Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  He whacked it with the goad. It screeched again, this time in fury, and sprang into the air as if hoping to shake him off. He grinned. An angry dragon was a

  dragon that would fly hard. He activated his crystal and spoke to his squadron leaders: "Green-Three, boys, just like the crystallomancer said. North and east of Herborn."

  Would the words slide by without the officers' fully noticing what he'd just said? He hoped so. But no such luck. "North and east?" Captain Orosio exclaimed. "Colonel, that doesn't sound good at all, not even a little bit."

  "I wish I could tell you you were wrong, but I'm afraid you're right," Sabrino said. "Nothing we can do about it, though, except hit Swemmel's bastards as hard as we can and help our own boys down on the ground."

  Orosio didn't answer that. As far as Sabrino could see, it had no answer. They flew on over the ruined landscape of the Kingdom-not the Duchy (not yet, thought Sabrino) -of Grelz. Two and a half years before, the Unkerlanters had fought hard to hold back the Algarvians. Little of what those battles wrecked was rebuilt, and now Sabrino's countrymen were doing everything they could to keep the Unkerlanters from retaking this stretch of land. If anything hereabouts was left standing by the time these battles were through, Sabrino would have been amazed.

  Then he stopped worrying about the local landscape. There down below, just emerging from forest onto open ground, was the head of an Unkerlanter column- surely the force against which his wing had been sent. A few Algarvian behemoths out on the frozen fields started tossing eggs at Swemmel's soldiers, but they wouldn't be able to stall the Unkerlanters for long, not without help they wouldn't.

  "Come on!" Sabrino shouted into his crystal. He pointed for good measure. "There they are. Now we make 'em sorry they aren't somewhere else."

  Like most of its kind, his new dragon was happy enough to stoop on the enemy, as if it imagined itself a madly outsized kestrel. Getting it to pull up, he knew, would be another problem. It wanted to sink its claws into a behemoth and fly off with the great beast, armor and crew and all: it had not the wit to see such was far beyond even its great strength.

  Sabrino loosed the eggs slung beneath the dragon and hit it with the goad. It screeched angrily, but did finally decide to rise rather than flying into the ground. More eggs burst behind Sabrino as the rest of his dragonfliers also loosed their loads of death on the Unkerlanters. He looked back over his shoulder and nodded in solid professional satisfaction. Battered and undermanned though it was, his wing still did a solid professional job. They'd well and truly smashed in the head of this column. Swemmel's men wouldn't be coming forward here, not for a while.

  But then more Unkerlanters emerged from the woods north and east of the column the dragonfliers had just attacked. And, as his dragon gained height, Sabrino saw still more men and beasts, some in rock-gray, some in white winter smocks over rock-gray, moving up from the south toward those soldiers coming out of the forest.

  Sabrino didn't know whether to groan or to curse. He did both at once, with great feeling. "Powers below eat them!" he shouted to the uncaring sky. "They've got Herborn trapped in one of their stinking kettles!"

  ***

  "Herborn surrounded." Fernao sounded out the Kuusaman words with care as he fought his way through the news sheet from Yliharma. "Large force of Algarvians trapped inside Unkerlanter lines. Demand for surrender refused."

  "I've heard Lagoans who sounded worse," Ilmarinen said. Coming from him, any praise was high praise.

  Fernao dipped his head. "Thank you," he said in Kuusaman. He went on in classical Kaunian, in which he remained more fluent: "Reading the news sheets, I learn many military terms. But they are not much use to me in speaking of ordinary things."

  "Oh, I don't know." Ilmarinen looked around the refectory till he spotted the serving girl for whom he'd conceived an as yet unrequited passion. Waving to get her attention, he called, "Hey, Linna! If I surround you, will you surrender?"

  "You are not asleep, Master Ilmarinen. You are awake," Linna answered. "You are not talking in your dreams, however much you wish you were."

  "I see," Fernao said. "Aye, I followed that well enough."

  "I was afraid you would," Ilmarinen said glumly. "That wench must spend an hour every morning stropping her tongue to make it sharper." He took a sip of tea, then asked, "Let me see that news sheet, will you?" Fernao passed it to him; Ilmarinen was bound to make smoother, faster going of it than he could. And, sure enough, the Kuusaman master mage soon grunted. "Here's a sweet little story: a Sibian woman who was pregnant by an Algarvian fed her husband rat poison when he came home and found out what she'd been up to."

  "Sweet, aye." Fernao had a pretty good idea why Ilmarinen had picked that particular story. He had no intention of admitting as much, since that would also have meant admitting Ilmarinen had a point.

  When Fernao said no more, Ilmarinen grunted again and went on, "Aye, poor Commander, ah, Cornelu won't be riding leviathans for King Burebistu any more, and his not-so-loving wife will end up a head shorter. Bad business all the way around."

  "Cornelu?" Fernao exclaimed-the name got his notice. "Oh, that poor bugger!"

  "You knew him?" Now Ilmarinen sounded surprised.

  "Not well, but aye, I knew him," Fernao answered. "He was the leviathan-rider who pulled King Penda of Forthweg and me out of Mizpah, down in the land of the Ice People, when it was on the point of falling to the Yaninans."

  "Ah." Ilmarinen nodded. "I suspect that, if we knew more of these webs of casual acquaintance, we could do more with the law of contagion than we've managed up till now. If I had to guess, I'd say that would be for the generation of mages after you."

  "It could be." Fernao eyed Ilmarinen with admiration no less genuine for being reluctant. No one could ever say Ilmarinen thought small. In a couple of sentences, he'd proposed a program of research that might well keep a whole generation of mages busy.

  Before Fernao could say anything else, Pekka strode into the refectory and spoke in ringing tones: "My fellow mages, we are leaving for the blockhouse in a quarter of an hour. You will be ready." The Kuusaman verb had a form that expressed absolute certainty; Pekka used it then.

  And Fernao was ready in a quarter of an hour-done with his breakfast and decked in furs a man of the Ice People wouldn't have disdained. As he dressed, he wondered whether Ilmarinen, who'd lingered in the dining hall, could possibly

  get to the front door of the hostel within the appointed time. But he found Ilmarinen there before him. The master mage gave a superior smirk, as if to say he knew he'd put one over on Fernao.

  Everyone was there: all the theoretical sorcerers who would conduct the next experiment that sprang from the unity at the heart of the Two Laws, the secondary sorcerers who would project their spell to the animals, the sorcerers who would keep the animals from freezing till the spell went forth, and the contingent of mages who would do their best to protect the theoretical sorcerers against any onslaught from Algarve.

  Pekka didn't look pleased to find everyone ready on time. She looked as if that were nothing less than her due. Maybe that was what leading meant. "And off we go," she said. "The weather is very fine today."

  She came from Kajaani, of course, on the southern coast of Kuusamo. That meant her standards differed from Fernao's. As far as he was concerned, it was bloody cold outside. But several of the other Kuusamans nodded, so he supposed he was the odd man out here.

  Odd man out or not, he was glad to snuggle under more furs in a sleigh. He was also glad to snuggle under them beside Pekka. Snuggle down beside her was all he did. Without a word, without a gesture, she'd made it plain that anything else would cost them the friendship they'd built up since he came to Kuusamo. He didn't think that was because she wasn't interested in him. On the contrary-he thought she was, and sternly wouldn't let herself be.

  In an abstract way, he admired that... which made it no less frustrating. Still, he didn't suppose he wanted to put her husband Leino in a situation like
the one from which poor, luckless Cornelu hadn't escaped. No, he didn't want that at all. All I want is to go to bed with her. If only things were so simple. But he knew too well they weren't.

  Pekka said, "In spite of everything, we do make progress. We shall be sending the energie s farther from the site of the sorcery than we have ever tried before." She paused before adding, "Almost far enough to be useful in the field."

  "Almost," Fernao said. But his comment was rather gloomier than hers: "Almost is one of the saddest words in the language-in any language. It speaks of hopes with nothing to show for them."

  "We are already releasing nearly as much energy with our sorcery as the Algarvians are with their murderous magecraft," Pekka said. "And our magic is far cleaner than theirs."

  "I know," Fernao replied-the last thing he wanted to do was affront her. "But they still have more control over theirs than we do with ours. We do not yet know how to project the energies from our spell across the Strait of Valmiera, for instance, and we know too well that Mezentio's mages can."

  As usual, speaking classical Kaunian gave the conversation a certain air of detachment-some, but not enough here. Pekka's shiver had nothing to do with the icy air through which the sleigh glided. "Aye, we do know that too well," she agreed with a grimace. "Were it not so, we would still have Siuntio on our side, and not a day goes by in which I do not miss him."

  "I know," Fernao said again. He might have dragged Siuntio out of the blockhouse when it started to collapse and burn during the Algarvian sorcerous attack. He'd dragged Pekka out instead. She still didn't realize he'd been closer to Siuntio

  than to her. No matter how much he wanted to bed her, he would never tell her that.

  Ptarmigan fluttered away from the sleigh, wings whistling as they took flight. "They are in their full winter plumage now," Pekka said. "The rabbits and the ferrets will be white, too."

  "So they will, here," Fernao said. "Up by Setubal-and on the Derlavaian mainland farther north, too-many of them will stay brown the whole winter long. I wonder how they know to go white here, where it snows more, but not to where the winters are milder."

  "Savants have puzzled over that for a long time," Pekka said. "They have never yet found an answer that satisfies me."

  "Nor me," Fernao agreed. "It almost tempts me to think some inborn sorcerous power is hidden inside animals. But if it is there, no mage has ever been able to detect it, and that makes me not believe in any such thing."

  "You are a modern rational man, and I feel the same way you do," Pekka said. "No wonder, though, that our superstitious ancestors thought beasts had the same potential for using magic as people did."

  "No wonder at all," Fernao said.

  Before he or Pekka could say anything more, the driver reined in and spoke two words of Kuusaman: "We're here."

  Fernao got down from the sleigh and extended a mittened hand to Pekka. She set her own mittened hand in his as she alighted. That was the contact of ordinary politeness, and she did not shy away from it. Even through two thick layers of felted wool, her touch warmed him.

  Braziers warmed the blockhouse-not nearly so well, as far as Fernao was concerned. Filling it with mages did a better job: did, in fact, too good a job. People shed cloaks and jackets. Fernao started sweating after taking off his coat. He joined the grumbling about how warm it was. But then Pekka's voice crisply cut through that grumbling: "Let us begin, shall we? Crystallomancer, please be so kind as to check with the mages handling the animals. Is everything ready?"

  She spoke to the woman in Kuusaman, but Fernao found he had no trouble following her. After a moment, the crystallomancer replied, "They are ready at your convenience, Mistress."

  "Good," Pekka said, and recited the ancient phrases with which Kuusamans preceded every sorcery. The other mages in the blockhouse repeated the phrases with her-everyone but Fernao. Nobody bothered him for not joining in the ritual, though one mage or another would sometimes tease him about it back at the hostel.

  Before Pekka could begin the spell itself, Ilmarinen let out a sharp bark of warning: "Look out!" Fernao's head came up. He peered north, as if he could see to the Strait of Valmiera, let alone across it. He sensed no sorcerous disturbance, not yet. A moment later, though, one of the mages charged with defending against Algarvian wizardry also exclaimed.

  And then Fernao felt it, too-that cantrip that tasted of iron and brimstone and blood, so much blood; that smelled of powers above only knew how many open graves. He couldn't join the Kuusaman mages in their defense against it-their ways were not his. His ways, to his shame, were closer to the school of sorcery that had spawned such monstrousness.

  "No!" he shouted in Lagoan, a cry of rejection hardly different from its Algarvian equivalent. He launched his own angry counterspell at Mezentio's mages. He didn't think it would do much good, but he didn't see how it could hurt, either. Then, to his astonishment, he felt his spell lifted, reinforced. He was almost startled enough to break off the chant. Ilmarinen waved for him to continue. So did Pekka. She was incanting furiously.

  But she's not aiming at the Algarvians, a tiny part of his mind thought. She's going on with the magic she would have tried anyhow. He didn't dwell on that. He dwelt on nothing but his own magecraft, and on the astonishing boost Ilmarinen was giving it. He couldn't see to the Strait of Valmiera, no, but he felt as if he might reach it and cross it.

  He wanted to loose his bolt of sorcerous power, but felt someone-Ilmarinen again? -delaying him, making him hold back. Then he could delay no more-but when he launched it, he also launched all the tremendous energy from the spell Pekka had shaped. Unlike the Kuusamans, the Algarvian mages had been ready only for attack; they hadn't dreamt they would need to defend. Fernao felt the sorcerous counterstroke shatter them. He cried out in triumph and pitched forward on his face in a faint.

  ***

  "We did it!" Pekka exclaimed for about the dozenth time since the mages returned to their hostel. "We truly did it! I didn't think we could, but we did it!"

  "So we did." Fernao spoke in classical Kaunian rather than Kuusaman. He still looked pale and drawn, though a couple of mugs of ale had gone some way toward restoring his color. "Not quite the experiment we had in mind when we went to the blockhouse, but success is never an orphan: only failure has to look for a father."

  "It was your success," Pekka said. "Everyone else thought only of holding off the Algarvians. You were the one who struck back."

  He shrugged. "Ilmarinen here helped. And I have Algarvic blood in me, and I am trained in Algarvic-style magecraft. I hoped they would prove all sword and no shield, and I was lucky enough to be right. It turned out better than I thought it would, in fact."

  "It turned out better than I dreamt it could," Pekka exclaimed. She sipped from a small goblet of brandy flavored with almond paste. "The Algarvians will not try to strike us again any time soon, not that way."

  Ilmarinen gave her a sour stare. "If you gush any more, my dear, you'll turn into a hot spring."

  She reminded herself that Fernao had needed the master mage's help to launch his counterspell at Mezentio's mages. That helped her keep her temper now. "The Algarvians are the ones gushing hot tears now," she said. "We put a lot of their sorcerers out of business today."

  "Well, so we did." But even that didn't much impress Ilmarinen. He went on, "It won't bring the Kaunians they killed back to life, though."

  "Did I say it would?" Pekka returned. "But it may give them less reason to kill more of them. That also counts for something."

  Perhaps because of the brandy, she felt her temper slipping out from under her control whether she wanted it to or not. Had Ilmarinen argued further, she would

  have scorched him. To her relief, he didn't, or not very much, anyhow. He said, "Aye, I suppose that's true, not that it does the poor blond buggers they sacrificed this time any good." Then he gulped the last of the ale in his mug, slammed it down on the table, and stalked away.

  Fernao stared after hi
m. "I almost think he would be happier if we were losing than he is to have struck the Algarvians a solid sorcerous blow," the Lagoan mage observed.

  With a sigh, Pekka answered, "I fear you are exactly right. He would feel more needed were that so, and we would be more inclined to make the kind of experiments he wants." She shrugged. "As things are, I am the one who judges what is important and what is not, and I say that what we did here today was one of the most important things we have ever done."

  "I think you are right," Fernao said. "We proved we could project that power a long way-a lot farther than we would have tried had the Algarvians not pushed us."

  "Everything we have done up till now, we have done because the Algarvians are pushing us," Pekka said. "This time, though, we pushed back."

  "Aye." Fernao turned in his chair till he was facing north and ever so slightly west. He pointed in that same direction. "Along this bearing-this is the direction from which their attack came, and the direction along which we aimed our answer. If we sent a dragon flying along this line, I wonder what its flier would see after it got to the coast of Valmiera."