Jaws of Darkness d-5

by Harry Turtledove

  “We’ll hurt ‘em if we do,” Leudast remarked. His own accent said he came from the northeast, not far from the Forthwegian border, and sounded particularly out of place down here in Grelz.

  Recared smiled at him. “That’s the idea, Sergeant-uh, Lieutenant. The worse that happens to the Algarvians, the better for Unkerlant.”

  “Oh, aye, sir.” If anything, Leudast knew that better than his superior. He was one of what couldn’t be more than a handful of men who’d fought the redheads since the first day of the war against them. Most of the soldiers who’d servedKingSwemmel on that now long-vanished day were dead or captured or crippled. Leudast had been wounded only twice, and put out of action for a few weeks of the slaughter around Sulingen. If that wasn’t good luck, what was?

  “All right, then,” Recared said. “We’ve got plenty of behemoths. We’ve got plenty of dragons. And if we need sorcery, we’ll manage that, too. When I shout, ‘Forward!’ we shall go forward. We shall not halt until I shout, ‘Stop!’ Gentlemen, I do not intend to shout, ‘Stop!’ “

  Leudast and the rest of the company commanders looked at one another. Slow grins spread over their poorly shaved faces. One of their number, a sergeant, said, “Curse me if that’s not an Algarvian kind of thing to say. Makes it into a riddle, like.” The others nodded.

  Recared said, “The Algarvians have taught us some lessons in this war, no doubt about it. But that time is passing. By the powers above, it is. Now we’re the schoolmasters, and we’ll give them stripes for not learning.”

  The lieutenants, all of them but Leudast, nodded again. He and the sergeants looked blank. They were peasants, and knew little of schoolmasters.

  “Let’s go, then,” Recared said. “We can do it. We will do it. Nothing is more efficient than victory.”

  KingSwemmelhad been trying to make Unkerlanters efficient throughout his reign. As far as Leudast could see, the king hadn’t had a lot of luck. Also as far as Leudast could see, saying the king hadn’t had much luck was about the least efficient thing one of his subjects could do.

  He pulled his cloak more tightly around him as he left the farmhouse. He’d known hard enough winters in the north of Unkerlant. Down here in the Duchy of Grelz-the Kingdom of Grelz no more, not after what had happened to Raniero once Swemmel had his way-the wind seemed full of icy knives.

  “Do we hit the redheads, Lieutenant? The redheads and the traitors, I mean?”SergeantKiun asked. He’d been a common soldier when Leudast’s company captured Raniero, just as Leudast had been a sergeant. But Kiun had been the one who’d recognized that Mezentio’s cousin wasn’t just the Algarvian colonel his uniform proclaimed him to be. He’d been promised a pound of gold along with his promotion. He hadn’t seen it yet, either.

  “Aye, we do,” Leudast answered. “High time we finish breaking out of this box they’ve tried to put us in.” He’d had to break out of Algarvian encirclements before, and counted himself lucky to have escaped with his life. But this was different. For one thing, he and his comrades weren’t altogether cut off; the redheads hadn’t been able to slam the lid down on the box. And, for another, there was more power here inside this box than was out there trying to contain it.

  Egg-tossers began hurling their loads of death at the Algarvians. Watching the bursts kick up snow and smoke in the distance, Leudast nodded to himself. He’d seen heavier poundings-especially down in Sulingen, where his countrymen and the Algarvians had hammered at each other till the redheads finally broke-but he’d also seen what the Algarvians were capable of in this particular fight. They’d never flung so many eggs at the Unkerlanter trenches.

  Dragons painted Unkerlanter rock-gray swooped down out of the sky, dropping more eggs on the redheads and flaming men and behemoths they caught in the open. Few gaudy Algarvian dragons rose to challenge them.

  Captain Recared blew his whistle. “Forward!” he shouted. “Swemmel and Unkerlant! Urra!”

  “Forward!” Leudast echoed. Only then did he remember he’d finally got his hands on an officer’s whistle. He shrugged. Shouting would do. “Forward! Urra!”

  And forward they went, all of them shouting so they wouldn’t blaze one another by mistake. Some of them didn’t go forward very far, but stopped beams as soon as they broke from cover. Some of the shouts turned to screams. Red flowed here and there on white snow, flowed and quickly began to freeze.

  Back when things had gone well for the Algarvians, they’d always had a knack for flanking Unkerlanter units-sometimes squads, sometimes whole armies-out of position. Even after things started going not so well for them, the redheads had kept that gift for showing up exactly where they would make the most trouble. If they hadn’t had it, KingSwemmel ’s soldiers would long since have run them out of Unkerlant.

  Leudast wished his countrymen showed a similar knack. No matter what he wished, the Unkerlanters seemed to lack it. As far as he could see, Unkerlanter forces too often hit the Algarvians where they were strong and tried to bull through instead of hitting them where they were weak and going around. Had he been a general, that was what he would have tried to do. Maybe the Unkerlanter generalswere trying to do it. If so, they didn’t have it down yet.

  On the other hand, if you hit anything hard enough and often enough, it would eventually fall over. The Unkerlanters had more egg-tossers and dragons than their foes. And they had many more behemoths. Behemoths on snowshoes were cursed awkward beasts, going forward at an aggressive waddle and kicking up little clouds of snow at every stride. But they went forward, which was the point of the exercise. Wherever the Algarvians tried to rally- and, with their usual skill and dash, they tried again and again-eggs from the tossers most behemoths carried, and beams from the heavy sticks the rest bore on their backs, smashed up strongpoints.

  “Mezentio!” Leudast had heard that defiant war cry more often than he could recall. This time, it came from a tiny village near the edge of a forest of snow-covered firs. The enemy soldiers holed up in the village blazed at the advancing Unkerlanters. Misses boiled steam from snow. Hits sent men sprawling bonelessly in death. “Mezentio!” The shout rang out again and again.

  But it didn’t sound right. Algarvians yelled their king’s name almost as if they were singing it. These soldiers simply shouted it, the same as they might have shouted, “Swemmel!”

  The very same as they might have shouted, “Swemmel!”… Leudast stiffened. He shouted, too: “Those aren’t redheads! Those are fornicating Grelzers!”

  Men who’d served the Algarvian puppet Kingdom of Grelz couldn’t very well shout, “Raniero!” any more, not after Swemmel had boiled Raniero alive. A lot of the soldiers who’d chosen to wear dark green tunics instead of rock-gray had sneaked away from the fighting, doing their best to pretend they’d been nothing but peasants or shopkeepers while the Algarvians occupied Grelz. Few who tried to surrender to Swemmel’s soldiers succeeded. None had joy of it afterwards.

  But here some stubborn souls still did what they could to help Mezentio’s cause. “Forward!” Leudast shouted again. This time, he remembered to blow the whistle. “Let’s give the traitors what they deserve.”

  Kilted soldiers slipped away through the trees: the Grelzers were buying time for their Algarvian comrades to get away. Maybe the men who’d followed Raniero and the dream of Grelz as a kingdom of its own realized how little their lives were worth with the duchy back in Swemmel’s hands and the king’s inspectors sure to be hunting them down. Or maybe the Algarvians were simply selling out their erstwhile allies.

  Leudast didn’t care why the Grelzers fought. He just wanted to be rid of them as fast as he could so he could go after the escaping redheads. His men converged on the village from three sides. Some of them had a shout of their own: “Death to the traitors!”

  By the way the Grelzers blazed, there weren’t very many of them. They didn’t look like holding up the pursuit for long. But, as the men from Leudast’s company came close to the tumbledown shacks in which the enemy fought, th
ey got a nasty surprise: What looked like small pottery jugs flew toward them and burst like miniature eggs when they hit the ground. Several soldiers howled as flying shards scored their flesh. Others hesitated, and the attack wavered.

  “Come on, curse it!” Leudast shouted. “I don’t care what sort of toys they’ve got-there can’t be more than a dozen of them!” He got up and went on toward the hamlet. If his men didn’t follow, he wouldn’t last long.

  Follow they did. The Grelzers proved to have only a few of those small, throwable eggs. Leudast would have liked to ask them where they’d got the few they did have, but, by the time the fight was over, no Grelzers remained alive to ask.

  His broad shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. If the Grelzers had this particular toy, the Algarvians would, too. He was liable to find out more about it than he wanted to know. He shrugged again. “Are we going to let those Algarvians get free of us? We’d cursed well better not!” He plunged into the woods after the redheads. Again, his men followed.

  More often than not, MarchionessKrasta worried about no one’s feelings but her own. Thus, when her maidservant, Bauska, came into her bedchamber one morning to help her decide what to wear that day-in Krasta’s mind, always a vitally important choice-she greeted the woman with, “How’s your little bastard doing?”

  Bauska’s lips tightened. She’d had a daughter by one of the Algarvian officers billeted in Krasta’s mansion on the outskirts of Priekule. Carefully, she said, “She’s doing very well, milady.”

  “Well, good.” Krasta hadn’t intended to be cruel, so she added, “I haven’t heard her howling in the night lately. That’s something.”

  “Two-year-olds don’t cry as much as newborn babes, no,” Bauska agreed.

  “I suppose not,” Krasta said. “Did you ever hear even a word from the father?”

  Bauska shook her head. “Nothing since he went off to Unkerlant to fight.”

  “Too bad.” Krasta sighed. “Mosco was a handsome chap, I’ll give you that.” Mosco had been a good deal handsomer thanColonelLurcanio, whose adjutant he’d been. He’d also been a good deal younger than Krasta’s own Algarvian lover. Every so often, she thought Bauska had got the better bargain. Bauska didn’t need to know that, though. Neither did Lurcanio.

  “Perhaps the gray silk tunic and trousers, milady?” the maidservant suggested, taking them from one of Krasta’s cavernous closets.

  “Powers above, no!” Krasta shook her head. “Do you want me looking like an Unkerlanter soldier?”

  “Milady, if you put onKingSwemmel ’s crown, would you look like him?”

  “Of course not,” Krasta said indignantly. “He’s dreadfully ugly, from everything I’ve heard, and I’m not.”

  “Well, then,” Bauska said.

  “Well, then, what?” Krasta snapped. She was impervious to logic, as any number of schoolmasters who’d tried to instill it in her might have told Bauska. “What does that have to do with anything? Get me another outfit and be quick about it, before I box your ears.”

  She meant it. Bauska must have known she meant it. The gray tunic and trousers disappeared as if they had never been. Dark blue trousers and a gold tunic met with more approval. As if to prove she could make her own choices, Krasta shrugged on a rabbit-fur jacket and went downstairs, pushing past Bauska without another word. Had the maidservant not got out of her way, Krasta would have pushed right through her. Bauska must have known as much, because she did move.

  Down in the front hall, Krasta pointed to another servant. “Tell the driver to ready the carriage. I shall go into Priekule before long.”

  “Aye, milady.” The servant went off to do her bidding.

  Before the war, hardly anyone had ever said anything but, Aye, milady, to Krasta or done anything but go off to do her bidding. Even now, hardly any Valmierans presumed to go against her wishes. But Valmierans, these days, weren’t the only folk with whom Krasta had to reckon. She was reminded of that as soon as she went into the west wing of the mansion.

  The Algarvian occupiers had taken over the west wing without so much as a by-your-leave. They’d made it plain that, if Krasta proved difficult, they were capable of taking over the whole place and throwing her out. Up till then, no one had ever dealt with her on those terms-who would have dared? The redheads dared, and they, unlike her countrymen, had the power to enforce their wishes.

  Desks and cabinets full of papers filled the elegant salon of the west wing these days. Algarvian military bureaucrats sat behind the desks, doing what they needed to do to keep Priekule running the way they wanted it to. Krasta had never inquired about the details. Details were for servants and other commoners.

  But one detail she did notice: Fewer Algarvian military bureaucrats sat behind the desks this morning than she’d ever seen before. More and more these days, the endless grinding war in Unkerlant pulled Algarvians out of Valmiera and off to the distant, barbarous west. Bauska’sCaptainMosco had been one of the first sent away from civilization, but many, many redheads had followed him since.

  Those who remained eyed Krasta with a leering familiarity that would have earned them slaps in the face… had they been Valmierans to be despised rather than Algarvians to be feared. As things were, Krasta swung her hips a little more than usual when she walked past them. They looked, aye, but they couldn’t presume to touch because she belonged to their superior.

  CaptainGradasso, the adjutant who’d taken over for the departed Mosco, wasn’t at his desk in the antechamber in front of Lurcanio’s office. Krasta beamed at that. She would have had to try to make sense of his archaic Valmieran, so heavily flavored with the classical Kaunian he knew embarrassingly more of than she did. As things were, she walked straight into Lurcanio’s lair.

  Gradasso wasn’t in there, either, as he often was when not out front to block importunate visitors. Krasta’s Algarvian lover glanced up from the papers that covered his desk like snow drifts in a hard winter. How tired he looks, she thought. Lurcanio was in his fifties, close to twice her age. He was a handsome man; more often than not, distinguished came to mind when she thought of him. Not now. Now the only fitting word wasweary.

  “Good day, my dear,” he said, bowing in his chair. His Valmieran, unlike his adjutant’s, was fluent, flavored only by a slight Algarvian trill. “You’ve come to say farewell before you venture forth to the shops, unless I miss my guess.”

  He read her far better than she could read him, which never failed to annoy her. “Well, aye,” she admitted, not quite daring to lie to him: a telling measure of how much he intimidated her.

  “Enjoy yourself,” Lurcanio said. “I wish I could find such an easy, pleasant escape.”

  Honestly puzzled, Krasta asked, “Why can’t you?”

  Lurcanio sighed. His mustaches-graying copper-were waxed so stiff, the exhalation didn’t trouble them. “Why, my sweet? Because, unlike you, I have to work for a living. I have duties to perform.” He waved at the blizzard of papers in front of him. “Who would take care of them if I went off whenever I chose?”

  Krasta didn’t recognize a rhetorical question when she heard one. “Why, CaptainGradasso, of course. What are servants for?”

  ColonelLurcaniosighed again. “First, an adjutant is not a servant. Second, they aremy duties, not his; he has his own. And third, at the moment he is performing his duties far from here.”

  “What do you mean?” Krasta asked.

  “I mean that he is on his way to the Duchy of Grelz, if he hasn’t got there yet,” Lurcanio answered. “Powers above grant that he stay safe. For the time being, I have his work to do as well as my own. I may eventually be assigned another adjutant. On the other hand, I may not.”

  Where she was sensitive to little else, Krasta understood every nuance of rank. “That’s an outrage!” she exclaimed.

  “It is war.” Lurcanio’s shrug was less extravagant-less Algarvian-than usual. He got up, came around the desk, and took Krasta in his arms. As he kissed her, his hands roamed her b
ody. She wondered if he would want her to flip up his kilt; she’d done that a couple of times here. She wouldn’t have minded doing it again-the danger of discovery often excited her. But Lurcanio let her go. With a last pat, he said, “Go on. Enjoy yourself. Be glad you can.” He returned to his paperwork.

  Krasta needed no more urging to do what she already intended to do anyhow. Before she left, though, she went around behind the desk, bent beside Lurcanio, and teased his ear with her tongue for a moment. If he preferred work to her, she wanted to remind him of a little of what he’d be missing. Then, laughing, she hurried away before he would grab her.

  Her driver smelled of spirits. He often did. Krasta didn’t worry about that overmuch. Even if he was drunk, the horse remained sober. “Take me to the Boulevard of Horsemen,” she said. When she went into Priekule, she most often went to the street with the capital’s finest shops. The driver nodded. He probably would have taken her there even had she said she wanted to go somewhere else, because he was used to heading there, waiting for her, and drinking while he waited.

  As it had ever since the Algarvians marched into it, Priekule looked sad and gray. Buildings needed paint and a scrubbing they weren’t likely to get any time soon. A lot of the people on the street seemed to need paint and a scrubbing, too: they shambled along, lacking the will or the energy to do anything more. Some of the Valmieran women, by contrast, wore altogether too much paint, and wore either trousers that might have been painted onto their backsides or Algarvian-style kilts that barely covered those backsides. Some of them had caught the redheaded soldiers they were obviously after, too.

  Krasta sneered. She’d caught a redheaded soldier, too, but she didn’t usually let herself think of it that way.