Darkness Descending Read online

  “I want to see you again, too,” Vanai said, and once more Ealstan had all he could do to keep from jumping up and turning handsprings. She went on, “Tomorrow is market day, so I don’t think I can get away, but I can come here the day after.”

  His heart leaped--and then fell. “My schoolmasters will beat me,” he said glumly, “the ones not out gathering mushrooms themselves, at any rate.” He could think the switchings he got worthwhile as long as he lay in Vanai’s arms--but not, he feared very long afterwards.

  To his relief, he saw his unwillingness to drop everything for her sake hadn’t offended her. Instead, she was nodding. “You have a head on your shoulders,” she remarked. Anyone who knew him would have said the same. But she didn’t, not yet, not with the mind as well as the body.

  Out beyond the oak grove, someone called to someone else. It wasn’t aimed at

  either Ealstan or Vanai, but both their heads came up in alarm. Nervously, Ealstan asked, “Did your grandfather come hunting mushrooms with you?” Brivibas, that was the old man’s name. If Ealstan had to be polite in a hurry, he could.

  But Vanai shook her head. “No. He’s searching by himself.” Her voice went cold and distant. She hadn’t talked about her grandfather like that before. Something must have happened between them. Ealstan wondered what. He saw no way to ask. Vanai found a question of her own: “What about your cousin--Sidroc?” She’d remembered things about Ealstan, too. He felt outrageously flattered.

  “He went off to the north awhile ago. We are supposed to meet back at the city gate at sunset.” Ealstan leaned over and kissed Vanai. She clung to him. The kiss went on and on. They started to lie back on the leaves again, but whoever was outside the little wood called out again, louder and closer this time. “We had better not take the chance,” Ealstan said, and heard the regret in his own voice.

  “You’re right.” Vanai slipped out of his embrace and got to her feet. “You can send me letters, if you like. I live on the Street of Tinkers in Oyngestun.”

  Ealstan nodded eagerly. “And I live on the Avenue of Countess Hereswith, back in Gromheort. I willwrite to you.”

  “Good.” Vanai nodded, too. “My grandfather will wonder when I start getting letters from Gromheort, but I don’t much care what my grandfather wonders, not any more.” Something had indeed happened between her and Brivibas. Maybe she would tell him what in a letter.

  “I had better go,” he said, though he didn’t want to leave her.

  But she nodded once more. “And I,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, “I will address my letters to you in Forthwegian. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger by letting anyone know you’re friendly to Kaunians.”

  He was grateful, and ashamed of himself for being grateful. “If I can do anything for you--or for your grandfather,” he remembered to add, “let me know. My father is not a man without influence.”

  “I thank you,” Vanai said, “but would he use that influence for the cursed blonds?” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness.

  “Aye,” Ealstan said, and nothing more.

  He saw he’d startled her. “Well,” she said, “if he’s your father, perhaps he would.”

  “He will,” Ealstan said, though he didn’t know if Hestan’s influence reached tOiOyngestun. “And so will I.” He had no influence at all and did know that. But he would have promised Vanai anything just then. By the way her eyes shone, she believed him, too, or at least was glad he’d said what he had.

  Ealstan kissed her one last time, then started back to Gromheort. He kept looking over his shoulder at Vanai, and almost walked into a good-sized oak. Feeling silly, he waved to her. She was looking over her shoulder, too, and waved to him. Only when they couldn’t see each other any more did Ealstan turn forward and walk straight.

  As he walked, he wondered what to say to Sidroc. He laughed. The easiest thing might be to tell his cousin the truth; Sidroc would surely call him a liar. But what Sidroc would call Vanai didn’t bear thinking of. He’d been making lewd jokes about her since the day Ealstan met her. Now .. .

  She’d given herself to Ealstan without hesitation. By everything people in Forthweg--Forthwegians and Kaunians alike--said, that made her a slut, almost as much a slut as the Kaunian girl who’d tried to get Leofsig to go to bed with her for money.

  “But it wasn’t like that,” Ealstan said, as if someone had declared it was. Whatever had brought Vanai into his arms, he got the idea that raw lust was only a small part of it. Loneliness and a desire to escape, if only for a little while, had probably played bigger parts. That didn’t flatter him, but flattery wasn’t so important to him. Seeing clearly counted for more.

  And calling Daukantis’ daughter a slut wasn’t easy, either, not when the Algarvians had left her with the choice between whoring and starving. From the height of his seventeen years, Ealstan saw that the older he got, the less the world looked like the things everybody said.

  He hoped the redheads hadn’t swept up the oil merchant’s daughter (he couldn’t remember her name, though Leofsig had mentioned it) when they gathered laborers in Gromheort. Something was strange there, though he couldn’t see what. But had the Algarvians only been after laborers, they would have chosen differently and let the Kaunians they did choose bring along more than they had.

  He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about that. His features softened as his thoughts returned to what he and Vanai had done. He spent most of the walk back to Gromheort trying to fix in his memory every kiss, every murmured endearment, every caress, every caress, every incredible sensation. Remembering wasn’t as good as lying down with her again, but it was all he could do now.

  Gromheort’s gray stone wall loomed higher and higher as he neared the city. Behind the wall, the sky was gray, too, gray as lead. It looked as if it would rain again soon. Autumn was shaping up as wet and nasty, which meant winter probably would be, too. He wondered if it would snow. That didn’t happen every year, not this far north.

  Someone standing by the wall waved. Ealstan squinted. Aye, that was Sidroc. Ealstan waved, too, and tried to bring his mind back from Vanai to mushrooms. Sidroc came toward him. He pointed to the basket Ealstan was carrying. “Ha!” he said. “That’s the one you brought home last year, not yours. Didn’t run into the little Kaunian bitch this time, eh? Too bad for you. You might have had a good time.”

  The only thing that let Ealstan get through was having been sure Sidroc would make some such crack. “No, I didn’t see her,” he answered, hoping he sounded casual. “Even if I had, we’d have just traded some mushrooms.” That would have been true the year before. It wasn’t any more.

  Sidroc gestured derisively. “She’s got to be sweet for you, Ealstan,” he said. “Powers above, if I’d found her out there in the woods, I’d have got her trousers down faster than you could say King Offa.”

  “In your dreams,” Ealstan said.

  “Aye.” Sidroc grabbed his own crotch. “In my wet dreams.” Ealstan managed to laugh at that, which seemed to convince Sidroc nothing unusual had happened out in the oak grove. Sidroc chaffed him as they went into Gromheort, but not too hard. They both chaffed the Algarvian constable at the gate when the fellow looked disgusted at the baskets of mushrooms they showed him.

  “More for us,” Ealstan said to Sidroc. The constable must have spoken some Forthwegian, for he made as if to retch. Ealstan and his cousin both laughed. Ealstan kept laughing all the way through the city, all the way back to his house. If Sidroc wanted to think he was laughing at the Algarvian, he didn’t mind a bit.

  Rain beat into Colonel Sabrino s face as he led his wing east from the front toward the miserable excuse for a dragon farm at which they were based. His dragon didn’t like the rain, not even a little. It flew heavily, laboring much more than it would have had the weather been good.

  Sabrino didn’t like the rain, either. He had a demon of a time keeping track of the dragonfliers under his command, and had to rely on his squadron leaders more t
han he wanted. He couldn’t see far enough to do anything else. Nor could he see far enough to spy Unkerlanter dragons and thanked the powers above the enemy couldn’t see very far, either.

  He had a demon of a time finding the dragon farm, too. Flying low to glimpse the ground through the curtain of rain, he almost flew his dragon into the side of a hill. The beast screeched protests when he made it pull up. It would have liked hitting the hillside even less but was too stupid to know that.

  He might not have found the dragon farm at all had he not flown over the victory camp that had gone up just north of it. Seeing the Kaunians huddled in dripping misery behind their palisade made him wonder what they thought of the name some clever clerk nad come up with. He doubted the Algarvian guards on the palisade were any too happy, either. In this weather, their sticks wouldn’t carry very far before raindrops attenuated their beams.

  But that was their worry, not his. His worries shrank, because spotting the victory camp told him where he was. He swung his dragon into a sharp turn. The beast screamed at him, not wanting to obey. He whacked it with his goad, and shouted into the crystal he carried as he did so. The dragons he could see through the rain were conforming to his movements, but he wanted to make sure the rest of the wing didn’t keep on flying back toward Forthweg and Algarve.

  And there was the farm, too, with the dragon handlers waving and shouting to keep him from missing them. He brought his dragon down to a landing that splashed muck over the keepers who came running up to chain the beast to a stake. How they made stakes hold in this muddy morass was beyond him, but they did.

  “What’s it like at the front?” one of the keepers asked as Sabrino slid down from the base of the dragon’s neck and into the mud.

  “By everything I saw, we’re stuck,” Sabrino answered. “Hard for us to go forward--and harder than it might be, because the Unkerlanters are still wrecking bridges and ley lines and everything else they can. That gives them an edge of sorts, because they’re bringing up their reinforcements on ground that’s not quite so badly chewed up.”

  “Aye.” The keeper wiped his eyes with a sleeve, an utterly useless gesture. “Cursed Unkerlanters are tougher than we figured they would be, too.”

  “So they are.” Sabrino remembered General Chlodvald, then wished he hadn’t. The retired soldier had been right when he said his countrymen would fight as hard as they could and would keep on fighting.

  More dragons splashed down into the muck. Seeing to his fliers and their beasts gave Sabrino an excuse not to think about General Chlodvald. After a while, he splashed past the keeper with whom he’d been talking. The fellow jerked a thumb toward the north. “If all else fails, those Kaunian whoresons in there’ll make sure we give King Swemmel what he deserves.”

  Sabrino’s stomach lurched, as if his dragon had sideslipped and dove without warning. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he said. “If it does, though . . .” He shrugged uneasily.

  At least with the whole wing down and safe--a minor miracle, in that ghastly weather--he could get under canvas. The ground was no drier inside his tent than outside, but the oiled canvas did keep water from pouring down onto his head. After he’d changed into a fresh tunic and kilt, he invited his squadron commanders to sup with him.

  He had no idea what they’d get. It turned out to be fried trout, boiled beets, and a jar of clear spirits that kicked like a mule--more nearly Unkerlanter fare than Algarvian. “Phew!” Captain Orosio said after a pull at the spirits. “If Swemmel’s boys drink this stuff all the time, no wonder they’re mean.”

  After a swig of his own, Sabrino wheezed, “Aye. I think I’ll send my gullet out for copper plating.” But that didn’t stop him from taking another swig a little later.

  He’d never been fond of beets, especially plain boiled ones. He was still picking at them when a commotion outside penetrated the noise of the rain drumming on his tent. “Have the Unkerlanters managed to sneak raiders past our lines?” Captain Domiziano said, half rising from his seat.

  But then one of the shouts out there in the night came clear: “Your Majesty!” A moment later, a dragon handler burst into Sabrino’s tent. “Sir, the king honors us with his presence!” he exclaimed.

  “Powers above,” Sabrino said softly. “I wish I were better placed to honor him in turn than in this miserable bog. Well, it can’t be helped. See if you can delay him long enough for the cooks to bring in another serving of supper, anyhow.”

  As things worked out, King Mezentio and the servitor bringing more fish and beets arrived at the same time. “Go on,” Mezentio told the cook. “I can’t very well eat that till you set it down, now can I?”

  The wind had blown his umbrella inside out. He was almost as wet as the dragonfliers had been. Sabrino and his squadron commanders sprang to their feet and bowed. “Your Majesty!” they said in unison.

  “Save the ceremony for later, can’t you?” Mezentio said. “Let me eat, and if you’ll pour me some of that, whatever it is, I’ll thank you for it, too.” He knocked back a slug of the spirits as if his gullet were already lined with metal.

  After the king had demolished his supper--beets fazed him no more than the spirits had--Sabrino presumed to ask, “What brings you to the front, your Majesty? And why this particular part of the front?”

  “Not just the pleasure of your company, my lord Count,” Mezentio answered. He poured from the jar again, then drank. “Ah, that warms me, curse me if it doesn’t. No, not the pleasure of your company. I probably wouldn’t have come if the Unkerlanters hadn’t stalled us.” His lips pulled back from his teeth in what was more nearly snarl than smile. “But they have, and so I’m going to watch what we do with a victory camp.”

  “Ah.” Orosio beamed. “That’s fine, your Majesty. That’s very fine.”

  Sabrino’s stomach lurched again. “Has it truly come to that?”

  “It has.” King Mezentio’s voice brooked no argument. “If we delay, we risk not taking Cottbus. And if we fail to take Cottbus, the war grows longer and harder than we ever thought it would be when we embarked on it. Is that true, or is it not?”

  “Aye, your Majesty, it is,” Sabrino answered, grimacing, “but--”

  Mezentio made a sharp chopping gesture with his right hand. “But me no buts, my lord Count. I did not come to this miserable, cursed place to argue with you, and nothing you can say will change my mind. The mages are here, the soldiers are here, the stinking Kaunians are here, and I am here. I came here to see it done. We shall go forward, and we shall go forward to victory. Is that plain, sirrah?”

  Sabrino’s squadron commanders were staring with wide eyes, as if wondering how he presumed to argue with his sovereign. With King Mezentio glaring at him, he also wondered how he presumed. “Aye, your Majesty,” he said. But then, being the descendant of a long line of freeborn Algarvian warriors, he added, “It had better do all we--you--hope it will, or we’d be better off never having tried it.”

  “You leave such worries to the mages and me,” Mezentio growled. “Your duty to the kingdom is to fly your dragons, and I know you do it well. My duty to the kingdom is to win the war, and I aim to do exactly that. Need I make myself any plainer?”

  “No, your Majesty,” Sabrino said. He took another swig from his glass of spirits--he needed fortifying. As the spirits mounted to his head, he reflected that he’d done everything he could; more, probably, than he should have. King Mezentio had overruled him. He inclined his head, “I shall obey.”

  “Of course you shall.” For a moment, Mezentio sounded very much the way King Swemmel was supposed to sound. But then he softened his words: “After we parade through Cottbus in triumph, I am going to say, ‘I told you so.’ “ He grinned engagingly at Sabrino.

  “I’ll be glad to hear it then,” Sabrino said, and grinned back.

  Mezentio did his best to set his battered umbrella to rights. “And now I have to go find the tent they’ve got waiting for me--somewhere. Always a pleasure to see you, m
y lord Count, even if not always to argue with you.” He nodded to Sabrino’s squadron commanders. “Gentlemen.” Without waiting for a reply, he went out into the wet, wet night.

  “You don’t live dangerously, sir,” Captain Domiziano said to Sabrino. “Not half you don’t.”

  “It’s war, sir,” Orosio added. “Anything we can do to kick the lousy Unkerlanters’ teeth down their throats, we’d better do it.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Sabrino said. “I have no choice but to suppose you’re right. His Majesty made that clear enough, didn’t he?” Discovering he could still laugh at himself came as something of a relief. All the same, he drank himself to sleep.

  King Mezentio did not visit the dragon farm again. Sabrino told himself that was because his sovereign had come to Unkerlant for other reasons, which was no doubt true. But he knew he hadn’t endeared himself to Mezentio. Men seldom found favor by questioning kings.

  Whether or not Mezentio was there to watch it, Sabrino’s wing kept on fighting the Unkerlanters. In that miserable weather, they did less than they might have earlier in the year, but the Unkerlanter dragons were similarly hampered. Sabrino began using the victory camp full of Kaunians as a landmark. It was far larger and easier to spy from the air than his own dragon farm.

  And then, about the time he began wondering if decent weather were gone for good, the sun returned to the sky. Days remained chilly, but the ground began to dry. Behemoths were once more able to move at something more than a squashy, heavy-footed walk. The Algarvians wasted no time in going over to the attack.

  But the Unkerlanters wasted no time counterattacking. They had been gathering men and beasts and dragons against the day of need, and threw them into the fight without seeming to worry about how many came out again, if only they stopped their foes. They didn’t quite stop the Algarvians, but slowed their advance from gallop to crawl.