, too, but refrained.

  He did rouse the leviathan and send it swimming south again, as fast as it would go. The sooner he got away from the Valmieran coast, the tougher the time Mezentio's minions would have finding him and running him down. He glanced up at the sky again. He would have trouble spotting dragons, but dragonfliers wouldn't enjoy looking for his leviathan, either.

  After a while, he activated the crystal that linked him to Lagoas. The same officer as before appeared in it. Cornelu spoke rapidly, outlining what he'd learned-who could guess when the Algarvians might start slaying?

  The Lagoan heard him out, then said, "Well, Commander, I daresay you've earned your day's pay." A Sibian officer would have kissed him on both cheeks, even if he was only an image in a crystal. Somehow, though, he didn't mind this understated praise, not tonight.

  ***

  Skarnu had got out of the habit of sleeping in barns. But, having escaped the latest Algarvian attempt to grab him in Ventspils, he'd gone out into the country again. A farmer risked his own neck by putting up a fugitive from what the redheads called justice.

  "I'll help with the chores if you like," he told the man (whose name he deliberately did not learn) the next morning.

  "Will you?" The farmer gave him an appraising look. "You know what you're doing? You talk like a city man."

  "Try me," Skarnu answered. "I feel guilty sitting here eating your food and not helping you get more."

  "Well, all right." The farmer chuckled. "We'll see if you still talk the same way at the end of the day."

  By the end of that day, Skarnu had tended to a flock of chickens, mucked out a cow barn, weeded a vegetable plot and an herb garden, chopped firewood, and mended a fence. He felt worn to a nub. Farmwork always wore him to the nub. "How did I do?" he asked the man who was putting him up.

  "I've seen worse," the fellow allowed. He glanced at Skarnu out of the corner of his eye. "You've done this before a time or two, I do believe."

  "Who, me?" Skarnu said, as innocently as he could. "I'm just a city man. You said so yourself."

  "I said you talked like one," the farmer answered, "and you cursed well do. But I'll shit a brick if you haven't spent some time behind a plow." He waved a hand. "Don't tell me about it. I don't want to hear. The less I know, the better, on account of the stinking Algarvians can't rip it out of me if it's not there to begin with."

  Skarnu nodded. He'd learned that lesson as a captain in the Valmieran army. All the stubborn men-and women-who kept up the fight against Algarve in occupied Valmiera had learned it somewhere. The ones who couldn't learn it were mostly dead now, and too many of their friends with them.

  Supper was black bread and hard cheese and sour cabbage and ale. In Priekule before the war, Skarnu would have turned up his nose at such simple fare. Now, with the relish of hunger, he ate enormously. And, with the relish of exhaustion, he had no trouble falling asleep in the barn.

  Lanternlight in his face woke him in the middle of the night. He started to spring to his feet, grabbing for the knife at his belt. "Easy," the farmer said from behind the lantern. "It's not the stinking redheads. It's a friend."

  Without letting go of the knife, Skarnu peered at the man with the farmer. Slowly, he nodded. He'd seen that face before, in a tavern where irregulars gathered. "You're Zarasai," he said, naming not the man but the southern town from which he'd come.

  "Aye." "Zarasai" nodded. "And you're Pavilosta." That was the village nearest the farm where Skarnu had dwelt with the widow Merkela.

  "What's so important, it won't wait till sunup?" Skarnu asked. "Are the Algarvians a jump and a half behind you, hot on my trail again?"

  "No, or they'd better not be," "Zarasai" answered. "It's more important than that."

  More important than my neck? Skarnu thought. What's more important to me than my neck? "You'd better tell me," he said.

  And "Zarasai" did: "The Algarvians, powers below eat them, are shipping a caravanload-maybe more than one caravanload; I don't know for sure-of Kaunians from Forthweg to the shore of the Strait of Valmiera. You know what that means."

  "Slaughter." Skarnu's stomach did a slow lurch. "Slaughter. Life energy. Magic aimed at... Lagoas? Kuusamo?"

  "We don't know," answered the other leader of Valmieran resistance. "Against one of them or the other, that's sure."

  "What can we do to stop it?" Skarnu asked.

  "I don't know that, either," "Zarasai" replied. "That's why I came for you- you're the one who managed to get an egg under a ley-line caravan full of Kaunians from Forthweg one of the other times the stinking Algarvians tried this. Maybe you can help us do it again. Powers above, I hope so."

  "I'll do whatever I can," Skarnu told him. When he'd buried that egg on the ley line not far from Pavilosta, he hadn't even known the Algarvians would be shipping a caravanload of captives to sacrifice. But the egg had burst regardless of whether he'd known that particular caravan was coming down the ley line. Now his fellows in the shadow fight against King Mezentio thought he could work magic twice when he hadn't really done it once. I'll try. I have to try.

  "Come on, then," the irregular told him. "Let's get moving. We have no time to waste. If the redheads get them to a captives' camp, we've lost."

  Skarnu paused only to pull on his boots. "I'm ready," he said, and bowed to the farmer. "Thanks for putting me up. Now forget you
ever saw me."

  "Saw who?" the farmer said with a dry chuckle. "I never saw nobody."

  A carriage waited outside the barn. Skarnu climbed up into it, picking bits of straw off himself and yawning again and again. "Zarasai" took the reins. He drove with practiced assurance. Skarnu asked, "Which ley line will the redheads be using?"

  Sounding slightly embarrassed, the other m an replied, "We don't quite know. They've been acting busy at three or four different places down along the coast, running a caravan to this one, then another to that one, and so on. They're getting sneakier than they used to be, the miserable, stinking whoresons."

  "We've caused 'em enough trouble to make 'em realize they have to be sneaky," Skarnu observed. "It's a compliment, if you like." He yawned again, trying to flog his sleepy wits to work. "Whatever they're doing with this sacrifice, they think it's important. They've never put this much work into trying to fool us before."

  "Zarasai" grunted. "I'm glad I came for you. I hadn't thought of it like that. I don't think anybody's thought of it like that." He flicked the reins to make the horse move a little faster. "Doesn't mean I think you're wrong, on account of I think you're right. Powers below eat the Algarvians."

  "Maybe they already have," Skarnu said, which kept his companion thoughtfully silent for quite a while.

  Had an Algarvian patrol come across the carriage, it would have gone hard for the two irregulars, who were traveling far past the curfew hour. But Mezentio's men, and even the Valmierans who helped them run the occupied kingdom, were spread thin. Dawn was making the eastern sky blush when "Zarasai" drove into a village that made Pavilosta look like a city beside it: three or four houses, a tavern, and a blacksmith's shop. He tied the horse in front of one of the houses and got down from the carriage. Skarnu followed him to the front door.

  It opened even before "Zarasai" knocked. "Come in," a woman hissed. "Quick. Don't waste any time. We'll get the carriage out of sight."

  Fancier than a farmhouse, the place boasted a parlor. The furniture would have been stylish in the capital just before the Six Years' War. Maybe it was still stylish here in the middle of nowhere. Skarnu didn't know about that. He didn't have much of a chance to wonder, either, for his eye was drawn like iron to a lodestone in the direction of the half dozen crystals on the elaborately carven table in the middle of that parlor.

  "We can talk almost anywhere in the kingdom," the woman said, not without pride.

  "Good," Skarnu said. "Just don't do too much of it, or you'll have the Algarvians listening in." The woman nodded. Despite his words, Skarnu was

  impressed. Down on the farm near Pavilosta, he'd often wondered if his pin- pricks meant anything to the Algarvians, and if anyone else in Valmiera was doing anything against them. Seeing with his own eyes how resistance spread across the whole kingdom felt very fine indeed.

  "Zarasai" went back into the kitchen and returned with a couple of steaming mugs of tea. He passed one on to Skarnu, waited till he'd sipped, and then said, "All right-you're in charge. Tell us what to do, and we'll do it."

  Maybe having served as a captain fitted Skarnu to the role thrust on him. Having wrecked the one caravan didn't, as he knew too well. Doing his best to think like a soldier, he said, "Have you got a map with ley lines marked? I want to see the possibilities."

  "Aye," the woman said matter-of-factly, and pulled one from the bureau drawer.

  Skarnu studied it. "If they're after Setubal again, they'll send the captives to the camp by Dukstas, the one they used before when the Lagoans raided them."

  The irregular from Zarasai nodded. "We figure that one's the most likely. They'd dearly love to serve Setubal as they served Yliharma. All these other camps are smaller and farther east. Setubal's the best target they've got. I don't see that they'd want to hit Kuusamo again and leave Lagoas untouched."

  "No, I wouldn't think so, either," Skarnu agreed. But he frowned. "Dukstas is the obvious place to send the captives."

  "Of course it is," "Zarasai" said. "That's why they're doing all these dances, isn't it? -to keep us from seeing what's obvious, I mean."

  "Maybe." Skarnu shrugged. "It could be, aye. But I just don't know...." He cursed under his breath. "Can we try to sabotage the ley lines into all of these camps?"

  "We can try doing them all." The other irregular sounded dubious, and explained why: "Odds are, some of the people we send in will get caught. They've got lots of soldiers and lots of cursed Valmieran traitors guarding the ley lines. They want to get these captives through, that's plain."

  "That means something really big," Skarnu said. "Setubal or... something else." His frown turned into a scowl. "What could be bigger than Setubal, if they can bring it off? But Setubal doesn't feel right to me-do you know what I mean?"

  "It's your call," the man from Zarasai answered. "That's why you're here."

  "All right." Skarnu nodded to the woman who did duty for a crystallomancer. "As much in the way of sabotage on every ley line we can reach that leads to one of those camps. I'm not convinced the captives are going to Dukstas. Maybe we'll see where they are going when we seen which ley lines the redheads defend hardest."

  "Sabotage all the ley lines we can," the woman repeated. "I shall pass the word." Pass it she did, one crystal at a time. Having given his orders, Skarnu could only wait to see how things far away turned out. That was new for him: he'd been a captain before, aye, but never a general.

  Reports started coming back around midday, some from raiders who had planted eggs, others from bands that failed because their stretch of ley line was too strongly protected. A couple of bands never reported back at all. Skarnu worried about that. Eyeing the map, "Zarasai" said, "Well, the buggers won't ship 'em into Dukstas, and that's flat."

  "So it is." Skarnu felt a certain satisfaction himself. A few hours later, word came that the Algarvians had succeeded in moving the Kaunian captives into a seaside camp, but one far, far to the east. He cursed, but made the best of things: "They may manage something, but we kept them from doing their worst."

  Four

  From the dining room of the hostel that had been run up in the wilderness of southeastern Kuusamo, Pekka looked out on bright sunlight shining off snow. She took another bite of a grilled and salted mackerel. "Finally," she said in classical Kaunian. "Decent weather for more experiments."

  "I've seen bad weather," Ilmarinen said. "I don't know that I've ever seen indecent weather. Might be interesting." Even in the classical language, he liked to twist words back on themselves to see what happened.

  Pekka gave him a sweet smile. "Any weather with you out in it, Master, would soon become indecent."

  Siuntio coughed. Fernao chuckled. Ilmarinen guffawed. "That all depends on whether the experiment goes up or down," he said.

  Siuntio coughed again, more sharply this time. "Let us please remember the high seriousness of the work in which we are engaged," he said.

  "Why?" Ilmarinen asked. "The work will go on just the same either way. We'll have more fun if we have more fun, though."

  "We are also more likely to make a mistake if we take things lightly," Siuntio said. "Considering the forces we are trying to manipulate, a mistake would be something less than desirable."

  "Enough," Pekka said before the elderly and distinguished mages could get any further into their schoolboy bickering. "One of the mistakes we make is arguing among ourselves."

  "Quite right." Siuntio nodded, then shook a finger in Ilmarinen's direction. "You should pay attention to Mistress Pekka's wisdom, for she-"

  Now Fernao coughed. "It pains me to tell you this, Master Siuntio," he said in his careful Kaunian, "but you are still arguing."

  "I am?" Siuntio sounded astonished. Then he seemed to consider. "Why, so I am." He dipped his head to Fernao. "My thanks for pointing it out; I confess I hadn't noticed."

  Pekka believed him. He was just the sort of man who might do such a thing without paying much attention to what he was doing. She said, "When we go out t
oday-or tomorrow, if we do not get the chance to do it today-we have to remind the secondary sorcerers to bend every effort to keeping all the animals hale while we perform the primary incantations. Having one of the rats in the younger group die before the spell was complete ruined a day's work and more."

  "As opposed to ruining a good part of the landscape," Ilmarinen said.

  "We have already done that," Pekka said. "Even after the blizzards come and pour snow over the latest hole in the ground, you can still see the scars of what we have done." She shook her head. "And to think all this started with an acorn disappearing."