Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  “Aye, it does, though not all of us”--Ealstan didn’t forget he was a Forthwegian--”feel that way about Kaunians.”

  Slowly, Vanai nodded. She knew how Ealstan felt about her. But from everything he’d said, his father and brother would never have done anything to harm Kaunians--and neither of them had fallen in love with one. Following that thought along its ley line brought fresh alarm to Vanai. “What will the redheads do to anyone who helps hide Kaunians outside the quarter?”

  Ealstan looked unhappy. Maybe he’d hoped that wouldn’t occur to her. The hope was foolish; the Algarvian edict would surely be plastered all over the news sheets, too. Reluctantly, he answered, “There is a penalty for harboring fugitives--that’s what they call it. The broadsheet doesn’t say what it is.”

  “Whatever the Algarvians want it to be, that’s what,” Vanai predicted, and Ealstan had to nod. She pointed at him, as if the broadsheet were his fault. “And now you’re going to be in danger on account of me.” That seemed even worse than her being in danger herself.

  Ealstan shrugged. “Not many people know you’re here. I’m not sure the landlord does, and that’s a good thing--landlords are a pack of conniving, double-dealing whoresons, and they’d do anything to put another three coppers in their belt pouches.”

  In their pockets, Vanai would have said, but the long tunics Forthwegians wore didn’t come with pockets. She wondered how he spoke with such assurance about landlords, having lived at home all his life till fleeing after the fight with his cousin. She was about to twit him on that when she remembered he was a bookkeeper, and the son of a bookkeeper for good measure. He would know more about landlords and their habits than she might have guessed.

  He went on, “I don’t know if we’ll be able to get you to any more of Ethelhelm’s performances, or anything like that.”

  When he said he didn’t know if she’d be able to go out, he meant he knew perfectly well she wouldn’t. Vanai could see that. Even so, she was grateful for the way he phrased it. It left her hope, and she had little else. She looked around at the imperfectly plastered walls of the dingy flat. Aye, they might have been the bars of a cage in the zoological garden.

  “You’ll have to bring me more books,” she said. “A lot more books.” Brivibas had given her one thing for which to remember him kindly, at any rate: as long as her eyes were going back and forth across a printed page, she could forget where she was. That was not the smallest of sorceries, not when this was the place she had to try to forget.

  “I will,” Ealstan said. “I’d already thought of that. I’ll scour the secondhand stores. I can get more for the same money in places like that.”

  She nodded and looked around again. Aye, this would be a cage, sure enough. She wouldn’t even dare look out on the street so much as she had been doing, lest someone looking up spy her golden hair. “Get me some cookbooks,” she said. “If I’m going to spend all my time cooped up in here, cooking will help make the days go by.” She pointed at Ealstan. “You’ll get fat, you wait and see.”

  “I don’t mind trying,” he said. “Fattening me up won’t be easy, though, not on what passes for rations these days.”

  Something unspoken hung in the air between them. IfAlgarve wins the war, none of this matters. Mezentio’s men wouldn’t need their savage sorceries anymore after that, but by then they would have got into the habit of killing Kaunians. And that, as the history of her people in Forthweg attested, was a habit easier to acquire than to break.

  There was one other thing she could think of to make time go by here in this little flat. She went over to Ealstan and put her arms around him. “Come on,” she said, doing her best to recapture the excitement that had been growing in her before the redheads ran up their broadsheets. “Let’s go back to the bedchamber. . . .”

  Trasone tramped through the battered streets of Aspang. The burly Algarvian soldier looked on the devastation around him with a certain amount of satisfaction. The Unkerlanters had done everything they could to throw his comrades and him out of the place, but they’d failed. Algarve’s banner of red and green and white still flew from flagpoles all over Aspang.

  So did another flag, the gold and green of the revived Kingdom of Grelz. Trasone rumbled laughter deep in his chest when he saw a Grelzer flag. He knew the kingdom was a joke. Every Algarvian soldier in Aspang knew the same thing. And if the Grelzers didn’t, they were even stupider than he thought.

  He snorted. As far as he was concerned, Grelzers were just another bunch of stinking Unkerlanters. If you turned your back on them, they’d stab you. Every couple of paces, he looked around. No, you couldn’t trust these whoresons, not even in a town full of Algarvian soldiers.

  He strode out into the market square. Along with the rest of Aspang, it had taken a beating. Still, merchants from the town and peasants in from the countryside had set up tables on which to display their wares. If they didn’t sell, they’d starve. And, no doubt, some of them took word of what they saw back to the Unkerlanter raiders who never stopped harassing the Algarvians behind their lines.

  “Sausage?” a woman called to Trasone, holding up several grayish brown links. “Good sausage!” He would have bet every copper he owned that she hadn’t known a word of Algarvian before the war.

  “How much?” he asked. Algarvian soldiers were under orders not to plunder in the market square, though the rest of Aspang was fair game. The links looked better than what he was likely to get back at the barracks.

  “One silver, four links,” the sausage seller answered.

  “Thief,” Trasone growled, to start the haggling off on the right note. He got his four links of sausage, and paid less than half what the Grelzer peasant woman had first demanded. He strolled away happy. That the woman hadn’t dared dicker hard against an occupying soldier with a stick slung on his back didn’t cross his mind. Had it, he wouldn’t have cared. The bargain was all that mattered.

  He hadn’t gone far before he saw Major Spinello heading his way. As best he could with sausages in his free hand, he came to attention and saluted. “As you were,” Spinello said. The battalion commander eyed his purchase. “You’re supposed to give these Unkerlanter wenches your sausage, soldier. You’re not supposed to take theirs.”

  “Heh,” Trasone said, and nodded. “That’s funny, sir.” Even if the officer did go on and on about the Kaunian girl he’d been screwing before he got sent west, he’d done a good job with the battalion.

  Now he took off his hat, waved it around to emphasize what he was about to say, and then set it back on his head at a jaunty angle. “You ask me, though, these broads are too ugly to deserve any Algarvian’s sausage.”

  That just made Trasone shrug. “Even ugly broads are better than no broads at all,” he said. He’d lined up for a go at a soldiers’ brothel a few times. That wasn’t the best sport in the world--far from it--but it was better than nothing.

  Spinello didn’t have to worry about standing in line. Officers’ brothels were a cut above what the regular troopers got. Even so, he rolled his eyes. “Ugly,” he repeated. “Every cursed one of ‘em is ugly. When I was doing garrison duty back in that Forthwegian town, now ...” And he was off on another story about the blond girl back in Oyngestun.

  Trasone grinned as he listened. Spinello did spin a pretty good yarn. If half what he said was true, he’d trained that Kaunian bitch the way a hunter trained his hound. Of course, everybody lied about women except women, and they lied about men instead.

  A few eggs started landing on the outskirts of Aspang, none of them very close to the market square. “Swemmel’s boys are right on time,” Spinello remarked. Other than that, he didn’t react to the eggs at all. He had nerve.

  “Think the Unkerlanters are going to have another try at running us out of here, sir?” Trasone asked.

  “They’re welcome to try, as far as I’m concerned,” Spinello answered. “The way we’ve fortified Aspang since we got driven back here, they could send every soldi
er they have against us, and we’d kill ‘em all before they broke in.”

  Maybe that was true. Aspang had held out against everything King Swemmel’s men had thrown at it so far. But an awful lot of Algarvian soldiers had died holding the Unkerlanters out.

  “Besides,” Spinello went on, waving an arm, “the snow is starting to melt. For the next few weeks, nobody’s going to move very far very fast--except to sink into the mud, I mean.”

  “Aye, something to that,” Trasone agreed. “If Unkerlant doesn’t hold the record for mud, I’m buggered if I know what does. Saw that last fall. Powers above, if it hadn’t been for the mud, we’d have made it into Cottbus without even breathing hard.”

  Spinello waggled a finger under Trasone’s nose. Trasone scowled. What did the officer know that would make him contradict? He hadn’t been in Unkerlant then. He’d been back in Forthweg, happily boffing that Kaunian slut. But Spinello turned out to know more than Trasone expected. Lecturing like a professor, the major said, “Consider, my friend. The fall mud comes from the fall rains alone. The spring mud comes not only from the rain but also from the melting of all the snow on the ground. Which do you expect to be worse?”

  As ordered, Trasone considered. His lips shaped a soundless whistle. “We’ll be in mud up to our ballocks!” he exclaimed.

  “Deeper,” Major Spinello said. “But so will the Unkerlanters. Till that mud dries out, nobody will do much. When it does, we’ll see who moves first, and where. And won’t that be interesting?”

  Again, he sounded more like a professor than a soldier. All Trasone said was, “I’m bloody well sick of going backwards. I want to be heading west again.” He cared little for the big picture, much more for his own small piece of it. If he was retreating, Algarve was losing. If he was advancing, his kingdom was winning.

  “Head west we shall.” Spinello didn’t lack for confidence. And he had his reasons, too: “If you don’t think our mages are more clever than the Unkerlanters’, you need to think again.”

  “Aye.” Trasone nodded, then chuckled. “By the time this fornicating war is done, there won’t be a Kaunian left alive.” And if that included the wench with whom the major had been fornicating, Trasone wouldn’t shed a tear.

  “Or an Unkerlanter, either,” Spinello said. “The ones we don’t slay, King Swemmel’s mages will. I, for one, won’t miss them. Nasty people. Homely people, too, when you get right down to it.” He drew himself up very straight. “We deserve to win, for we are better looking.”

  Did he mean that, or was it one of the absurd conceits he liked to come out with every now and then? Trasone couldn’t tell. He didn’t much care, either. Spinello had proved he knew what he was doing on the battlefield. So long as that held true, he could be as crazy as he liked away from it.

  He thumped Trasone on the back. “Go on. Enjoy your sausages.” Off he strutted across the market square, a cocky little rooster of a man. Trasone stared after him with almost paternal affection.

  Then, with a shrug, the veteran headed back toward the theater where his company was quartered these days. The name of the play it had been showing before the Algarvians overran Aspang was still up on the marquee. That was what somebody had told Trasone the words were, anyhow. He couldn’t speak Unkerlanter, and he couldn’t read it, either; the characters were different from the ones Algarvians used.

  Sergeant Panfilo had some onions. Even more to the point, he had a frying pan. The company had stolen a little iron stove from a house near the theater. Issued rations had often got erratic during the winter. When the soldiers came on food, they wanted to be able to cook it. Before long, a savory aroma rose from the pan.

  One of the other troopers in Trasone’s squad, a skinny fellow named Clovisio, came over and stood by the stove, watching with spaniel eyes as the sausages sizzled. Trasone’s rumbling stomach made him less than polite. “You think you’re going to scrounge scraps off us, you can bloody well think again,” he growled.

  Clovisio looked affronted as readily as he’d looked cuddly and endearing a moment before. “My dear fellow, I can pay my way,” he said. He took a flask from his belt and gently shook it. Its suggestive gurgle brought a smile to Trasone’s face--and to Sergeant Panfilo’s.

  “Now you’re talking,” the sergeant said. He turned the sausages with his knife, eyed them, and lifted the pan off the stove. “I think we’re in business here.” The three of them ate sausage and onions and shared nips of the fiery Unkerlanter spirits in Clovisio’s flask.

  “That’s not so bad,” Trasone said, chasing a couple of strings of fried onion around the pan with his own knife. He slapped his belly. “Blazes the stuffing out of meat hacked off the carcass of a behemoth that froze to death.”

  “Or meat hacked off the carcass of a behemoth that didn’t freeze right away, but had time to start going bad first,” Clovisio said. Trasone grimaced and nodded; he knew the sickly sweet taste of spoiled meat as well as any other Algarvian soldier in Unkerlant.

  Not to be outdone by his companions, Sergeant Panfilo added, “And it sure blazes the stuffing out of going empty.”

  “Aye,” Trasone said. All three soldiers solemnly nodded. Like so many Algarvians in Unkerlant, they’d known emptiness, too. Trasone turned to Clovisio. “Anything left in that flask?”

  Clovisio shook it again. It still gurgled. He passed it to Trasone. Trasone sipped, but didn’t empty it. Instead, he handed it to Panfilo. The sergeant took a sergeant’s privilege and tilted it up to get the last few drops.

  For a moment, the three men squatted there, looking at the now empty frying pan. Trasone nodded, as if in agreement to something nobody had actually come out and said. “That’s not so bad,” he repeated. “A full belly, a little something to drink--”

  “Nobody trying to kill us right this minute,” Clovisio put in.

  “Aye, it could be worse,” Panfilo agreed. “We’ve all seen that.” Trasone and Clovisio nodded. They had indeed seen that.

  “Even when it’s been as bad as it can be, we get to fight back,” Trasone said. “I’d rather be us than a pack of stinking Kaunians in what they call a special camp waiting to be turned into fuel for magecraft.”

  “I’d rather be us than a pack of stinking Kaunians any which way,” Clovisio declared. “The more of ‘em we get rid of, the sooner we lick the Unkerlanters and the sooner we can go home.”

  “Home.” Trasone spoke the word with dreamy longing. He shook himself like a man reluctantly awakening. “I don’t even remember what it’s like anymore, or only just barely. I’ve been doing this too long. I know it’s real. Everything else--” He shook his head. After a moment, so did Panfilo and Clovisio.

  Leofsig didn’t like the way his father was looking at him. Hestan drew in a long breath and then slowly let it out: a patient exhalation that wasn’t quite a sigh. “But why, son?” he asked. “Our family and Felgilde’s have been talking about this match for quite a while now, as you know full well. Her father is a merchant who’s done well even in these sorry times. Joining Elfsig’s house to ours would benefit both.” He raised an eyebrow. “And Felgilde dotes on you. You must know that, too.”

  “Oh, I do, Father,” Leofsig answered. That sat alone together in the dining room. Leofsig kept glancing at the doorways and the courtyard to make sure Sidroc and Uncle Hengist weren’t snooping. For that matter, he didn’t want his mother or sister listening, either. He didn’t want to be having this conversation at all.

  His father, though, had put his foot down. Hestan seldom did that; when he did, he usually got what he wanted. He said, “And I thought you were fond of the girl, too.”

  “Oh, I was, Father. I am,” Leofsig said. Fond was’t exactly the word he would have used, but it served about as well as the cruder equivalents that sprang into his mind.

  “Well, then?” Hestan asked in what was for him a considerable show of annoyance. “Why won’t you wed the girl? Then you could--” He broke off, but Leofsig had a good notion of what he’
d been about to say. Then you could do whatever you want with her.

  “No,” Leofsig said, though he knew just what he wanted to do with Felgilde, and knew she wanted to do it, too.

  “Why not?” His father raised his voice, something he did even more rarely than putting his foot down.

  “Because I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to marry anybody I can’t trust not to go to the Algarvians with word of where Ealstan is and who he’s with,” Leofsig answered. “That’s why. And I can’t, curse it.”

  Hestan didn’t show surprise very often, either. “Oh,” he said now, and then, a breath later, “Oh,” again. “It’s like that, is it?”

  “Aye, it is.” Leofsig’s nod was somber. “She’s got no use for Kaunians, and she’s got no use for anybody who has a use for them. She’s a sweet girl a lot of ways, powers above know”--he remembered the wonderful feel of her hand on him-- “but we already have too many in our family we don’t trust with our secrets.”

  “Not everyone would put his brother ahead of the girl who might become his wife.” Hestan inclined his head. “You pay me a compliment by making me think I may possibly have done something right in raising you.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Leofsig answered with a shrug. “I do know there are plenty of girls out there, and I’ve only got one brother.” He wondered where the girls he talked about were. Forthwegian girls of good family in Gromheort were mostly spoken for, as Felgilde had been for all practical purposes. Some Kaunian girls of good family were selling themselves on the streets these days, the Algarvians having prevented them from feeding themselves any other way. Leofsig sometimes found himself horrified and tempted at the same time.

  His father sighed. “Now I’m going to have to tell Elfsig we can’t proclaim a formal engagement, and I’m going to have to make up some kind of reason to explain why we can’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Leofsig said. “Believe me, I didn’t want things to turn out this way.” If he could have married Felgilde, he could have taken her to bed with no scandal attaching to either one of them. He envied his younger brother, who hadn’t let scandal--double scandal, since his lover was a Kaunian--get in his way.