Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  "I have orders for you, sir, and for your regiment." The messenger opened a leather tube he wore on his belt and took out a roll of paper bound with a ribbon and a wax seal. "From army headquarters."

  "I see that," Spinello said. Brigade headquarters would have been much less formal. He took the orders and used his thumbnail to crack the seal, then unrolled the paper and quickly read it. Even before he'd finished, he started to curse.

  "What's wrong, sir?" Turpino asked.

  "We are not going to stamp the Unkerlanters into the dust today," Spinello answered.

  "What?" His men howled furious protests: "Don't they think we're good enough?" "We'll lick 'em!" "A plague on the Unkerlanters, and another one on our generals!"

  "You have your men very ready for action," the messenger observed.

  "What's gone wrong, sir?" Captain Turpino had. He assumed something had, and Spinello could hardly blame him for that. Spinello had thought something was wrong, too, till he'd gone all the way through the orders.

  As things were, he said, "Nothing, Captain. It is, if you like, even a compliment." He passed the paper to Turpino so the senior company commander could see for himself. Spinello addressed the regiment as a whole: "We are withdrawn from the line for rest, refit, and reinforcements-this because of our outstanding fighting qualities, as the general heading up the army says in so many words. They want us in very top shape before they throw us into battle again, so we can do the enemy as much harm as possible."

  "Aye, that's what it says," Turpino agreed. "It also says we're going to get sent south when the refit's done."

  Spinello nodded. "That looks to be where the war will be won or lost. I say that because, having fought there, I see the difference between that part of the front and this one. Here, we go forward or we go back, and not a whole lot changes either way. There... There they take whole armies off the board when things go wrong. They've gone wrong for us and the Unkerlanters both. Next time, by the powers above, I want 'em going wrong for Swemmel's men, and we can help make that happen."

  His men clapped their hands. A few of them tossed their hats in the air. The messenger saluted Spinello. "Sir, you've got them eating out of the palm of his hand."

  "Do I?" Spinello looked at the palm in question. Grinning, he wiped it on his kilt. "I've been wondering why it was wet." The messenger snorted. Spinello turned back to his troops. "Form up, you lugs. Some other lucky fellows get the joy of fighting Unkerlanters here . Poor us-we have to face baths and barbers and beds and brothels. I don't know how we'll be able to manage it, but for the sake of the kingdom we have to try."

  "You are a mountebank," Turpino said as Spinello led his soldiers out of the line. "Sir." His voice held nothing but admiration.

  A new regiment came up the dirt road to replace Spinello's. It looked to be a very new regiment, with plump, well-fed men wearing clean uniforms. "Do your mothers know you're here?" one of Spinello's scrawny veterans called. That set off an avalanche of jeering. The raw troops smiled nervously and kept marching.

  They didn't jeer back, which only proved they didn't know what they were getting into.

  "Stay awake," Spinello told his men. "Keep an eye skinned for dragons. I think we've got enough holes in the ground to dive into if we have to." That drew more laughter from the veterans. The landscape, like most landscapes that had seen a lot of fighting, was a jumble of craters and old, half-collapsed trenches and foxholes. Spinello bunched his fingertips and kissed them. "Aye, Unkerlant is beautiful in the springtime."

  He'd hoped for a ley-line caravan ride back to Goldap, the Unkerlanter town the Algarvians used for a rest center and replacement depot. But Swemmel's men had sabotaged the ley line, and the Algarvian mages were still working to repair the damage. That meant three days of marching through mud for the regiment.

  Once they got into Goldap, soldiers exclaimed at how large and fine it was. Maybe they were from little farms and had no idea what a city was supposed to be like. Maybe, and more likely, they'd been out in the field too long, so that any place with several streets' worth of buildings standing seemed impressive.

  Spinello got them billeted and queued up at a bathhouse next door to the barracks before seeking army headquarters to report his presence. Though normally fastidious-indeed, more than a bit of a dandy-he didn't bother cleaning up first. If he brought the smell of the front with him, then he did, that was all. And if he brought a few fleas and lice with him, too, well, the officers here had a better chance of getting rid of them than somebody who spent all his time fighting.

  As Spinello had expected, the lieutenant to whom he first announced his presence wrinkled his nose and did his best not to breathe. But the colonel to whom the lieutenant conducted him only smiled and said, "Major, about every third officer who visits me tries to show me how dreadful things are up at the front. I know it for myself, believe me."

  Spinello eyed the decorations the colonel wore. They included a couple of medals for gallantry, a pair of wound badges, and what the troops called the frozen- meat medal marking service in Unkerlant the first winter of the war against Swemmel. "Perhaps you do, sir," Spinello admitted. "But you might have been someone just in from Trapani, too."

  "In which case, you'd've made me feel guilty for being clean and safe, eh?" the colonel said. "I'd be angrier at you if I hadn't played those games every now and again, too. As things are, I'm trying to arrange another field command for myself."

  "I hope you get one, sir," Spinello said. "Anybody can be a hero back here. You've shown you can do it where it counts."

  The colonel rose from his chair so he could bow. "You are too kind," he murmured. "And you have made a respectable name for yourself as a combat soldier, I might add. If you hadn't, we would have left you here in a sector where nothing much ever happens. As things are, you'll serve the kingdom where it really matters."

  "Good." Hearing himself sound so fierce, Spinello started to laugh. "Can you believe, sir, that before this war started I was more interested in the archaeology and literature of the Kaunian Empire than in how to outflank a fortified position?"

  "Life is to live. Life is to enjoy-till duty calls," the colonel answered. "Me, I was a beekeeper. Some of the honeys my hives turned out won prizes at

  agricultural shows all over Algarve. Now, though, I have to pay attention to behemoths, not bees."

  "I understand," Spinello said. "If they're sending us south, does that mean we aim to have another go at Durrwangen once the ground really gets hard?"

  "I can't tell you for a fact, Major, because I don't know," the colonel said. "But if you can read a map, I expect you'll draw certain conclusions. I would."

  Now Major Spinello bowed. "I think you've answered me, sir. Where am I to pick up the drafts of men who will bring my regiment to full strength?"

  "We've taken over a couple of what used to be hostels down the street from the caravan depot," the colonel replied. "At the moment, we've got a brigade just in from occupation duty in Jelgava. Three companies have your name on them. Speak with one of the officers there; they'll take care of you. If they don't, send them on to me and I'll take care of them." He sounded as if he relished the prospect.

  Spinello laughed again. "From Jelgava, eh? Poor bastards. They'll be wondering what in blazes hit 'em. And then they go down south? Powers above, they won't enjoy that much. I hope they'll be able to fight."

  "They'll manage," the other Algarvian officer said. "This past winter, we had a brigade from Valmiera get out of its caravan in a blizzard in a depot the Unkerlanters were attacking right that minute. They gave Swemmel's men a prime boot in the balls."

  "Good for them!" Spinello clapped his hands together. "May we do the same."

  "Aye, may you indeed," the colonel agreed. "Meanwhile, though, go collar your new men. Make sure the ones you already have are able to climb into their caravan cars day after tomorrow. We'll try not to halt 'em at a depot where they have to fight their way off."

  "Generous o
f you, sir," Spinello said, saluting. "I'll do everything you told me, just as you said. I won't be sorry to go down south again." He reached up and touched his own wound badge. "I owe the Unkerlanters down there a little something, that I do."

  "And you believe in paying your debts?" the colonel asked.

  "Every one of them, sir," Spinello answered solemnly. "Every single one-with interest."

  ***

  "Hello, there," Ealstan said to the doorman at Ethelhelm's block of flats. "I got a message he wanted to see me." He didn't bother hiding his distaste. He wished he hadn't come at all, but had ignored the band leader and singer who couldn't break with the Algarvians.

  And then the doorman said, "You got a message from whom, sir?"

  Ealstan stared. This fellow had been letting him into the building for months so he could cast the singer's accounts. Had he suddenly gone soft in the head? "Why, from Ethelhelm, of course," he answered.

  "Ah." The doorman nodded and looked wise. "I thought that might be whom you meant, sir. But I must tell you, that gentleman no longer resides here."

  "Oh, really?" Ealstan said, and the doorman nodded again. Ealstan asked, "Did he leave a forwarding address?"

  "No, sir." Now the doorman shook his head. His cultured veneer slipped. "Why do you want to know? Did he skip out owing you money, too?"

  Too? Ealstan thought. But he also shook his head. "No. As a matter of fact, we were square. But why did he ask me to come here if he knew he was going to disappear?"

  "Maybe he didn't know," the doorman said. "He just up and left a couple of days ago. All kinds of people have been looking for him." He sighed. "Powers above, you should see some of the women who've been looking for him. If they were looking for me, I'd make cursed sure they found me, I would."

  "I believe that." Ealstan decided to risk a somewhat more dangerous question: "Have the Algarvians come looking for him, too?"

  "Haven't they just!" the doorman exclaimed. "More of those buggers than you can shake a stick at. And this one redheaded piece..." His hands described an hourglass in the air. "Her kilt was so short, I don't hardly know why she bothered wearing it at all." He made a chopping motion at his own knee-length tunic, just below crotch level, to show what he meant.

  Vanai had talked about seeing Algarvian women in the baths. Ealstan had no interest in them. He wondered what Ethelhelm had wanted, and what the musician was doing now. Whatever it was, he hoped Ethelhelm would manage to do it far from the Algarvians' eyes.

  Aloud, he said, "Well, the crows take him for making me come halfway across town for nothing. If he ever wants me again, I expect he knows where to find me." He turned and left the block of flats. With a little luck, I'll never see it again, he thought.

  Someone had scrawled PENDA AND FREEDOM! on a wall not far from Ethelhelm's building. Ealstan nodded when he saw that. He hadn't felt particularly free when Penda still ruled Forthweg, but he hadn't had standards of comparison then, either. King Mezentio's men had given him some.

  He saw the slogan again half a block later. That made him nod even more. New graffiti always pleased him; they were signs he wasn't the only one who despised the Algarvian occupiers. He hadn't seen so many since the spate of scribbles crowing about Sulingen. The redheads, curse them, had proved they weren't going to fold up and die in Unkerlant after all.

  When an Algarvian constable came round the corner, Ealstan picked up his pace and walked past the new scribble without turning his head toward it. He must have succeeded in keeping his face straight, too, because the constable didn't reach for his club or growl at him.

  I'm well rid of Ethelhelm anyhow, Ealstan thought. He'd found a couple of new clients who between them paid almost as much as the musician had and who didn't threaten to disappoint him with a friendship that wo uld turn sour. His father had been friendly with his clients, but hadn't made friends with them. Now Ealstan saw the difference between those two, and the reason for it.

  Not far from the ley-line caravan depot, a work gang was clearing rubble where an Unkerlanter egg had burst. Some of the laborers, the Forthwegians among them, looked like pickpockets and petty thieves let out of gaol so the Algarvians could get some work from them. The rest were trousered Kaunians taken out of their district.

  Ealstan hadn't seen so many blond heads all together for a long time. He wondered why the Kaunian men hadn't dyed their hair and used Vanai's spell to help themselves disappear into the Forthwegian majority. Maybe they just hadn't got the chance. He hoped that was it. Or maybe they didn't want to believe what the Algarvians were doing with and to their people, as if not believing it made it less true.

  The Forthwegians weren't working any harder than they had to. Every so often, one of the redheads overseeing the job would yell at them. Sometimes they picked up a little, sometimes they didn't. Once, an Algarvian whacked one of them in the seat of his tunic with a club. That produced a yelp, a few curses, and a little more work. The Kaunians in the gang, though, labored like men possessed. Ealstan understood that, and wished he didn't. The Forthwegians would sooner have been sitting in a cell. But if the Kaunians didn't work hard, they'd go west and never, ever come back. Their lives depended on convincing the Algarvians they were worth their keep.

  A Forthwegian passing by called, "Hey, you Kaunians!" When a couple of the blonds looked up, he drew his finger across his throat and made horrible gurgling noises. Then he threw back his head and laughed. So did the Algarvian strawbosses. So did about half the Forthwegian laborers. The Kaunians, for some reason, didn't seem to find the joke so funny.

  And Ealstan had to walk on by without even cursing his loutish countryman. He didn't dare do anything that would draw the occupiers' notice. His own fate was of no great concern to him. Without him, though, how would Vanai manage? He didn't want her to have to find out.

  At the doorway to the flat, he gave the coded knock he always used. Vanai opened the door to let him in. After they kissed, they both said the same thing at the same time: "I've got news." Laughing, they pointed to each other and said the same thing at the same time again: "You first."

  "All right," Ealstan said, and told Vanai of Ethelhelm's disappearance. He finished, "I don't know where he's gone, I don't know what he's doing, and I don't much care, not anymore. Maybe he even listened to me-maybe he's gone off to find some quiet little place in the country where nobody will care where he came from or what he used to do as long as he pulls his weight."

  "Maybe," Vanai said. "That would be easier for him if he didn't look as if he had Kaunian blood, of course. Maybe someone got my spell to him."

  "Maybe somebody did," Ealstan said. "For his sake, I hope somebody did. It would make things easier." He paused, then remembered he wasn't the only one with something on his mind. He pointed at Vanai and asked, "What's your news?"

  "I'm going to have a baby," she answered.

  Ealstan gaped. He didn't know what he'd expected her to say. Whatever it was, that wasn't it. For a couple of seconds, he couldn't think of anything to say. What did come out was a foolish question: "Are you sure?"

  Vanai laughed in his face. "Of course I am," she answered. "I have a perfectly good way to tell, you know. I was pretty sure a month ago. There's no room for doubt now, not anymore."

  "All right," he mumbled. His cheeks and ears heated. Talk of such intimate details embarrassed him. "You surprised me."

  "Did I?" Vanai raised an eyebrow. "I'm not surprised, not really. Or rather, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took so long to happen. We've been busy."

  He heard her, but he wasn't really paying much attention to what she said. "A baby. I don't know anything about taking care of babies. Do you?"

  "Not really," she said. "We can learn, though. People do. If they didn't, there wouldn't be any more people."

  "We'll have to think of a name," Ealstan said, and then added, "Two names," remembering it might be either boy or girl. "We'll have to do... all sorts of things." He had no idea what most of them were, bu
t Vanai was right-he could learn. He'd have to learn. "A baby."

  He walked past his wife into the kitchen, opened a jar of red wine, and poured two cups full. Then he went out to Vanai, handed her one, and raised the other in salute. They both drank. Vanai yawned. "I'm sleepy all the time. That's another thing that's supposed to be a sign."

  "Is it?" Ealstan shrugged a shrug meant to show ignorance. "I'd noticed you were, but I didn't think it meant anything."

  "Well, it does," she said. "You sleep as much as you can beforehand, because you won't sleep once the baby's born."

  "That makes sense," Ealstan agreed. "A baby." He kept saying the words. He believed them, but in a different sense he had trouble believing them. "My mother and father will be grandparents. My sister will be an aunt." He started to mention his brother also, started and then stopped. Leofsig was dead. He still had trouble believing that, too.