Jaws of Darkness d-5

by Harry Turtledove

  Even when he’d commanded a company as a sergeant, Leudast hadn’t been allowed to attend officers’ conferences. He was still commanding a company, but, thanks to luck andMarshalRathar, he was a lieutenant these days. That entitled him to know what would happen before it happened to him.

  Here, he and Captain Recared and a couple of dozen officers commanding units much larger than their ranks properly entitled them to lead sat in a barn that still stank of cow and listened to a colonel who was probably doing a lieutenant general’s job explaining the details of what the Unkerlanter army would try next in the south. “And so,” the colonel was saying, “if we succeed, if all goes as planned, we shall finally drive the cursed Algarvians from the soil of the Duchy of Grelz, exactly as our glorious comrades in arms have driven them out of northern Unkerlant. High time, I say-high time indeed.”

  A low-voiced rumble rose from the officers: “Aye.” Leudast joined it, but had other things on his mind. So they’ve driven the redheads out of the north altogether, have they? That means my home village belongs to Unkerlant again. The thought would have cheered him more had he not paused to wonder if any of it was still standing. It would have been fought over at least twice, and, for all he knew, more often than that.

  “Have you any questions?” the colonel asked. A couple of majors did, and even a brash captain. Leudast kept his mouth shut. He was without a doubt the most junior officer in the barn, and didn’t want to remind anyone else that he was there at all. The colonel efficiently disposed of the queries; unlike a good many commanders Leudast had known, he actually had some notion of what he was talking about. He finished, “We’ve wanted to pay those whoresons back for years. Now we put them in a sack and then pound the sack to pieces.”

  Somebody said, “We’ll find all sorts of strange things in the sack, too.”

  “So we will,” the colonel agreed. “Algarvians, Yaninans, Forthwegians, even blonds from out of the far east.” He shrugged. “So what? It only shows the redheads are scraping up everything they can to try to hold us back. But it won’t work. Glory toKingSwemmel! Glory to Unkerlant!”

  “Glory to Swemmel! Glory to Unkerlant!” the officers chorused. The meeting broke up.

  Leudast and Captain Recared walked back to their position together. Leudast pointed. “Look at all the egg-tossers we’ve got waiting for the redheads.”

  “Egg-tossers and behemoths and dragons and men,” Recared said. “The river is running our way now. They’ll try to dam it up-they always fight hard-but we should have our way with them.”

  “Aye.” Leudast nodded. “They threw everything they had at the Durrwangen bulge last year. They haven’t done any throwing since. They’ve been catching instead.”

  Recared nodded, too. “That’s right. And they’ll catch it good and proper come tomorrow morning.”

  And Leudast and Recared passed a stockade. Guards stood stolidly around the perimeter. The stink of long-unwashed bodies wafted over the wall. “Is that what they’re doing with the soldiers they court-martial these days?” Leudast asked. “I thought they just put them in punishment battalions and threw them at the redheads first.”

  “They do,” Recared answered. “Those aren’t soldiers in there. Come on.” He walked faster, plainly wanting to get away from the stockade as soon as he could.

  “They aren’t soldiers?” Leudast said. “Then who…? Oh.” He walked faster, too. “I wish we didn’t have to do that.” How had the wretches behind the stockade ended up where they were? By being desperate criminals? Maybe. By being in the wrong place at the wrong time? That struck Leudast as much more likely. He said no more. Those who complained about such things might end up behind a stockade themselves.

  When he got back to his own encampment, he feigned cheeriness, whether he really felt it or not. “We’ve got a good plan and plenty of what we need to make it work,” he told his company. Every word of that was true, too. If it wasn’t the whole truth, the soldiers didn’t need to know it. “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to make the Algarvians sorry they ever set foot in Unkerlant.”

  His men cheered. SergeantHagen, who’d replaced Kiun, said, “We’ll do better than that. We’ll make the cursed Algarvians sorry they were ever born-isn’t that right, Lieutenant?”Hagen was very young, and had a youngster’s terrifying enthusiasm.

  “That’s just right,” Leudast said. “You ought to get whatever sleep you can tonight, because all the eggs we’re going to fling will wake you up early.”

  The eggs they were going to fling would wake some of his men up early. Others had found a knack for sleeping through anything. Leudast envied them, wishing he had the same knack himself.

  As company commander, he didn’t get much sleep. He stayed up late, making sure everything in the company was as ready as it could be. And he had a soldier shake him awake half an hour before the eggs were due to fly so he could be ready to lead the men eastward.

  Hissing and whistling noises in the air announced eggs flying toward the enemy. A few moments later, the eastern horizon lit up, as with sunrise a couple of hours early. Leudast thrust his whistle into his mouth and blew a long, piercing blast. It was fun-as much fun as he’d had with toys while a boy-and he suddenly understood why officers enjoyed the privilege of carrying them. “Forward!” he shouted. “ForKingSwemmel and for Unkerlant!”

  Other company commanders’ whistles were shrilling, too, and so was Captain Recared’s. “Urra!” the men yelled. “Urra! Swemmel! Urra!” They swarmed toward the Algarvian lines. Part of that was eagerness to close with the hated foe. Part of it was knowing that hard-eyed impressers with sticks would follow the advance and mercilessly blaze anyone who wasn’t moving forward fast enough to suit them. Those impressers sometimes met mysterious fatal accidents of their own, but they did help inspire most of the soldiers.

  Eggs burst among the advancing Unkerlanters, too-KingMezentio’s men hadn’t been caught altogether by surprise, and the pasting they were taking hadn’t put all their egg-tossers out of action. Shrieks mingled with the cries of, “Urra!” But what the Algarvians gave was only a pittance, a nuisance, compared to what they were taking. Some of Leudast’s men, newly swept into the army, shrieked from terror rather than from pain, but he knew better. He’d been on the receiving end of far, far worse than this.

  Pulses of light began flickering in the night ahead-Algarvian sticks, their beams probing for his countrymen. No, the redheads hadn’t been completely fooled, and they hadn’t been completely silenced, either. Leudast cursed under his breath. Why don’t they start killing the poor sods they’ve rounded up? he thought. We could use the help.

  He was ashamed of himself a moment later. Algarvian footsoldiers must have felt the same way when their mages first started slaughtering Kaunians back in the dark, fearful days when Cottbus looked as if it would surely fall. If they were wrong to wish for such a thing, how was he right, especially when his kingdom’s sorcerers slaughtered his own countrymen for their effects?

  How am I right? It’s my neck, that’s how. Some of the enemy’s beams zipped past him, fearfully close, before the ground ahead shook and violet flames burst up from it. Some of his men whooped with glee as the sorcery struck the foe. Maybe they were naive enough not to know how their mages did what they did. Maybe-more likely-they wanted to live themselves, and didn’t care.

  “Forward!” Leudast yelled. “Hit ‘em hard while they’re groggy!” The Algarvians wouldn’t stay groggy long. Three years and more of fighting them had made him all too sure of that. They didn’t have enough men or beasts to hold back the Unkerlanters or drive them as they once had, but the troopers they had left were as deadly dangerous as ever.

  And the redheads still had Kaunians left to kill. Leudast had hoped the Unkerlanter bombardment would have slain a lot of the blonds without giving the Algarvians the chance to seize their life energy and turn it into sorcerous energy. No such luck. The dreadfully disruptive and destructive sorcery the Unkerlanter wizards raised now q
uieted much sooner than it should have, as Mezentio’s mages used, and used up, the Kaunians to counteract it.

  Could be worse, Leudast thought. In the old days, we’d’ve been fighting like mad bastards to counter their conjuring, not the other way round.

  A column of Unkerlanter behemoths thundered forward. The egg-tossers and heavy sticks the armored beasts bore on their backs battered down surviving Algarvian strongpoints. And once it got moving east, that column kept moving. The only thing that could reliably stop a behemoth was another behemoth. The Algarvians had been short of behemoths ever since losing so many in the enormous battles of the Durrwangen bulge, and most of the animals they did have were in the north, trying to hold the Unkerlanters there.

  “Come on, men!” Leudast shouted, almost stumbling over a kilted corpse. “They can’t hold us! We’re breaking them! Their crust is tough, but once we’re past it, what have they got left? Nothing!” He blew the whistle again, exulting in the squeal.

  He exulted in what he saw, too, as the sky grew light and true dawn approached. Watching Algarvians run was something Unkerlanter soldiers didn’t get to do often enough. The redheads almost always fought till they couldn’t fight any more. Not here. Hit with overwhelming force, Mezentio’s men fled for their lives. It didn’t help much; the fleeing footsoldiers fell one after another.

  Leudast was in the middle of yelling, “Forward!” yet again when an Algarvian who didn’t run-some stubborn whoresons always stood their ground- blazed him in the leg. The word went from a command to an anguished howl. He fell heavily, clutching at his right thigh.

  “Lieutenant’s down!”SergeantHagen shouted. Leudast heard the words as if from very far away. He’d heard such cries countless times before, but he’d gone through three years of war and been wounded only once-till now.

  How bad was it? He made himself yank up his tunic and look. The beam had gone right through his leg, outside the thighbone. Such wounds often cauterized themselves. This one hadn’t. He was bleeding, but not too badly. He had a wound bandage. Unkerlant didn’t issue such things; he’d taken it off a dead Algarvian. Covering both sides of the wound was awkward, but he managed.

  He’d just got the bandage into place when a couple of troopers hauled him upright. He screamed again; the way they manhandled him hurt as much as getting blazed had in the first place. “Sorry, sir,” one of them said. “We’ll get you back to the healers.”

  “All right.” Leudast tasted blood; he must have bitten his tongue or lower lip. The men were glad to help him. Why not? It took them away from danger, too. And, he realized, in dull, pain-filled astonishment, he was getting his own second holiday from the war. But the price of the ticket was very high. He bit down on another scream, and then on another still. Before long, he wasn’t biting down on them anymore.

  Pekka hadn’t needed long to realize she disliked Viana. The more she knew her, the more she disliked her, too. It wasn’t that the Lagoan sorceress was particularly annoying, or that she lacked the wit to understand the spells she’d come to the Naantali district to learn. For a little while, Pekka had trouble figuring out what it was.

  For a little while, but not for long. Viana was tall and straight and high-breasted, with a narrow waist and long, elegant legs the short kilts she wore showed to best advantage. Standing beside her, Pekka felt twelve years old and half-sprouted all over again. Having stood beside Viana once, Pekka made it a point of never doing it again.

  She’s a Lagoan. Lagoan women are bigger and rounder than Kuusamans. After Pekka told herself that a couple of times, she suddenly quit. It wasn’t the answer to the problem. Itwas the problem.

  It wouldn’t have been, if Viana hadn’t cast sheep’s eyes at Fernao every chance she got-and she made sure she got plenty of them. Just watching her, just listening to her, made Pekka want to retch.

  You’re jealous, Pekka thought. He’s not your man -you made a point of telling him he’s not your man-and you’re jealous. You told him to find a Lagoan girl. Here’s one practically throwing herself at his feet, and you want to kill her. You don ‘tjust want to kill her. You want to kill her slowly, an inch at a time, and take days and days to get it over with.

  She stared at herself in the mirror above the sink in her room. Jealousy was the green-eyed monster, but her eyes remained brown. “No, Viana’s eyes are green,” Pekka hissed.

  She stepped away from the mirror. No, she whirled away from the mirror so she wouldn’t have to look at herself or think about the color of Viana’s eyes. Am I going out of my mind’!

  In a way, it would have been easier had Fernao fallen head over heels for his countrywoman. Then Pekka would have known how things were, and she could have gone on with her own life. But, as far as she could see, Fernao was much less interested in Viana than Viana was in him. Which meant..

  “Which means trouble,” Pekka said aloud. Which meant Fernao was still interested in her. If that wasn’t trouble, she didn’t know what was.

  Going to him to let him know how upset she was at Leino’s jointing the war on the Derlavaian mainland had been a mistake. She saw that now. If she revealed her most intimate feelings about her husband to another man, with whom was she being more intimate? The answer to that was depressingly obvious. The reason for it was pretty obvious, too: Leino was far away, while Fernao was here.

  “I was onlyreally intimate with him once,” Pekka said. As long as she could keep on saying that… As long as I can keep on saying that, what? she wondered. As long as I can keep saying that, I’m going to be sick-jealous ofViana whenever I see her or even think of her.

  And what if I werereallyintimate with Fernao more than once? She didn’t see Leino’s face in her mind when she asked herself that. She saw Uto’s. Thinking about her son made Pekka raise a hand to her cheek, as if someone had slapped her in the face.

  After that, Pekka couldn’t make herself stay in her chamber another instant. For that matter, she couldn’t make herself stay in the hostel any more. Instead of going into the refectory to gab with her colleagues, she fled the place as if it were full of demons. And so it was, but the demons were her own.

  Outside, things felt easier somehow. The day was mild, not warm: the Naantali district got warmer in summer than her southern seacoast home town of Kajaani, but not a lot warmer. White clouds drifted slowly from west to east across a watery blue sky. Grass and shrubs remained green, but they would start turning yellow in only a couple of months. Before long, winter would reclaim this land and hold it for a long, long time. A lapwing flew by, peeping. Before long, it would fly north. It could flee. She was stuck here.

  The lapwing’s motion made her notice other motion in the sky, far, far higher. Something up there circled lazily, right at the edge of visibility. A hawk? she wondered, and shook her head. It was bigger than a hawk, and higher than a hawk, too. A dragon.

  But what was a dragon doing up there? How long had dragons circled over Naantali? She didn’t remember seeing one before. Had the Seven Princes taken to warding the hostel and the blockhouse and the land in between? It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. If they had, though, why hadn’t they told her about it? This washer project. She was supposed to know about such things.

  She watched the dragon. It continued to wheel, far too high up for her to tell anything about it except what it was. Then something fell away from it. Pekka let out a gasp of horror, fearing the dragonflier had somehow fallen off. But the dragon didn’t change course, as it would have if suddenly deprived of intelligent control. It kept right on circling, as the the speck tumbled down to earth.

  Pekka had a while to watch that speck fall, to watch it grow larger, to wonder what it was. She didn’t wonder long. If it wasn’t a dragonflier, it almost had to be an egg. But if it was an egg, either something had gone dreadfully wrong up there or…Or the Algarvians have managed to sneak a dragon south from Valmiera, the way we pound their kingdom. The thought formed, blizzard-cold, in her mind.

  One egg, though? The d
ragon had flown a long, long way. It couldn’t possibly have carried more than one. What were the odds the fellow flying it could hit anything worth hitting with a single egg? Good enough to risk a dragon and a highly trained man? Pekka couldn’t see how.

  Unless… She had to keep her eye on the plummeting egg now; had she glanced away, she would have lost it. It looked as if it would fall some little distance behind the hostel-but then, at the last instant, the direction in which it fell suddenly shifted, bringing it back toward the building.

  Magecraft! flashed through her mind just before the egg burst. She knew of no spell that could catch a quickly falling object like an egg and swing it back toward its target, but she didn’t know everything there was to know, either. The Algarvians had talented mages of their own. If they’d concentrated on this kind of magic, they might be as far ahead with it as her group was with its special spells.

  Even as she realized that, the egg released its sorcerous energy with a great roar and a flash of light just behind the hostel. Although she’d wandered a couple of hundred yards away before she saw the dragon, the noise was terrific, a hammer-blow against the ears. Part of the hostel sagged down toward the back, like a tired old man sagging into a sofa. Smoke began to rise.

  “No!” Pekka screamed, and dashed back to the battered building. As she ran, she looked up into the sky. She couldn’t spot the dragon at first. Then she did. It wasn’t circling any more. It was flying off toward the north, as if the man aboard it knew he’d done what he was supposed to do. And so, no doubt, he did.

  Pekka cursed him with all her heart. She doubted the curse would bite; her own countrymen were warded against such, and the Algarvians were bound to be, too. She cursed anyhow.

  People started spilling out of the hostel, some bleeding, some limping, some helping others who had trouble moving on their own. There was Ilmarinen, with blood running down his face from a cut cheek-and with the plate of smoked salmon from which he’d been eating still in his hand. He waved to her, calling, “They managed to sneak one in on us, the stinking whoresons.” Was he angry, or did he admire the Algarvians’ professional skill? Pekka couldn’t tell.