Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “No,” Leudast said. “Nothing wrong with that at all. Let’s see how the redheads like slogging through the mud. If the powers above are giving us an early winter, maybe they’ll give us a nasty winter, too.” He stared up at one of the few patches of blue sky he could see, hoping the powers were listening to him.

  Along with a dozen of his comrades, Tealdo sheltered in a half-wrecked barn somewhere in southern Unkerlant. It was raining almost as hard inside the barn as it was outside. Tealdo and Trasone held a cloak above Captain Galafrone to keep water from dripping down onto the map the company commander was examining to try to figure out just where they were.

  “Curse me if I know why I’m bothering,” Galafrone growled. “This miserable thing lies more often than it tells the truth.”

  Trasone pointed to a line printed in red. “Sir, isn’t that the highway?” “That’s what the map says,” Galafrone answered. “I saw Unkerlanter roads during the Six Years’ War, but I thought they might have got better since. They were supposed to have got better since. But the stinking ‘highway’ is just another dirt track. Huzzah for Swemmel’s efficiency.”

  “Mud track now,” Trasone said. His legs, like everyone else’s, were mud to the knees and beyond.

  Tealdo said, “Maybe Swemmel’s efficient after all. Hard for us to go very far very fast if we bog down every step we take.”

  Galafrone gave him a sour look. “If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t mean it for a joke, sir,” Tealdo said. “I meant it for the truth.”

  “They have as much trouble in this slop as we do,” Trasone said.

  “What if they do?” Tealdo answered. “They’re not trying to go forward right now, or not so much. They’re only trying to hold us back.”

  That produced a gloomy silence. At last, Captain Galafrone said, “We’ve got ‘em by the ears and we’ve got ‘em by the tail. Can’t very well let go now, can we?” He bent closer to the map, then swore. “I’ll be cursed if I don’t need spectacles to read the fornicating letters when they’re printed that fornicating small. Where in blazes is the town called Tannroda?”

  Trasone and Tealdo both peered at the map--rather awkwardly, since they had to keep holding the cloak over it. Tealdo spotted the place first. He pointed with his free hand. “There, sir.”

  “Ah.” Galafrone’s grunt held more weariness than satisfaction. “My thanks. Northwest, is it? Well, that makes a deal of sense--it’s in the direction of Cottbus. Once we take his capital away from him, King Swemmel won’t be so much of a much.” He folded up the map and put it back in his belt pouch. “Come on, boys. We’ve got to get moving. The Unkerlanters won’t wait for us.”

  “Maybe they’ve all drowned in the mud,” Trasone said.

  “Don’t I wish.” Galafrone grunted again. For the first time since the veteran had taken command of the company, Tealdo thought he saw his years telling on him. Galafrone made himself rally. “It’s too much to hope for, and you know it as well as I do. If we don’t shift ‘em, they won’t get shifted.”

  “Maybe the Yaninans can do the job,” Tealdo said slyly as Galafrone started toward the open barn door.

  The captain stopped and gave him a baleful look. “I wouldn’t pay you a counterfeit copper for a whole army of those chicken thieves. They think we’re supposed to do the fighting while they steal anything that isn’t spiked down. Only thing they’re good for is holding down quiet stretches of the line--and they’re not much good for that, either. Come on. We’ve wasted too much time here.”

  Out they went. The rain was still coming down hard; Tealdo felt as if he’d been slapped in the face with a wet towel. More bedraggled Algarvians emerged from the farmhouse, which had taken an even worse beating than the barn. Still others were resting in haystacks and under trees. Like Tealdo, they all squelched forward toward Tannroda and, somewhere beyond it, Cottbus.

  Every step was an effort. Tealdo, like most of the company, stayed on what was called the highway for lack of a suitably malodorous word. Others insisted moving through the fields to either side was easier. It probably didn’t make much difference, one way or the other. Mud was mud.

  They slogged past a ley-line caravan whose forwardmost several cars no longer floated above the ground but lay on it, canted at drunken angles. The Algarvian soldiers who’d been riding in those cars now stood around in the mud--except for the ones who lay in it, hurt when the caravan went awry.

  “Poor dears,” Tealdo said. “They’ll get wet.”

  Trasone’s laughter had a nasty edge. “They look like new men--probably never saw an Unkerlanter in all their born days. They’ve been drinking wine and pinching pretty girls back in Algarve while we’ve had to go out and work for a living. Whoresons might as well find out what it’s like over here.” He spat into the muck. The drumming rain drowned his spittle.

  They hadn’t gone much farther before the reason the caravan had come to grief became obvious. Three or four Algarvian mages stood around and in a large hole in the ground that was rapidly turning into a pond. A colonel shouted at them: “Hurry up and fix the damage to this ley line, powers below eat you all! I have men to move, and how am I supposed to move them with the line broken?” He stamped his booted foot, which only made it sink into the soggy ground.

  “Try walking,” Tealdo called, confident the rain would cloak him. And, sure enough, the colonel whirled in his direction, but couldn’t pick him out from among the other vague, dripping shapes.

  In any case, the officer was more concerned with the mages, and they with him. One of them said, “My lord Colonel, the egg the cursed Unkerlanters buried and then burst did too good a job of wrecking the line for us to repair it right away. It wasn’t meant to try to absorb so much energy all at once. And the Unkerlanters use different spells from ours to maintain the line--and they’ve done their best to obscure those, too. It’ll be awhile before you’re gliding again.”

  “How long awhile?” the colonel ground out.

  Before answering, the mage put his head together with his colleagues. “A day, certainly,” he said then. “Maybe two.”

  “Two?” the colonel yelped. He waved his arms and stamped his foot again and loosed some extravagant curses, as any Algarvian might have. None of that did him any good. Being under his command, the mages had to try to soothe him instead of telling him what they thought of him, which Tealdo knew he would have wanted to do had he been in their place.

  “Come on,” Galafrone said. “They may be stuck, but we’re not--quite.”

  On the footsoldiers went, leaving the sabotaged ley line behind them. After another mile or so, the road became an even worse bog than it had been. Dragging himself out of the ooze, Tealdo discovered the going was better--not good, nowhere close to good, but better--in the field to one side.

  “Something else is buggered up ahead,” Trasone predicted. “You wait and see--we’ll find out what it is.”

  They’d gone only a little farther when the wide-shouldered bruiser proved himself a good prophet. There ahead were half a dozen behemoths stuck belly-deep in the clinging mud. “Hurrah,” Tealdo said. “First they ruined the road for us, then they went and ruined it for themselves, too.”

  “They’re in so deep, they’re liable to drown there,” Trasone said. One of the trapped behemoths evidently thought the same, for it lifted its head and let out a loud, frightened bellow. It thrashed in the mud, trying to get free, but succeeded only in miring itself even worse.

  “There, precious, there.” One of the behemoth-riders was down in the mud with the beast, doing his best to keep it calm. Tealdo would not have wanted that fellow’s job, not for anything. The behemoths’ crews had already done everything they could to lighten their animals, stripping off not only egg-tossers and heavy sticks but also the chainmail coats the behemoths wore. As far as Tealdo could tell, none of that had done much good.

  A troop of Algarvian horsemen rode up across the field. Not having been churned by th
e behemoths, the ground there held their weight better than the alleged road would have. The horsemen had ropes with them. The men who rode the lead behemoth began making lines fast to their beast. “Do they really think they’ll be able to pull him out?” Tealdo asked.

  “If they don’t, they’re going to a cursed lot of trouble for nothing,” Trasone answered.

  Tealdo hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about putting ropes around a behemoth to get it out of the mud. Unlike him, though, the men who rode the great animals looked to have considered the problem before, for they went about the business as matter-of-factly as he would have built a fire.

  “Go!” a behemoth-rider shouted to the horsemen. They urged their animals forward, but could not move the heavy behemoth. “Go!” the rider shouted again. The horses had no better luck the second time. The behemoth-rider threw up his arms in despair. Then his eye fell on the men of Captain Galafrone’s company slogging past. “Lay hold of the ropes and lend a hand, will you?” he asked--begged, actually.

  Had he tried to order Galafrone’s soldiers to help, Tealdo was sure the company commander would have consigned him to the powers below. As things were, Galafrone said nothing but, “Aye--needs doing,” and ordered his men to the ropes.

  With a company of soldiers adding their strength to that of the horses, the behemoth came up, ever so slowly, out of the clinging mud. The men who rode him cheered themselves hoarse. Then they fastened the ropes to the next behemoth so that the footsoldiers and horses could pull him free, too.

  Getting all six of the great beasts out of the ooze took all day. And, by the time the dripping sky began to darken, Tealdo was more worn than he had been after any battle in which he’d ever fought. Too weary to eat, he wrapped his blanket around himself, lay down not far from where he’d labored so hard, and slept like a dead man.

  Someone kicked him awake, not unkindly, at dawn the next day. A field kitchen had found the company sometime in the night; he wolfed down a couple of bowls of hot barley porridge with bits of unidentified meat floating in it. In his civilized days, he would have turned up his nose at such coarse fare. Now it brought him back to life. He resumed the long tramp westward with more spirit than he would have thought possible before he ate.

  “We’re going to be late to Tannroda,” Galafrone muttered discontentedly. “Powers above, we’re already late to Tannroda.”

  When they got to the town, it didn’t seem worth reaching. The Unkerlanters must have fought hard there; it looked as if a giant had set it afire and then stamped out the flames with his feet. A military constable asked Galafrone to which regiment his men belonged. The captain told him, looking apprehensive.

  But the fellow just nodded and said, “You’re only the third company through--this wretched weather is playing hob with everyone. Use the northwest road--that one there. The Unkerlanters, curse ‘em, are mounting another counterattack.”

  “I thought King Swemmel was supposed to be running short of men by now,” Tealdo said as he and his comrades slogged on to try to throw the Unkerlanters back yet again.

  “You’ve been in the army awhile now,” Trasone answered. “Don’t you know better than to believe everything you hear yet?” Tealdo pondered, grunted, nodded, and kept marching.

  Tired as usual after a long day’s labor, Leofsig made his way through the streets of Gromheort back toward his home. He stepped carefully; the pavement was wet and slippery from a shower that had passed through earlier in the afternoon. He was wet from the shower, too, which meant he was a little less filthy than on most days. He thought about heading for the baths, but decided not to bother. The sooner he got home, the sooner he could eat and sleep. Nobody was as clean as in the days before the war.

  He’d got more than halfway home before he noticed the new broadsheet pasted to walls and fences and trees. The Algarvians had put it up, of course--the penally for a Forthwegian putting up a broadsheet was death, and the penalty for a Kaunian probably something worse. But, regardless of whether the Algarvians had put it up, it showed the tough, jowly image of Bung Plegmund, arguably Forthweg’s greatest ruler, and a troop of hard-looking soldiers carrying spears and bows and dressed in the styles of four hundred years before.

  PLEGMUND SMASHED THE UNKERLANTERS, read the legend below the illustration. YOU CAN, TOO! JOIN PLEGMUND’S BRIGADE. BEAT BACK BARBARISM. Smaller

  letters gave the address of the recruiting station and also warned, No Kaunians will be accepted into this Brigade.

  With a snort, Leofsig walked on. He had a hard time imagining Kaunians wanting to join a brigade under the control of people intent on grinding their noses in the dirt. For that matter, he had a hard time imagining Forthwegians wanting to join a brigade under Algarvian control. Who would do such a daft thing? Somebody one jump ahead of the constables, maybe. He wished the Algarvians joy of trying to make such recruits into soldiers.

  A blond woman about his own age stepped out from between a couple of buildings as he went by. “Sleep with me?” she called, doing her best to make her voice alluring. Her tunic and trousers clung so tightly, they might have been painted onto her.

  Leofsig started to shake his head and walk on. Then, to his dismay, he realized he recognized her. “You’re Doldasai,” he blurted. “My father used to cast books for yours.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he had them back. Better for both of them if he’d pretended he didn’t know her and gone on his way. Too late for that now. She hung her head; she must have wished he’d kept his mouth shut, too. “You see my shame,” she said. If she remembered Leofsig’s name, she didn’t want to use it. “You see my people’s shame.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, which was true and useless at the same time.

  “Do you know the worst of it?” Doldasai said. “The worst of it is, you can still have me if you pay me. I need the silver. My whole family needs the silver, and the Algarvians won’t let any of us make it any other way.” Nasty promises glowed in her blue-gray eyes, promises of things he hadn’t done, perhaps of things he’d scarcely imagined.

  And he was tempted, and hated himself for being tempted. When he still hoped Felgilde would let him slip his hand under her tunic--she hadn’t yet--why wouldn’t he have been tempted to find out what all he’d been missing? Of itself, his hand slid toward his belt pouch.

  Doldasai made a peculiar noise, half bitter mirth, half. . . disappointment? Leofsig gave her a couple of coins. “Here. Take this,” he said. “I wish I could afford to give you more. I don’t want anything from you.” That wasn’t quite true, but it kept things simpler.

  She stared down at the small silver coins, then abruptly turned her back on him. “Curse you,” she said, her voice thick and muffled. “I didn’t think anyone could make my cry any more, not after everything I’ve had to do. Go on, Leofsig”--she knew who he was, all right--”and if the powers above are kind, we’ll never see each other again.”

  He wanted to help her with something more than a little money. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t think of what he might do. And so, ingloriously, he left. He didn’t look back over his shoulder, either, for fear he would see Doldasai propositioning some other Forthwegian who might part with cash for a few minutes’ pleasure.

  “You made good time coming home,” Elfryth remarked as she unbarred the front door to let him in.

  “Did I?” he said, not wanting to tell his mother he’d fled Doldasai as the Forthwegian army had ended up fleeing the Algarvians.

  “Aye, you did.” To his relief, his mother didn’t seem to notice any false note in his voice. “You have time to wash a little”--which meant he remained rank in spite of the rain shower--”and drink a glass of wine before supper. Conberge even came up with some meat to mix in with the peas and beans and pulses.”

  “What kind of meat?” Leofsig asked suspiciously. “Roof rabbit?” He meowed.

  Elfryth shook her head. “The butcher called it mutton, but I think it’s got to be goat. It’s
been in the pot for hours, and it isn’t close to tender yet. But even tough meat is better than no meat at all.”

  Leofsig couldn’t argue with her. He wondered how long it had been since Doldasai and her family had eaten meat. His family was going through hard times. Hers was going through catastrophe. He grabbed a towel off the rack and went off to use the pitcher and basin in his room. It wouldn’t be a bath, but would be better than nothing.

  Ealstan looked up from a page of work: not problems from their father, for once, but verses of a poem. “Why the grim face?” Leofsig’s younger brother asked.

  “I didn’t know I had one,” Leofsig answered as he started to wash.

  “Well, you do,” Ealstan said. “How come?”

  “Do you want to know why?” Leofsig considered. Ealstan wasn’t a baby anymore. “I’ll tell you why. I ran into Daukantis’ daughter coming home--remember, the olive-oil merchant?” He told the tale in a few words.

  Ealstan clicked his tongue between his teeth. “That’s hard,” he said. “I’ve heard other stories like it, but not anybody we know. You ought to tell Father--if anyone can do anything for them, he can.”

  “Aye, that’s so,” Leofsig said through the towel he was using to dry his face. He looked over it at his brother. “It’s a good idea, in fact. You’re getting a man’s wits faster than I did, I think.”

  “Living under the redheads pushes everybody along faster--except for the people it pushes under, like the Kaunians,” Ealstan said. “Did you see the broadsheet for what the Algarvians are calling Plegmund’s Brigade?”

  “Aye, I saw it. You’d have to be blind not to see it; they’ve slapped up enough copies,” Leofsig answered. “Disgusting, if you ask me.”

  “Well, I think so, too, but Sidroc says he’s dead keen on joining.” Ealstan held up a hand before Leofsig could burst like an egg. “I don’t think he loves Mezentio. I think he just wants to go out there and kill something, and this would give him the chance.”

  “What do Father and Uncle Hengist have to say about it?” Leofsig asked.