Out of the Darkness d-6 Read online

  Whatever he’d been about to say, he didn’t say it. After some thought, he did say, “A lot of those people went into Plegmund’s Brigade-my cursed cousin Sidroc, for instance. I don’t think they’ll be coming home.”

  “That’s good,” Vanai admitted. “But there are always more of those people. They don’t disappear. I wish they did, but they don’t.” She spoke with a weary certainty that was very Kaunian indeed.

  The day was mild, as even winter days in Eoforwic often were. They had the shutters open wide to let fresh air into the flat. A couple of daggerlike shards of glass remained in the window frames, but no more. Now, maybe, I can think about getting that fixed, went through Ealstan’s mind. Maybe, in spite of everything, this city will come back to life again now that the Algarvians are gone.

  Motion down on the street drew his eye. He went to the window for a better look. Through much of the summer and fall, he wouldn’t have dared do any such thing-showing himself would have been asking to get blazed. A couple of Unkerlanters, recognizable by their rock-gray tunics and clean-shaven faces, were pasting broadsheets on still-standing walls and fences. “I wonder what those say,” he remarked.

  “Shall we go down and find out?” Vanai replied. “We can do that now, you know, I can do that now, you know.” To emphasize how strongly she felt about it, she switched from the Forthwegian she and Ealstan usually used to classical Kaunian.

  “Why not?” Ealstan replied in the same language. Vanai smiled. Though she was more fluent in Forthwegian than he was in the tongue she’d most often used back in Oyngestun, he pleased her whenever he used classical Kaunian. Maybe it reminded her that not all Forthwegians hated the Kaunians who shared the kingdom with them.

  Ealstan scooped Saxburh out of the cradle, where she’d been gnawing on a hard leather teething ring. She smiled and gurgled at him. Her eyes were almost as dark as his, but her face, though still baby-round, promised to end up longer than a pure-blooded Forthwegian’s would have. Vanai threw on a cloak over her long tunic. “Let’s go,” she said, and really did sound excited about being able to leave the flat whenever she wanted.

  As usual, the stairwell stank of boiled cabbage and stale piss. Ealstan was resigned to the reek these days, though it had distressed him when he first came to Eoforwic. Back in Gromheort, his family had been well-to-do. He hoped they were well, and wondered when he would hear from them again. Not till the Unkerlanters run the redheads out of Gromheort, he thought. Soon, I hope.

  Vanai pointed to the front wall of a block of flats a couple of doors down. “There’s a broadsheet,” she said.

  “Let’s go have a look,” Ealstan said. Here in the street, another stink filled the air: that of dead meat, unburied bodies. The Algarvians hadn’t fought house by house in Eoforwic, not when it became plain the city would be surrounded. They’d got out instead, saving most of their men to give battle elsewhere with better odds. But a good many of them had perished, and some Unkerlanters- and, almost surely, more Forthwegian bystanders than soldiers from both sides put together.

  The broadsheet’s headline was bold and black: the king will speak. Ealstan stared at those astonishing words. Vanai read the rest, “ ‘The King of Forthweg will address his subjects before the royal palace at noon on’“-the date was three days hence. “ ‘All loyal Forthwegians are urged to come forth and hear their sovereign’s words.’“

  “King Penda’s back?” Ealstan’s jaw fell in astonishment. He grabbed Vanai and kissed her. “King Penda’s back! Hurrah!” He felt like cutting capers. He did cut a few, in fact. From Vanai’s arms, Saxburh stared at him in astonishment. He kissed the baby, too. “King Penda’s back! I never thought the Unkerlanters would let him show his face in Forthweg again.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased.” By Vanai’s tone, the news didn’t excite her nearly so much.

  “Let’s go hear him when he speaks!” Ealstan exclaimed. His wife looked as if that wasn’t the thing she most wanted to do, but she didn’t say no. She might not share his patriotism, but she’d learned better than to argue about it with him.

  And so, on the appointed day, Ealstan and Vanai and Saxburh with them went to the square in front of the palace. Ealstan wore his best tunic, not that it was much better than the others. Vanai hadn’t bothered putting on anything special.

  Blue and white ribbons and streamers and banners-Forthweg’s colors-did their best to enliven the battered square and even more battered palace facade. In front of the palace stood a new wooden platform with a speaker’s podium at the front. Unkerlanter soldiers stood guard around it. More soldiers, these probably of higher rank, stood on it with a personage in fancy robes.

  Ealstan got up on tiptoe, trying to see better. “Is that King Penda?” he said, almost hopping in his excitement. “Who else could that be but King Penda?” He took Saxburh from Vanai and held her up over his head. “Look, Saxburh! That’s the king!”

  “I don’t think she cares,” Vanai said pointedly.

  “Not now, but she will when she’s older,” Ealstan said. “She’s seen the king!”

  The king did not come to the podium at once. Instead, one of the Unkerlanter officers strode forward. “People of Forthweg!” he called in accented but understandable Forthwegian. “I am General Leuvigild, King Swemmel’s commander for Forthweg.” What does that mean? Ealstan wondered. Before he could say anything, Leuvigild went on, “People of Forthweg, I give you a king who has struggled side by side with us to free your kingdom from the Algarvian invaders, a man who has fought alongside Unkerlanter soldiers rather than fleeing his kingdom for a life of ease and luxury, safe in Lagoas. People of Forthweg, I give you King Beornwulf I! Long may he reign!”

  In dead silence, Beornwulf came up to the podium. A puppet, Ealstan thought bitterly. Nothing but an Unkerlanter puppet. Back before the war, he’d heard of Beornwulf a few times: the man was an earl or count with estates in the west of Forthweg. The man is a whore, naked in King Swemmel’s bed, and he prostitutes his kingdom along with himself.

  “People of Forthweg, I will make you the best king I can,” Beornwulf said. “We are allied with Unkerlant in the tremendous struggle against accursed Algarve. We shall follow our ally’s lead, and in so doing regain our own freedom. So long as we do that, we shall stay great and free. I expect all my subjects to recognize the importance of this alliance, and to do nothing to jeopardize it, as I shall do nothing to jeopardize it. Together, Unkerlant and Forthweg will go forward to victory.”

  He stepped back. More silence followed: no curses, no boos, but no cheers or applause, either. Quietly, Vanai said, “Well, it could be worse, you know.”

  And she was right. Swemmel could simply have annexed Forthweg. Maybe rule from a puppet would prove better than direct rule by a puppet-master like the King of Unkerlant. Maybe. Ealstan wondered if he dared hope for even that much.

  People started filing out of the square. They had to file past more Unkerlanter soldiers, men who hadn’t been there when the square filled. “What are they doing?” Vanai said, alarm in her voice. “They can’t be checking for Kaunians. They don’t do that… do they?”

  “Your spell is fine,” Ealstan told her, and squeezed her hand. “And you dyed your hair not so long ago. You’ll get by.”

  Not everyone got by. The Unkerlanters-there were a surprising lot of them-pulled people out of the crowd and let others through. They didn’t listen to the cries of protest that started rising. But nobody did more than shout. The Unkerlanters all had sticks, and likely wouldn’t hesitate to use them. Most people seemed to get through. Having no choice, Ealstan and Vanai went forward.

  An Unkerlanter soldier looked Ealstan up and down. He paid Vanai no attention whatever. In what was probably his own language rather than Forthwegian, he asked, “How old are you?”

  Ealstan got the drift; Forthwegian and Unkerlanter were cousins. “Twenty,” he said.

  “Good.” The Unkerlanter gestured with his stick. “You come here with us.”
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br />   Ice ran through Ealstan. “What?” he said. “Why?”

  “For the army,” the Unkerlanter answered. “Now come, or be sorry.”

  “King Beornwulf will have an army?” Ealstan asked in surprise.

  “No, no, no.” The Unkerlanter laughed. “King Swemmel’s army. Plenty of Algarvians to kill. Now come.” By the way he gestured with the stick this time, he’d use it if Ealstan balked. Numbly, Ealstan went. He didn’t even get to kiss Vanai goodbye.

  Colonel Lurcanio had spent four happy, useful years in Priekule, helping to administer the occupied capital of Valmiera for King Mezentio of Algarve. He’d seen a great many other Algarvians leave Valmiera to fight in Unkerlant, a fate not worse than death but near enough equivalent to it. After the islanders landed in Jelgava, he’d seen other countrymen go north to fight there.

  At last, with the Valmierans ever more restless under Algarvian control, there simply weren’t enough Algarvians left to hold down the occupied kingdom any more. And so Mezentio’s men had withdrawn from most of it, the bargain being that the Valmieran irregulars wouldn’t harass them so long as they were pulling back. Both sides had stuck to it fairly well.

  And so I’ve become a real soldier again, Lurcanio thought. A tent in the rugged upland forests of northwestern Valmiera was a far cry from a mansion on the outskirts of Priekule. If he wanted his cot warmed, he could put stones by the campfire and wrap them in flannel. They were a far cry from Marchioness Krasta. Lurcanio sighed for pleasures now lost. Krasta hadn’t a brain in her head, but the rest of her body more than made up for that. Not for the first time, Lurcanio wondered if she was indeed carrying his child.

  He had no time to dwell on the question. Instead of keeping Priekule running smoothly for Grand Duke Ivone, he had command of a brigade of footsoldiers these days. And they were about to strike. As soon as the Algarvians abandoned the northern coast of the Strait of Valmiera, Kuusamo and Lagoas promptly started pouring men and behemoths and dragons across the arm of the sea separating their island from the Derlavaian mainland. Algarvian dragons and leviathans did what they could to hinder that, but what they could was less than their commanders had expected-less than they’d promised, too.

  “As if anyone with sense would believe our promises nowadays,” Lurcanio muttered. Too many of them had been broken. And so Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers rampaged west through southern Valmiera, a few brigades of Valmierans with them. They were heading straight for the border of the Marquisate of Rivaroli, which had been Algarvian before the Six Years’ War, Valmieran between the Six Years’ War and the Derlavaian War, and was now Algarvian once more. How long it would stay that way. .

  Is partly up to me, Lurcanio thought. He turned to his adjutant, Captain Santerno. “Are we ready?”

  “As ready as we can be, sir,” Santerno answered. He was a young man, with perhaps half Lurcanio’s fifty-five years, but he wore two wound badges and what he called a frozen-meat medal that showed he’d fought in Unkerlant through the first dreadful winter of the war there. He had a scarred face and hard, watchful eyes. “Now we get to find out how good the islanders really are.”

  His tone said he didn’t expect the Lagoans and Kuusamans to be very good. After what he’d seen in the west, his attitude proclaimed, nothing the islanders did was likely to impress him. And his eyes measured Lurcanio. He didn’t say, You ‘ve been sitting on your arse in Priekule, screwing blond women and living high on the hog, but what kind of warrior do you make? He didn’t say it, but he thought it very loudly.

  What kind of warrior do I make? Lurcanio wondered. After four years of being a military bureaucrat, he was going to find out. “Do you think we can slice south through them, all the way to the sea?” he asked.

  “We’d cursed well better, wouldn’t you say, Colonel?” Santerno replied. “Cut ‘em off, chew ‘em up. That’ll buy us the time we need here, maybe let us set things right against the Unkerlanters.” He didn’t sound convinced. A moment later, he explained why: “We’ve scraped a lot together to make this attack. We might have done better to throw it all at Swemmel’s bastards.”

  “How would we stop the islanders then?” Lurcanio asked.

  “Powers below eat me if I know, sir,” his adjutant said. “All I can tell you is, we haven’t got the men in the west to keep the Unkerlanters out of Algarve the way things are. I got to Valmiera just a couple of weeks before we pulled back. That was supposed to free up more men for the west, but they’ve been sucked up into Jelgava, or else they’re here in the woods. Seems like we can’t stop everybody.” He rolled his eyes. “Seems like we can’t hardly stop anybody.”

  Stretched too thin, Lurcanio thought sorrowfully. Safe and warm and cozy in Priekule, he’d wondered about that. He’d sometimes even wondered about it lazy and sated in Krasta’s bed. But he’d been only a military bureaucrat, and so what was his opinion worth? Nothing, as his superiors had pointed out several times when he’d tried to give it.

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said, “we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Right,” Santerno said, and gave him that measuring stare once more. What will you do, Colonel, when you really have to fight?

  They moved south out of the forest a little before dawn, under clouds and mist. The Lagoans and Kuusamans still hadn’t got accustomed to fighting in Valmiera. They hadn’t realized how big a force the Algarvians had built up, there in the rugged northwest of the kingdom, and had only a thin screen of pickets warding the men moving west on what they reckoned more important business. Bursting eggs and trampling behemoths and dragons painted in green and red and white announced that they’d miscalculated.

  “Forward!” Lurcanio shouted all through the first day. Forward the Algarvians stormed, just as they had in the glorious early spring of the war when Valmiera fell. Disgruntled Lagoan and Kuusaman captives went stumbling back toward the rear, disbelief on their faces. Algarvian soldiers relieved them of whatever money and food they had on their persons. “Keep moving!” Lurcanio yelled to his men. “We have to drive them. We can’t slow down.”

  “That’s right, Colonel,” Santerno said. “That’s just right.” He paused. “Maybe you haven’t done a whole lot of this stuff, but you seem to know what’s going on.”

  “My thanks,” Lurcanio said, on the whole sincerely. He didn’t think Santerno paid compliments for the sake of paying them-not to a man twice his age, anyhow.

  That first day, the Algarvians raced forward as hard and as fast as any of Mezentio’s generals could have hoped. A spear driven into the enemy’s flank, Lurcanio thought as he lay down in a barn to snatch a few hours’ sleep. Now we have to drive it home.

  The roar of bursting eggs woke him before sunup the next morning. The bursts came from the south: Algarvian egg-tossers already up into new positions to pound the enemy. “You see, sir?” Santerno said, sipping from a mug of tea he’d got from a cook. “The islanders aren’t so much of a much.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Lurcanio answered, and went off to get some tea of his own.

  Things went well on the second day, too, though not quite so well as they had on the first. Algarvians slogged forward through snow that slowed both foot-soldiers and behemoths. “We’ve got to keep going,” Santerno said discontentedly. “The faster we move, the better our chances.”

  But the Kuusamans and Lagoans, no longer taken altogether by surprise as they had been when the attack opened, fought back hard. They also wrecked every bridge they could as they retreated, making Mezentio’s artificers spend precious hours improvising crossings. And the enemy seemed to have endless herds of behemoths, not the carefully hoarded beasts the Algarvians had accumulated with so much labor and trouble. They weren’t so good on the behemoths as the veterans who rode the Algarvian animals, but they could afford to spend their substance freely. Lurcanio’s countrymen couldn’t.

  On the third day, the sun burned through the low clouds earlier than it had on the first two of the attack. “Forward!” Lurcanio shouted
once more. The Algarvians had pushed about a third of the way down to the Strait of Valmiera, fairly close to the distance their plan had prescribed for the first two days. Lurcanio was more pleased than not; no plan, he knew, came through battle intact.

  He was also weary unto death. He felt every one of his years like another heavy stone on his shoulders. I have had a soft war, he thought as he splashed south through an icy stream. A good thing, too, or I’d have fallen over dead a long time ago. Someone blazed at him from the trees beyond the stream as he came up onto the bank. The beam boiled a puff of steam from the snow near his feet. He threw himself down on his belly with a groan. I wish I could just lie here and go to sleep. Not far away, Captain Santerno sprawled behind a tree trunk. Lurcanio noted with a certain amount of relief that the hard-faced youngster looked about as haggard as he felt himself.

  A couple of Algarvian behemoths lumbered up out of the stream. The egg-tossers on their backs made short work of the enemy footsoldiers in the trees. Lurcanio heaved himself to his feet. “Forward!” he yelled, and then, more quietly, spoke to Santerno: “Who would have thought it? We may really do this.”

  “Why not?” his adjutant answered. “These Kuusamans and Lagoans, they’re not so tough. If you haven’t fought in Unkerlant, you don’t know what war’s about.”

  Lurcanio had heard that song before. He began to think Santerno was right, though. Then, toward the afternoon, his brigade surrounded a town called Adutiskis. The road the Algarvians really needed to use ran through the town. The Kuusamans holed up inside threw back the brigade’s first attack, killing several behemoths Lurcanio knew his countrymen couldn’t afford to lose. He sent in a message under flag of truce to the Kuusaman commander: “I respectfully suggest you surrender your position. I cannot answer for the conduct of my men if they overrun the town. You have already fought bravely, and further resistance is hopeless.”

  In short order, the messenger returned, bearing a written answer in classical Kaunian. It said, Powers below eat you. Lurcanio and Santerno stared at that. The hard-bitten adjutant swept off his hat in salute and said, “The man has style.”