Through the Darkness Read online

  They were alone in the hut. Otherwise, without a doubt, Vatran would have kept his mouth shut. And otherwise, without a doubt, Rathar would not have answered, “No.” Even saying it where only Vatran could hear was a risk; the general might become a marshal if he could persuade Swemmel that the word had passed Rathar’s lips. Of course, Rathar would call him a liar, but still. . . .

  But Vatran said, “Well, you’re honest, at any rate.” He tore a chunk off the very stale loaf of black bread they’d found in the hut and passed it to Rathar. Rathar chewed and swallowed and thanked the powers above for a good set of teeth. His canteen was full of spirits. He swigged, then offered Vatran a drink. Maybe the general thought it was water. He took a big swallow. His eyes went wide. He coughed a couple of times, but held the spirits down.

  “Fooled you,” Rathar said with a chuckle. But his amusement soon faded. “Now if we could only fool the redheads.”

  “If we don’t—” Vatran shook his head. Not even to Rathar’s ear alone, not even with a good slug of spirits in him, would he saw what was in his mind.

  Rathar didn’t have much trouble figuring out what that was. He said it, even if Vatran wouldn’t: “If we don’t, we’re ruined.”

  “That’s about the size of it, lord Marshal,” Vatran agreed unhappily. “They just keep smashing through us. If we don’t fall back, they cut off chunks of the army with their behemoths and chew ’em up at their leisure. And if we do fall back, we yield up the land they were after.”

  “They’re stretched thin,” Rathar said, as much to keep up his own hopes as to hearten Rathar. “They’ve got Yaninans holding quiet stretches of the line, more of them every day. They’re putting Forthwegians and Sibians into uniform to do their fighting for them. If they keep stretching, they’re bound to break sooner or later.”

  “Aye, but will it be before they break us?” Vatran said. Rathar took another swig of spirits; he had no answer for that.

  Someone rapped on the door. Rathar opened it. A filthy, skeletally lean runner stood there panting. The fellow saluted, then said, “Lord Marshal, the Algarvians are pounding our lines to the northeast. If they don’t get some help, they’re going to have to fall back again.”

  By his tone, he’d plainly either heard or heard about King Swemmel’s speech. “Not one step back!” the king had thundered. To start retreating so soon after such an order did not bear thinking about.

  Turning to Vatran, Rathar asked, “Have we got dragons we can use to give them a hard time?” Before the general could answer, the marshal stabbed out a forefinger. “Of course we do—that farm not far from here. Order ’em into the air—we’ll see how Mezentio’s men like getting hammered instead of doing the hammering.” His chuckle was harsh: they wouldn’t like it any better than soldiers ever did. Well, too bad for them.

  “What else can we throw in there?” Vatran asked. He wasn’t shy about fighting. None of the Unkerlanter generals left alive was. The war had already weeded out a lot of men who did nothing but look handsome in a uniform tunic. It would, no doubt, weed more. Without bothering to check the map, Rathar started naming regiments and brigades the Unkerlanters could quickly move to defend the threatened area. Vatran did look at the map, and stared. “How in blazes do you keep all that in your head, lord Marshal?”

  “I don’t know,” Rathar answered, a little sheepishly. “I’ve always had the knack. It comes in handy every now and again.” Still standing in the door of the hut, he shouted for an orderly.

  One came running up. “What do you need, sir?”

  “A horse for me, and another one for General Vatran—or a unicorn apiece, if that’s easier,” Rathar told him. “There’s trouble north and east of here. If we’re not on the spot, how can we command the defense?”

  Rathar knew he was less than the best rider in the world. He rapidly discovered Vatran was among the worst. The orderly brought them both unicorns, each with its gleaming white hide painted in mud- and dirt- and grass-colored splotches to make it harder to see. Even the unicorns’ iron-shod horns were carefully rusted to stop any betraying glints of light from them. Rathar thought the beasts perfect. Vatran’s opinion was rather different.

  “Not so fast, I pray you,” he protested as Rathar sped to a still-modest trot. By the way Vatran clutched the reins and clung to the saddle, he might have been going at a breakneck gallop. If he ever did have to go at a gallop, Rathar thought he would likely break his neck.

  Dragons ranged over the battered land behind the battle line, some low, some high—Algarvian dragons. From the air, the two high-ranking officers looked like a pair of nondescript cavalrymen, which suited Rathar fine.

  “What will we do if we spy real Algarvian horse, lord Marshal—or if the redheads spot us?” Vatran asked in piteous tones.

  “Why, charge them of course,” Rathar answered, deadpan. Vatran groaned, then cursed as he realized the marshal hadn’t meant it seriously. Rathar laughed a little. Finding anything to laugh about wasn’t easy.

  In the tradition of battles from long-ago days, he rode toward the sound of the loudest fighting. Vatran managed to stay with him. They trotted past a team of Unkerlanters stripping the armor and egg-tosser off a slain Algarvian behemoth. “That’s good,” Vatran said. “That’s very good. We can use the gear, and that’s a fact. The Algarvians have too fornicating much of everything.”

  “Except soldiers, we hope,” Rathar said, and Vatran nodded. The marshal looked over his shoulder at the Unkerlanter workmen. Thoughtfully, he went on, “Have to make sure they slap a coat of rock-gray paint on that mail before they put it on one of our behemoths. Even then, our men are liable to take it for a ruse—the redheads’ patterns are different from ours.”

  “Here’s hoping the Algarvians don’t think of a ruse like that,” Vatran said with feeling. “They think of too cursed many things, and that’s the truth.”

  “Aye, isn’t it just?” Rathar said. He filed the idea away, as one against which he would have to warn the Unkerlanter soldiery.

  Up ahead, dragons swooped again and again. The sharp roars of bursting eggs came ever closer together. And Unkerlanter footsoldiers began streaming away from the center of the fighting before Rathar could get there and take charge of the defense. They had the look he’d seen too often in the fight against the Algarvians: the look of men not just beaten but stunned by what had rolled over them. They gaped at the sight of anyone going toward the battle from which they were retreating. “It’s another cursed breakthrough,” one of them said.

  “Didn’t you hear the king’s order?” General Vatran thundered. “Not another step back!”

  The soldier came to a ragged sort of attention, realizing the two men on unicomback were officers. He didn’t realize what sort of officers they were; he was too battered and worn to pay attention to the rank badges on their collar tabs. “If old Swemmel went through what I’ve been through, he’d step back himself, and pretty fornicating lively, too.”

  Vatran looked about ready to burst like an egg. His fury did him no good. Before he could start thundering again, the weary soldier and his comrades trudged past him and Rathar, heading west and south. They might—they probably would—fight again later, when the odds looked better. For now, they’d taken all they could.

  “Come on,” Rathar told Vatran. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than a squad’s worth of stragglers.” If we can’t stop the Algarvians from breaking through whenever they press hard, the whole kingdom will go over a cliff.

  “Ought to line ’em up against a wall and blaze ’em,” Vatran said, forgetting his earlier claim that the king had been too merciful. “That’s what we’d have done in the Twinkings War, and you cursed well know it.”

  “We’ve done it in this fight, too,” Rathar said. “And we’ll do more of it, if we have to. But not this lot, that’s all.”

  Vatran grunted. His unicorn chose that moment to sidestep. It almost threw him, where even an average rider would have shifted
his weight a little and gone about his business. By the time the general had his mount under control (Rathar would have taken oath the beast looked scornful, but it might have been the way the paint streaked its muzzle), he’d calmed down a little. “Have to hit the redheads’ column in flank as it punches through. That’ll give ’em some trouble, if we can bring it off.”

  “Good notion,” Rathar told him, and it was. They’d blunted some Algarvian attacks that way. He wondered if the Unkerlanter forces moving against the breakthrough could cut it off. Even more, though, he wondered where he was going to make the next fight this side of Sulingen.

  Under Garivald’s tunic, a drop of sweat ran down his back as he trudged toward the village of Pirmasens. Heat wasn’t what made him sweat, though the weather was as warm and sticky as it ever got down in the Duchy of Grelz. No, he was afraid, and knew how afraid he was.

  “Liaz,” he said, over and over again. “Liaz. Liaz.” He couldn’t very well go into any Grelzer village under his own name, not with the whacking great price the Algarvians had put on his head. Most villagers hated King Mezentio and his puppet King of Grelz, his cousin Raniero, more than they hated King Swemmel. But enough felt the other way about things to make him glad he had an alias. Now if only he could be sure of remembering it!

  Pirmasens wasn’t one of the villages from which Munderic’s irregulars usually gathered food and supplies. The Algarvians held it tight, not least because it stood close to a ley line. Munderic needed to know what they were up to. Irregulars from other parts of Unkerlant would have betrayed themselves as soon as they opened their mouths. Garivald would be a stranger in Pirmasens, but a stranger with the right accent.

  As he neared the village, he saw it was intact, which meant Unkerlanter soldiers hadn’t made a stand here the summer before. That wasn’t so good; it gave the locals less reason to hate the redheads. It also gave them more reason to betray a fugitive bard named Garivald, if any of them should recognize him in the person of Liaz. Another drop of sweat slid down his spine.

  “It won’t be so bad,” he muttered, and did his best to make himself believe it. Before the war, a stranger wandering into a peasant village would have been a surprise, especially if he was just another peasant and not a merchant with something to sell. The fighting, though, had torn things up by the roots. So Munderic had told Garivald, anyhow. Garivald hoped the irregulars’ leader was right.

  Hoofbeats made him look back over his shoulder. An Algarvian trooper on a lathered horse cantered past him and into Pirmasens. The redhead eyed him on riding by, just as he watched Mezentio’s soldier. Any man who trusted another, even for a moment, risked his life these days.

  Well behind the horseman, Garivald came into Pirmasens. It was a bigger place than Zossen, which remained his touchstone, probably because it lay close to the ley line and so drew more trade. It looked achingly normal: men out in the fields around the village, women in the vegetable plots by their houses, children and dogs and chickens underfoot. A lump came into Garivald’s throat. This was the way life was supposed to be, the way he’d always known it.

  Then a couple of kilted Algarvians strode out of one of the few buildings in the village that wasn’t somebody’s house: the tavern, unless he missed his guess. He’d planned on going in there himself—how better to find out what was going on in Pirmasens than over a few mugs of ale? Now he wondered if that was such a good idea.

  A dog came yapping up to him. He stamped his foot and growled back, and the dog ran away. “That’s how you do it, all right,” a villager called. Garivald had to work hard not to stare at the fellow. He’d never seen an Unkerlanter with a fancy waxed mustache before. He hoped he’d never see another one, either; such fripperies might do well enough for an Algarvian, but they struck him as absurd on one of his countrymen.

  “Aye, sure is,” Garivald replied.

  Hearing Grelzer dialect identical to his own coming out of Garivald’s mouth, the man with the mustache grinned. It was a fine, friendly grin, one that should have made Garivald like him at sight. But for the hair on his lip, it might have. Even seeing the mustache—surely the mark of someone currying favor with the redheads—Garivald warmed somewhat. The local said, “Haven’t seen you in these parts before, have I?”

  Now Garivald smiled back. He might be an amateur spy, but he recognized a counterpart on the other side when he heard one. “Wouldn’t think so. I’m from east of here—a little place called Minsen.” That was a village not far from Zossen. “Swemmel’s soldiers, curse ’em, fought hard to hold it, so it’s not there any more. Neither is my wife. Neither are my son and daughter.” He made himself sound grim.

  “Ah, I’ve heard tales like that so many times,” the fellow with the mustache said. He came up and draped an arm around Garivald’s shoulder, as if he were a sympathetic cousin. “I’m not sorry we’re out from under Swemmel’s yoke, and that’s a fact. Look at the price you paid for getting stuck in the middle of a lost war.”

  “Aye,” Garivald said. “You’ve got a good way of looking at things, ah . . .”

  “My name’s Rual,” the man from Pirmasens said.

  Garivald clasped his hand, which also let him shake off that arm. “And I’m Liaz,” he said. He’d got it right the first time, anyhow.

  “Let me buy you a mug of ale, Liaz,” Rual said. “We can sit around and swap stories about what a son of a whore Swemmel is.”

  “Suits me fine,” Garivald said. “I’ve got plenty of ’em.” And he did, too. Loving Swemmel wasn’t easy. After what he’d seen, after what he’d been through, hating the redheads more was. “I’ll buy you one afterwards, too. I’ve got enough coppers for that, anyhow.”

  “Well, come on, then. Let’s get out of the hot sun.” Sure enough, Rual led him to the building from which the Algarvians had come.

  More Algarvians sat inside. One of them nodded to Rual in a familiar way. As if the mustache hadn’t been enough, that told Garivald all he needed to know about the other peasant’s allegiance. It also told him he had to be extra careful if he wanted to get out of Pirmasens in one piece.

  Rual waved to the fellow behind the bar, who wore not only a mustache but also a ridiculous little strip of chin beard, as if he hadn’t been paying attention while he shaved. “Two mugs of ale here,” Rual called, and set a shiny, newly minted silver coin on the table.

  Garivald picked it up and looked at it. “So that’s what King Raniero looks like, is it?” he remarked. “Hadn’t seen him before.” In his opinion, Raniero had a pointy nose. He didn’t think Rual would care about his opinions in such matters.

  “Aye.” Rual waited till the tapman brought him his ale, then raised his mug. “And here’s to Raniero.” Having expected such a toast, Garivald had no trouble drinking to it. Rual added, “Good to have a king in Grelz again.”

  “That’s the truth,” Garivald said, though Swemmel was the only king in Grelz he acknowledged. After a pull at his ale—which was pretty good—he added, “I wish we hadn’t had to have a war to get one, though.” He also wished the king Grelz had got weren’t an Algarvian, one more opinion he kept to himself.

  “No, we should have had one of our own all along,” Rual said. “But I’d sooner be tied to the redheads than to Cottbus.”

  The Algarvians in here were surely listening to him, as he was listening to Garivald. Garivald wondered what they’d think of his wanting a Grelzer king rather than Mezentio’s cousin. “I never worried about things like this before the fighting started,” he said at last. “I just wanted life to go on the way it always had.” He wasn’t even lying.

  Rual gave him another sympathetic look, though the last thing Garivald wanted was his sympathy. “I understand what you’re saying—powers above know I do,” Rual assured him. “But weren’t you sick of inspectors stealing your crops and impressers liable to drag you off into the army if you looked at ’em sideways or even if you didn’t?”

  “Well, who wasn’t?” Garivald said, making it sound like an
admission Rual had dragged out of him. Again, he wasn’t lying. Again, it didn’t matter, which Rual didn’t seem to understand. The Algarvians had done worse in Zossen—and, no doubt, elsewhere in Unkerlant—than Swemmel’s inspectors and impressers. Garivald decided to make his own comment before Rual could ask another question. “This looks like a pretty happy place now, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Oh, it is,” Rual assured him. “Raniero makes a fine king. So long as we don’t trouble anything, he leaves us alone. You could never say that about Swemmel, now could you?”

  “No, indeed.” Garivald laughed a particular kind of laugh, one that suggested a lot of things you could say about King Swemmel. He would have enjoyed saying them, too—to his wife, or to his friend Dagulf back in Zossen. Saying them to Rual would have been blackest treason.

  “Well, there you are,” Rual said, as if certain Garivald agreed with him in every particular.

  “Aye, here I am—at the bottom of my mug of ale.” Garivald set coins—old coins, coins of Unkerlant, not Grelz—on the table and waved to the Unkerlanter with the preposterous mustache and strip of beard behind the counter. When he caught the fellow’s eye, he pointed to his mug and Rual’s. The tapman brought them refills.

  “My thanks,” Rual said. “You’re a man of your word. Too many drifters coming through Pirmasens these days want to grab what they can and then slide out again. This is a nice, quiet place. We want to keep it that way.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Garivald said. “Almost tempts a fellow into wanting to settle down here for good.” He drank some more ale, to get rid of the taste of the lies he was telling.

  “You could do worse, Liaz,” Rual said, and the curse of the war Unkerlant and Algarve were fighting was that he was probably right. “Aye, it’s right peaceful here.” He didn’t mention—maybe he even didn’t consciously notice—the Algarvian soldiers drinking at a table not ten feet away from him. If they’d been back in Algarve where they belonged, he would have come closer to telling the truth.