Out of the Darkness Page 11

  “Lieutenant Andelot wants you, Sergeant,” the soldier said.

  “I’m coming,” Garivald told him. A couple of more eggs burst in front of his hole as he scrambled out and went back toward his company commander. Even had the Algarvians been pounding the bridgehead just then with everything they had, he still would have had to go. No one in Swemmel’s army got away with disobeying orders.

  “Hello, Sergeant,” Andelot said. He was several years younger than Garivald, but he was an educated man, not a peasant, and spoke with a cultured Cottbus accent. Garivald liked him as well as he could like anyone set in authority over him.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” Garivald asked now.

  Andelot set his hand on some papers. “I just wanted to say, this report you wrote after the last time the redheads tapped us is quite good.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Garivald grinned his pleasure at the praise.

  With a chuckle, Andelot said, “Anyone could tell you’re new to having your letters. Once you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll come to see what a nuisance putting reports and such together can be.”

  “It’s your own fault, sir, for teaching me,” Garivald replied. Only a handful of people in Zossen had been able to read and write; the village had had no school, and not much of anything else. He’d shaped and carried all his songs in his head. He still did, for that matter--putting them down on paper would have put Swemmel’s inspectors on his trail faster than anything else he could think of.

  “I don’t think we’ll have the leisure for reports and such for very much longer,” Andelot said.

  “Ah?” Garivald leaned toward him. “Are we finally going to break out?”

  Andelot nodded. “That’s the idea.”

  “Good,” Garivald said. “I’m sick of looking at this same little chunk of Forthweg day after day--especially since it gets more torn up every single day.” His nostrils flared. “If it weren’t winter--or as close to winter as they get around here--we wouldn’t be able to stand the stink. It’s pretty bad even so.”

  “Mezentio’s men have hurt us,” the company commander agreed. “But we’ve hurt them, too, and we’re going to hurt them more. When we do break out of here--and out of our other bridgehead north of Eoforwic--the city will fall.”

  “Aye, sir.” Now Garivald nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  But Andelot hadn’t finished. “And that’s not all, Fariulf,” he went on, as if Garivald hadn’t spoken. “Once we break the hard crust of their line, we storm eastward with everything we’ve got. And do you know what? I don’t think they can stop us, or even slow us down much, this side of the Algarvian border.”

  “The Algarvian border,” Garivald echoed in dreamy tones. Then he asked a question that showed his ignorance of the world outside Zossen and the Duchy of Grelz: “How far is it from here to the Algarvian border?”

  “A couple of hundred miles,” Andelot answered lightly. Garivald gaped, but only for a little while. Even though he’d been dragged into the army relatively late, he’d seen how fast it could move when things went well. Andelot went on, “We strike them at sunrise day after tomorrow. Have your men ready.”

  “Aye, sir.” Garivald saluted and went up to his muddy hole in the ground once more. He knew dismissal when he heard it.

  Behemoths came forward that evening under cover of darkness. Some of them sheltered under what trees still stood. Others stayed out in the open, but with great rolls of mud-colored cloth spread over them to make them harder for Algarvian dragons to spot from the air. The deception must have worked, for the redheads flung no more eggs than usual at the bridgehead the next day. The following night, still more behemoths tramped up toward the fighting front.

  And, some time in the dark, usually quiet hours between midnight and dawn, that calm was shattered when every Unkerlanter egg-tosser in the bridgehead suddenly started hurling eggs at the Algarvians as fast as it could. The din, the flashes of light, the quivering of the earth beneath Garivald were all plenty to terrify him. What they were doing to the redheads among whom the eggs were landing was something he didn’t care to think about. The worse they get hit, the better, did go through his mind. The worse the Algarvians got hit at the beginning, the more trouble they would have fighting back.

  As dawn stained the sky ahead with pink, officers’ whistles shrilled. “Forward!” The cry echoed all through the bridgehead.

  “Forward, men!” Garivald yelled at the top of his lungs. “Forward! Urra! King Swemmel! Urra!” And then he added a new cry, one that had just occurred to him: “On to Algarve!”

  “On to Algarve!” the men in his squad echoed. Moving on to Algarve was easier when whole regiments of behemoths thundered forward alongside the footsoldiers.

  Here and there, Algarvian resistance was tough. Garivald had discovered that, however much he hated them, the redheads made brave and resourceful foes. Wherever they hadn’t been smashed flat, they clung to strongpoints, held on, and pushed back the advancing Unkerlanters as best they could. That was what the behemoths advancing with his countrymen were for. The egg-tossers and heavy sticks they bore on their backs made short work of positions the foot-soldiers couldn’t possibly have cleared by themselves.

  “Come on! Keep moving!” Garivald shouted till he grew hoarse. “We’ve got to keep up with the behemoths.”

  In spite of the pounding the egg-tossers had given the Algarvian lines, the first day’s advance went slowly. Mezentio’s men had put as many rings of field-works around the rim of the Unkerlanter bridgehead as they could, and had to be dug out of them one battered set of trenches at a time. Whatever reserves they had close by, they threw into the fight. They knew what was at stake here no less than the Unkerlanters did.

  Toward evening, Garivald found himself huddled behind a burned-out barn only a few feet from Andelot. He couldn’t quite remember how he’d got there. All he could feel was relief that nobody was blazing at him for the moment. Panting, he asked, “How do you think we’re doing, sir?”

  “Not too bad,” Andelot answered. “I think we might be better off if they hadn’t managed to murder General Gurmun. He was one of our good ones, our really good ones. But we have room to spare, and the redheads don’t.”

  “How did they do that, sir?” Garivald asked.

  “Nobody knows, because we never caught the whoreson who killed him,” Andelot answered. “My guess is, they did something like what they tried to do here in the bridgehead, only you caught it and Gurmun’s guards cursed well didn’t.”

  “They sent in a redhead sorcerously disguised as a Forthwegian, sir?” Garivald asked.

  “Maybe. More likely, though, they sent in an Algarvian disguised as one of us,” Andelot said. “We don’t look much different from Forthwegians, and they have people who speak our language. Somebody like that could get in to see Gurmun without much trouble. He’d come out and disappear--and after a while, somebody would have gone in and found Gurmun dead. I don’t know that’s how it happened, mind you. I’m just a lieutenant--nobody tells me these things. But it’s my best guess. We’ll go slower than we would have with Gurmun in charge. I’m sure of that.”

  Garivald snatched a little sleep in the dubious shelter the barn gave. Screeching whistles roused him well before dawn. He got his men up and moving. Beams from the business end of Unkerlanter and Algarvian sticks flashed and flickered like fireflies.

  He wondered if Mezentio’s men would loose their fearsome, murder-based magic. They didn’t. Maybe the Unkerlanter attacks had killed most of their mages or wrecked the camps where they kept Kaunians before slaughtering them. He knew less about that than Andelot knew about how General Gurmun had died, but it seemed a reasonable guess.

  What Garivald did know was that, midway through the second day of the breakout, Unkerlanter men and behemoths smashed past the last prepared Algarvian positions and out into open country. “Come on, boys!” he shouted. “Let’s see them try and stop us now!” He trotted east, doing his b
est to keep up with the behemoths.

  Peering west, Leino had no trouble seeing the Bratanu Mountains, the border between Jelgava and Algarve. On the Algarvian side of the border, they were called the Bradano Mountains. But, since the Kaunian ancestors of the Jelgavans had given them their name, the Kuusaman mage preferred the blonds’ version.

  Looking ahead to the mountains made him wistful, too. “See?” He pointed to the snow that, at this season of the year, reached halfway down from the peaks. “You can find winter in this kingdom, if you go high enough.”

  He spoke classical Kaunian, the only language he had in common with Xavega. The Lagoan sorcerer tossed her head, sending coppery curls flying. “So you can. But we are still down here in the flatlands. And powers above only know when we shall drive the cursed Algarvians back beyond their own frontier.”

  “Patience.” Leino stood up on his toes to give her a kiss; she was taller than he. “It was only this past summer that we came ashore on the beaches near Balvi, and here we are at the other side of the kingdom. I do not see how the Algarvians can keep us from crossing the mountains. They do not have the men, the behemoths, or the dragons to do it.”

  “Patience.” Xavega spoke the word as if it were an obscenity. “I have no patience. I want this war to be over and done. I want to go back to Setubal and pick up the pieces of my life. I hate the Algarvians as much for what they have done to me as for what they have done to Derlavai.”

  “I believe that,” Leino murmured; Xavega was invincibly self-centered. He hadn’t been going to bed with her because he admired her character. He didn’t. He’d been going to bed with her because she was tall and shapely, somewhere between very pretty and outrageously beautiful, and as ferociously talented while horizontal as anyone looking at her vertical could have hoped. With a small sigh, he said, “I want to go back to Kajaani and start over, too.”

  “Kajaani.” Xavega sniffed. “What is a Kuusaman provincial town, when set beside Setubal, the greatest city the world has ever known?”

  The capital of Lagoas was indeed a marvel. Leino had gone there a couple of times for sorcerers’ convocations, and had always been amazed. So much to see, so much to do ... Even Yliharma, Kuusamo’s capital, couldn’t really compare. But Leino had an answer with which even short-tempered Xavega couldn’t quarrel: “What is Kajaani? Kajaani is home.”

  He missed Pekka. He missed Uto, their son. He missed their house, up a hill from the ley-line terminal stop. He missed the practical magecraft he’d been doing at Kajaani City College.

  Would he miss Xavega if the chances of war swept them apart? He chuckled under his breath. Some specific part of him would miss her; he could hardly deny that. But the rest? He ruefully shook his head. Xavega didn’t even like Kuusamans, not as a general working rule. That she made an exception for him was almost as embarrassing as it was enjoyable.

  And how would he explain her to his wife? If the powers above were kind, he’d never have to. If they weren’t? I’d been away from you for a long, long time, sweetheart, was about as good as he could come up with. Would Pekka stand for that? She might; Kuusamans did recognize that men and women had their flaws and foibles. But she wouldn’t be very happy, and Leino didn’t see how he could blame her.

  He almost wished she were carrying on an affair of her own--nothing serious, just enough so that she couldn’t beat him about the head and shoulders with tales of glistening, untrammeled virtue. He didn’t find that likely; he didn’t really think his wife was the sort to do such things. And he didn’t really wish she were that sort. Just. . . almost.

  Oat of tl)e Darkness

  Kuusaman dragons, eggs slung under their bellies, flew by heading east to pound the Algarvian positions in front of the Bratanu Mountains. Aye, Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons ruled the skies over Jelgava. The Algarvians had a lot of heavy sticks on the ground, but those didn’t help them nearly so much as dragons of their own would have done.

  Painted sky blue and sea green, the Kuusaman dragons were hard to spot. Kuusamans had never believed in unnecessary display. Kuusamans often didn’t believe even in necessary display, Algarvic peoples, with their love for swagger and opulence, had a different way of looking at things. Algarvian dragons were painted green, red, and white; the colors of Sibiu were red, yellow, and blue; and those of Lagoas red and gold. Algarvian soldiers had gone into the Six Years’ War in gorgeous, gaudy, impractical uniforms. The slaughter in the early days of that fight, though, had forced pragmatism on them in a hurry.

  Before long, the muted roar of eggs bursting in the distance came back to Leino’s ears. In an abstract way, he pitied the-Algarvian soldiers who had to take such punishment without being able to give it back. But, as a practical mage, he knew abstraction went only so far. He much preferred dishing out misery to taking it.

  When he said that aloud, Xavega nodded. “Against the combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo, they are all but powerless to resist,” she replied.

  The combined might of Lagoas and Kuusamo here in Jelgava was two or three parts Kuusaman to one part Lagoan. The Kuusamans were also fighting, and winning, a considerable war against Gyongyos across the islands of the Both-nian Ocean. Xavega didn’t like to think, didn’t like to admit, that the short, swarthy, slant-eyed folk she looked down on both metaphorically and literally were a good deal more powerful than her own countrymen. Few Lagoans did. And, because Lagoas looked west and north across the Strait of Valmiera toward Derlavai while the Kuusamans concentrated on shipping and trade, they didn’t often have to. Leino smiled. Often was different from always.

  But then his smile slipped. “The Algarvians cannot match us in men or beasts, no. But in magecraft. . .” By the time he finished, he looked thoroughly grim.

  Xavega scowled, too. “Aye, they are murderers. Aye, they are filthy. But that is why we are here, you and I. The magecraft we learned can make their own wickedness come down on their heads, not on those against whom they aim it.”

  “Indeed.” Leino had to work to hold irony from his voice. It wasn’t that Xavega hadn’t told the truth. It was just that, as she had a way of doing, she turned things so they looked best to her. The sorcery she was talking about came from Kuusamo, not Lagoas. If fact, unless Leino was entirely wrong, Pekka had had a lot to do with devising it. She hadn’t said so--but then, she hadn’t been able to talk about what she was doing for quite some time. The few hints Leino had picked up all pointed in that direction.

  Before his thoughts could glide much further down that ley line, a crystallo-mancer burst out of a nearby tent and came running toward him and Xavega. “Master mages! Master mages!” the fellow cried. “One of our dragonfliers reports that the Algarvians are stirring at their special camp near the mountains.”

  “Are they?” Leino breathed. Mezentio’s men called the camps where they kept Kaunians before killing them by an innocuous name, not least, Leino suspected, so they wouldn’t have to think about what they did. Names had power, as any mage knew. And the Algarvians’ enemies had adopted this euphemism, too, not least so they wouldn’t have to think about what the Algarvians were doing, either.

  “What is he saying?” demanded Xavega, who’d stubbornly refused to learn any Kuusaman. There were days when Leino found himself surprised she’d ever learned classical Kaunian.

  He explained, adding, “You would think they would have learned their lesson.”

  “Algarvians are arrogant,” Xavega said. By all the signs she gave, she’d never noticed her own arrogance. She went on, “Besides, their murderous sorcery is the strongest weapon Mezentio’s men have. If they use it when no mages are in position to strike back at them, they can work no small harm. Here, I would say, they judge the risk to be worth it.”

  “I would say you are right,” Leino answered. “I would also say we are going to teach them they have miscalculated.”

  The crystallomancer seemed to follow classical Kaunian only haltingly. He spoke to Leino in the Kuusaman that was their common birthspeech:
“Shall I tell the men at the front that they will have sorcerous protection?”

  “Aye, you can tell them that,” Leino answered, also in Kuusaman. The crystallomancer saluted and dashed back to his tent. Leino fell back into classical Kaunian: “This time, at least, we have some little warning. That must have been a sharp dragonflier. Usually, we have to start the counterspells when we feel the jolt as the Algarvians start killing.”

  Xavega nodded. She put her arms around Leino and gave him a long, thorough kiss. When at last they broke apart, she murmured, “Use my strength as your own when we give them what they deserve.”

  Heart pounding, Leino nodded, too. On the cot and in matters magical, Xavega gave of herself without reserve. Everywhere else, she was as spoiled a creature as had ever been born. Leino knew that. He could hardly help knowing it. But it didn’t make any difference to what he would do now. Here, he almost had to lead, for the spells were in Kuusaman; no one had yet had the leisure to render them into classical Kaunian or Lagoan. Xavega had learned the rituals well enough to support him, and she did that very well.

  “Before the Kaunians came, we of Kuusamo were here,” he murmured in his own tongue, a ritual as old as organized magecraft in his land. “Before the Lagoans came, we of Kuusamo were here. After the Kaunians departed, we of Kuusamo were here. We of Kuusamo are here. After the Lagoans depart, we of Kuusamo shall be here.” He’d used the traditional phrases whenever he incanted in Jelgava, even though they weren’t strictly true here, as they were back in his homeland.

  Once they’d passed his lips, he went through all the preliminary phases of the spell he would hurl at Mezentio’s sorcerers. Xavega nodded approval. “Good,” she said. “Very good indeed. As soon as they start killing, as soon as they reveal their direction and distance, we shall drop on them like a pair of constables seizing a band of robbers.”