Out of the Darkness Read online

  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.”

  “Aye,” Lurcanio agreed. “He also has Adutiskis, and it’s a cork in the bottle.” He led another attack. It failed. Mages brought up blonds to kill--maybe Kaunians from Forthweg, maybe Valmierans scooped up at random. Lurcanio asked no questions. Winning overrode everything else. But Kuusaman wizards in the town threw the spell back on their heads. “We have to get through,” Lurcanio raged. “They’re crimping the whole attack.”

  The fourth morning dawned even brighter and clearer than the third had, and swarms of Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew up from the south. Eggs crashed down on the Algarvians’ heads. Dragons flamed behemoths one after another till the stink of burnt meat filled Lurcanio’s nostrils. The Kuusamans in Adutiskis held against a third attack, and then he had to turn men away from the town to try to contain an enemy thrust bent on relieving it. By the slimmest of margins, he did.

  Even more enemy dragons were in the air the next morning. Every so often, one would get blazed out of the sky and smash down into the snow, but two or three fresh beasts always seemed to take its place. The Algarvian advance stumbled to a halt. “Did you ever see anything like this in Unkerlant?” Lurcanio asked Santerno.

  Numbly, the younger officer shook his head. “We have to fall back,” he said. “We can’t stay out in the open like this. We’ll all get killed.” The Algarvian commanders took three days longer to realize the same thing, which gained them little ground and cost them men and beasts they could not spare. Adutiskis never did fall. And the way into Algarve lies open for the enemy, Lurcanio thought grimly.

  Leudast had no trouble figuring out when he crossed the border from Yanina into Algarve. It wasn’t so much that the buildings in the villages changed, though they did--the Algarvians were given to vertical lines enlivened with ornamental woodwork that struck the Unkerlanter lieutenant as busy. It wasn’t even that redheads replaced small, skinny, swarthy Yaninans. More than anything else, it was the roads.

  In Unkerlant, cities had paved streets. Villages didn’t. Often, good-sized towns didn’t. Roads between cities were invariably dirt--which meant that, in spring or fall, they were invariably mud. That mud had gone a long way toward slowing the Algarvian advance on Cottbus the first autumn of the war.

  Yanina hadn’t seemed much different from Unkerlant, not as far as roads went. Oh, there was one paved highway leading east from Patras, but Leudast hadn’t been on it very long. Everywhere else, the rules he knew held good: paved streets in cities, dirt in villages and out in the countryside.

  In Algarve, things were different. Every road was topped with cobbles or slates or concrete. Every single one, so far as Leudast could see. “Powers above, sir,” he said to Captain Drogden. “How much does it cost to pave over a whole cursed kingdom?”

  “I don’t know,” Drogden answered. “A lot. I’m sure of that.”

  “Aye.” Leudast clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I always knew the redheads were richer than we are. They have a lot more crystals than we do, their soldiers eat better food and more of it, they use supply caravans that put anything we’ve got to shame. But seeing their kingdom . . .” He shook his head. “I didn’t know they were that much richer than we are.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Drogden said. “It doesn’t fornicating matter. The whoresons aren’t in Unkerlant any more, trying to take away what little we’ve got. Now we’re here--and by the time we’re through with them, they won’t be so fornicating rich any more. Most of ‘em’ll be too dead to be rich.”

  “Suits me, sir,” Leudast said. “Suits me fine. I just don’t want to end up dead with ‘em. They pushed us back till they could see Cottbus. I’ve come this far. I want to see Trapani.”

  “So do I,” Drogden said. “Bastards fight for every village like it was Trapani, too.” He spat. “They haven’t got enough men left to stop us, though.”

  Leudast nodded. “Some of that last batch of captives we took look like they were too old to fight in the last war, let alone this one.”

  “Some of ‘em won’t be ready to fight till the next one, either.” Drogden spat again. “Little buggers like that are dangerous, too. It’s like a game to them, not anything real. You and me, we’re afraid to die. Those kids, they don’t think they can. They’ll do crazy things on account of it.”

  “They’re Algarvians,” Leudast said. “That means they’re all dangerous, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Something to that--something, but not everything,” Drogden answered. “The women, now . . . Mezentio’s whoresons had fun with our girls when they came into Unkerlant. Now it’s our turn. Redhaired pussy’s as good as any other kind.”

  “I expect it would be,” Leudast agreed. Drogden sounded as if he was speaking from experience. No one among the Unkerlanters’ commanders would say a word if their soldiers and officers raped their way through Algarve. Leudast hadn’t indulged himself yet. He didn’t know whether he would or not. Go without long enough and you didn’t much care how you got it.

  “They’re all sluts anyway--Algarvian women, I mean,” Drogden said. “They deserve it--and they’re going to get it, too.”

  “A lot of ‘em are running away from us as fast as they can go, for fear of what we’ll do to them,” Leudast said.

  “That’s fine. I don’t mind a bit.” Drogden had a nasty chuckle when he chose to use it. “The more they clog their nice paved roads for their own soldiers, the more trouble they end up in. And when our dragons fly over, don’t they have fun?”

  “Don’t they just?” Now Leudast spoke with the same savage enthusiasm as his regiment commander. “The redheads would do that to our peasants and townsfolk when they jumped on our back. Nice to let ‘em know what it feels like.”

  Funny, he thought. I don’t mind seeing Algarvians torn to pieces by sorcerous energy from our eggs or flamed into charcoal by our dragons. I don’t mind that at all, except for the stink of the burnt meat. So why am I squeamish about throwing a woman down and stabbing her between her legs with my lance?

  Before he could dwell on that, eggs burst close enough to make him flatten out on the ground like a snake. “They do keep trying to hit back,” Drogden said. “Well, they’ll pay for it. They’ll pay for everything.”

  He was soon proved right. The Unkerlanters had many more egg-tossers up near the fighting front than the Algarvians did, and soon pounded the redheads into silence again. The push into western Algarve went on--till the redheads made a stand in a town called Ozieri. Instead of swarming into the town and fighting house to house, as they would have done earlier in the war, the Unkerlanters swept around it--a lesson they had learned from their Algarvian foes. Once Mezentio’s men inside Ozieri were cut off from help, the Unkerlanters could p
ound them and their strongpoint to bits at leisure and at minimum expense.

  That didn’t bring out the Algarvian defenders. They’d learned their lessons in the long, bitter war, too. Their soldiers dug in among the ruins. Sooner or later, they would make the Unkerlanters pay the price for winkling them out. Sooner or later, we’ll throw second-line soldiers at them, Leudast thought. Losing those fellows won’t matter so much--and we’ll get rid of the Algarvians. Sometimes the game had steps almost as formal as a dance.

  But the Algarvian civilians in Ozieri didn’t understand how the game was played. They’d never expected to have to learn; they’d left that lesson for the people of all the kingdoms bordering their own. When eggs started bursting among the homes and shops they’d cherished for generations, many of them didn’t know enough to go down to their cellars and try to wait out the attack. Those people grabbed whatever they could and fled east with it in their arms or on their backs.

  What they didn’t realize was that it was too late for such flight. By the time the eggs started falling heavily, the Unkerlanters had already surrounded Ozieri. Civilians fleeing the place found themselves in just as much danger as soldiers would have--if anything, in more, because they couldn’t blaze back and didn’t know how to take cover.

  Leudast blazed an old man with a duffel bag slung over one bent shoulder. He wasn’t happy about doing it, but he didn’t hesitate. For all he knew, the old Algarvian was one of the soldiers recently dragooned into the army, and the canvas sack was full of those nasty little throwable eggs the redheads had got so much use from the past few months.

  Somebody blazed at him a moment later, from the direction from which the old man had come. He rolled behind a hedge, wishing the Algarvians hadn’t manicured their landscapes so neatly. A shriek from that same direction a moment later argued that some other Unkerlanter had taken care of the redhead with the stick.

  Another shriek came from behind Leudast. This one was torn from a woman’s throat. By the way it went on, and by the laughs that accompanied it, he didn’t think she’d been wounded by an egg or a stick.

  Sure enough, when he went back to check, he found three men holding her down and a fourth, his tunic hiked up, pumping away on top of her. The soldier grunted, shuddered, and pulled out. One of his pals took his place. “Hello, Lieutenant,” said the fellow on her right leg. “You want a turn? She’s lively.”

  “She’s noisy, is what she is,” Leudast answered.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the fellow who had her arms. “She bites whenever you put a hand over her mouth. We don’t want to get rid of her till we’ve all had a go.”

  “Shut her up,” Leudast said. “She’s liable to bring redheads down on you, and you aren’t exactly ready to fight.” That got the soldiers’ attention. A rough gag didn’t stop the woman’s screams, but did muffle them. The man who was riding her drove deep, then sat back on his haunches with a satisfied smirk on his face.

  “You going to take her, Lieutenant?” asked the soldier who had her arms. “Otherwise, it’s my turn.”

  There she lay, naked--or naked enough--and spreadeagled. Would it make any difference to her if five men had her, or only four? Do I care? Leudast wondered. She’s only an Algarvian. “Aye, I’ll do it,” he said, and bent between her thighs. It didn’t take long. He hadn’t thought it would. And what had her brothers or husband--maybe even her son; he thought she was close to forty--done in Unkerlant? Nothing good. He was sure of that.

  He didn’t feel particularly proud of himself afterwards: not as if he’d take a step toward overthrowing Mezentio. But he wasn’t sorry, either. Just. . . one of those things, he thought.

  “Behemoths!” The shout from ahead came in Unkerlanter, so Leudast supposed the Algarvians east of Ozieri had mustered a counterattack. They kept striking back whenever they could, even with the odds dreadfully against them. Here, if they could fight their way into the town, they might bring some soldiers out with them, and that might help them make a stand somewhere else.

  As always, the Algarvians fought bravely. Their footsoldiers knew how to use behemoths to the best advantage. With skill and bravado, they pushed the Unkerlanters back about half a mile. But skill and bravado went only so far. Against dragons and many more behemoths and many more men, the counterattack faltered short of its goal. Sullenly, the Algarvians drew back.

  Leudast waited for Captain Drogden to order the regiment forward again. That was Drogden’s way: to hit the redheads hard when they weren’t ready for it. But no orders came. “Where’s the captain?” Leudast asked.

  An Unkerlanter pointed over his shoulder. “Last I saw him, he was going off behind that fancy house there. He had a redhead with him.” The soldier’s hands shaped curves in the air.

  Leudast went after Drogden without hesitation. Fun was one thing, fun at the expense of the fight something else. “Captain?” he called as he went around the house, which was indeed a great deal fancier than any he’d seen in his own village. “You there, Captain?”

  Amidst the yellowish brown of dead grass, rock-gray stood out. There lay Drogden, his tunic hiked up to his waist--and a knife deep in his back. There was no sign of the woman he’d had with him, or of his stick. Leudast scrambled away in a hurry--she might be lying in wait, ready to blaze whoever came after Drogden. But no beam bit or charred grass near Leudast. Still, he shook his head in blank dismay. Drogden was a careful fellow, he thought, but this once he wasn‘t careful enough. He shivered. It could have been me.

  Skarnu found himself restless and discontented in Priekule. He’d thought that, when he came back after the Algarvians abandoned his beloved city, he would simply resume the life he’d led before the Derlavaian War called him into King Gainibu’s service. But going to one feast after another palled fast. He didn’t mind drinking a bit, but getting drunk night after night seemed a lot less enjoyable, a lot less amusing, than it had in peacetime.

  And, of course, he’d gone to those feasts not least looking for some pretty girl or another with whom he might spend the rest of the night. Plenty of pretty girls still came to those affairs. Several all but threw themselves at him: almost all women with reputations for having slept with one Algarvian or another during the occupation. Maybe they think they’ll look better by going to bed with me, he thought. Or maybe they just want to make sure they’ve taken care of both sides.

  These days, though, Skarnu wasn’t looking for a pretty girl. He’d found one-- and one with a temper a good deal sharper than his own. “Thank you, my dear,” he told one noblewoman whose offer had left nothing to the imagination, “but it’s about even money whether Merkela would blaze you or me first if I did that.”

  Her laughter was like tinkling bells. “You’re joking,” she said. Before Skarnu could even shake his head, she read his eyes. “You’re not joking in the slightest. How very . . . barbaric of your . .. friend.”

  “My fiancée,” Skarnu corrected her. “She’s a widow. The Algarvians executed her husband. She hasn’t got much of a sense of humor about these things.” The noblewoman didn’t lose her bright smile. But she didn’t hang around long, either.

  A mug of ale in her hand, Merkela came up to Skarnu a moment later. “What was that all about?” she asked, a certain hard suspicion in her voice.

  “About what you’d expect.” He put his arm around her. “I know who I’m going home with tonight, though, and I know why.”

  “You’d better,” Merkela said.

  “I know that, too.” Skarnu chuckled. “I told Skirgaila you’d come after her--or maybe me--with a stick if she didn’t leave well enough alone. She didn’t believe me. Then she did, and turned green.”

  “I ought to give her something to remember me by now,” Merkela said, with the same directness she’d used while hunting redheads.

  Before she could advance on Skirgaila, Viscount Valnu came up, the usual mocking smile on his bony, handsome face. “Ah, the happy couple!” he said, and contrived to make it sound almost like an
insult.

  “Hullo, Valnu,” Skarnu said. Valnu didn’t seem to mind the endless rounds of feasts. But then, he’d been coming to them all through the Algarvian occupation, too. Aye, he’d been in the underground. Still, Skarnu was sure he hadn’t let that keep him from having a good time.

  His arrival distracted Merkela. She didn’t know what to make of Valnu. But then, a lot of people don’t know what to make of Valnu, Skarnu thought. Skirgaila, meanwhile, had practically painted herself to the chest of another nobleman who hadn’t collaborated with the Algarvians. Skarnu nodded to himself. She wants to repair one sort of reputation, sure enough, and she doesn‘t care about the other sort.

  With peasant bluntness, Merkela demanded, “Are you really father to the child Krasta’s carrying?”

  Valnu’s blue, blue eyes widened. “Am I, milady? I don’t know. I haven’t looked inside there to tell.” That was bluntness of a sort Merkela wasn’t used to; she flushed. Chuckling, Valnu went on, “Could I be that father, though? Without a doubt, I could be.” He fluttered his eyelashes at Skarnu. “And now I’ll have the poor girl’s outraged brother coming after me with a club.”

  “You’re impossible,” Skarnu said, at which Valnu bowed in delight. Even Merkela snorted at that. With a sigh, Skarnu went on, “I hope you are. All things considered, I’d not have the family dragged through too much dirt.”

  “You’re no fun at all,” Valnu said. “I know what your problem is, though-- I know just the disease you’ve caught.”

  “Tell me,” Skarnu said, raising an eyebrow. “What sort of slander will you come up with? If it’s vile enough, I’ll haul you before the king.”

  “It’s pretty vile, all right,” Valnu said. “You poor fellow, you’ve caught. . . responsibility. It’s very dangerous unless you treat it promptly. I came down with it myself for a while, but I seem to have thrown it off.”

  “I believe that,” Skarnu said. But he couldn’t stay too annoyed with Valnu. No matter how much fun the viscount had had here in Priekule during the occupation, he’d played a hard and dangerous game. Had the Algarvians realized he was anything more than a vacuous good-time boy, he would have suffered the same nasty fate as had so many men--and women--from the underground.