Rulers of the Darkness Read online

  “In which case, you’d’ve made me feel guilty for being clean and safe, eh?” the colonel said. “I’d be angrier at you if I hadn’t played those games every now and again, too. As things are, I’m trying to arrange another field command for myself.”

  “I hope you get one, sir,” Spinello said. “Anybody can be a hero back here. You’ve shown you can do it where it counts.”

  The colonel rose from his chair so he could bow. “You are too kind,” he murmured. “And you have made a respectable name for yourself as a combat soldier, I might add. If you hadn’t, we would have left you here in a sector where nothing much ever happens. As things are, you’ll serve the kingdom where it really matters.”

  “Good.” Hearing himself sound so fierce, Spinello started to laugh. “Can you believe, sir, that before this war started I was more interested in the archaeology and literature of the Kaunian Empire than in how to outflank a fortified position?”

  “Life is to live. Life is to enjoy—till duty calls,” the colonel answered. “Me, I was a beekeeper. Some of the honeys my hives turned out won prizes at agricultural shows all over Algarve. Now, though, I have to pay attention to behemoths, not bees.”

  “I understand,” Spinello said. “If they’re sending us south, does that mean we aim to have another go at Durrwangen once the ground really gets hard?”

  “I can’t tell you for a fact, Major, because I don’t know,” the colonel said. “But if you can read a map, I expect you’ll draw certain conclusions. I would.”

  Now Major Spinello bowed. “I think you’ve answered me, sir. Where am I to pick up the drafts of men who will bring my regiment to full strength?”

  “We’ve taken over a couple of what used to be hostels down the street from the caravan depot,” the colonel replied. “At the moment, we’ve got a brigade just in from occupation duty in Jelgava. Three companies have your name on them. Speak with one of the officers there; they’ll take care of you. If they don’t, send them on to me and I’ll take care of them.” He sounded as if he relished the prospect.

  Spinello laughed again. “From Jelgava, eh? Poor bastards. They’ll be wondering what in blazes hit’em. And then they go down south? Powers above, they won’t enjoy that much. I hope they’ll be able to fight.”

  “They’ll manage,” the other Algarvian officer said. “This past winter, we had a brigade from Valmiera get out of its caravan in a blizzard in a depot the Unkerlanters were attacking right that minute. They gave Swemmel’s men a prime boot in the balls.”

  “Good for them!” Spinello clapped his hands together. “May we do the same.”

  “Aye, may you indeed,” the colonel agreed. “Meanwhile, though, go collar your new men. Make sure the ones you already have are able to climb into their caravan cars day after tomorrow. We’ll try not to halt’em at a depot where they have to fight their way off.”

  “Generous of you, sir,” Spinello said, saluting. “I’ll do everything you told me, just as you said. I won’t be sorry to go down south again.” He reached up and touched his own wound badge. “I owe the Unkerlanters down there a little something, that I do.”

  “And you believe in paying your debts?” the colonel asked.

  “Every one of them, sir,” Spinello answered solemnly. “Every single one—with interest.”

  “Hello, there,” Ealstan said to the doorman at Ethelhelm’s block of flats. “I got a message he wanted to see me.” He didn’t bother hiding his distaste. He wished he hadn’t come at all, but had ignored the band leader and singer who couldn’t break with the Algarvians.

  And then the doorman said, “You got a message from whom, sir?”

  Ealstan stared. This fellow had been letting him into the building for months so he could cast the singer’s accounts. Had he suddenly gone soft in the head? “Why, from Ethelhelm, of course,” he answered.

  “Ah.” The doorman nodded and looked wise. “I thought that might be whom you meant, sir. But I must tell you, that gentleman no longer resides here.”

  “Oh, really?” Ealstan said, and the doorman nodded again. Ealstan asked, “Did he leave a forwarding address?”

  “No, sir.” Now the doorman shook his head. His cultured veneer slipped. “Why do you want to know? Did he skip out owing you money, too?”

  Too? Ealstan thought. But he also shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, we were square. But why did he ask me to come here if he knew he was going to disappear?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” the doorman said. “He just up and left a couple of days ago. All kinds of people have been looking for him.” He sighed. “Powers above, you should see some of the women who’ve been looking for him. If they were looking for me, I’d make cursed sure they found me, I would.”

  “I believe that.” Ealstan decided to risk a somewhat more dangerous question: “Have the Algarvians come looking for him, too?”

  “Haven’t they just!” the doorman exclaimed. “More of those buggers than you can shake a stick at. And this one redheaded piece …” His hands described an hourglass in the air. “Her kilt was so short, I don’t hardly know why she bothered wearing it at all.” He made a chopping motion at his own knee-length tunic, just below crotch level, to show what he meant.

  Vanai had talked about seeing Algarvian women in the baths. Ealstan had no interest in them. He wondered what Ethelhelm had wanted, and what the musician was doing now. Whatever it was, he hoped Ethelhelm would manage to do it far from the Algarvians’ eyes.

  Aloud, he said, “Well, the crows take him for making me come halfway across town for nothing. If he ever wants me again, I expect he knows where to find me.” He turned and left the block of flats. With a little luck, I’ll never see it again, he thought.

  Someone had scrawled PENDA AND FREEDOM! on a wall not far from Ethelhelm’s building. Ealstan nodded when he saw that. He hadn’t felt particularly free when Penda still ruled Forthweg, but he hadn’t had standards of comparison then, either. King Mezentio’s men had given him some.

  He saw the slogan again half a block later. That made him nod even more. New graffiti always pleased him; they were signs he wasn’t the only one who despised the Algarvian occupiers. He hadn’t seen so many since the spate of scribbles crowing about Sulingen. The redheads, curse them, had proved they weren’t going to fold up and die in Unkerlant after all.

  When an Algarvian constable came round the corner, Ealstan picked up his pace and walked past the new scribble without turning his head toward it. He must have succeeded in keeping his face straight, too, because the constable didn’t reach for his club or growl at him.

  I’m well rid of Ethelhelm anyhow, Ealstan thought. He’d found a couple of new clients who between them paid almost as much as the musician had and who didn’t threaten to disappoint him with a friendship that would turn sour. His father had been friendly with his clients, but hadn’t made friends with them. Now Ealstan saw the difference between those two, and the reason for it.

  Not far from the ley-line caravan depot, a work gang was clearing rubble where an Unkerlanter egg had burst. Some of the laborers, the Forthwegians among them, looked like pickpockets and petty thieves let out of gaol so the Algarvians could get some work from them. The rest were trousered Kaunians taken out of their district.

  Ealstan hadn’t seen so many blond heads all together for a long time. He wondered why the Kaunian men hadn’t dyed their hair and used Vanai’s spell to help themselves disappear into the Forthwegian majority. Maybe they just hadn’t got the chance. He hoped that was it Or maybe they didn’t want to believe what the Algarvians were doing with and to their people, as if not believing it made it less true.

  The Forthwegians weren’t working any harder than they had to. Every so often, one of the redheads overseeing the job would yell at them. Sometimes they picked up a little, sometimes they didn’t. Once, an Algarvian whacked one of them in the seat of his tunic with a club. That produced a yelp, a few curses, and a little more work. The Kaunians in the ga
ng, though, labored like men possessed. Ealstan understood that, and wished he didn’t. The Forthwegians would sooner have been sitting in a cell. But if the Kaunians didn’t work hard, they’d go west and never, ever come back. Their lives depended on convincing the Algarvians they were worth their keep.

  A Forthwegian passing by called, “Hey, you Kaunians!” When a couple of the blonds looked up, he drew his finger across his throat and made horrible gurgling noises. Then he threw back his head and laughed. So did the Algarvian strawbosses. So did about half the Forthwegian laborers. The Kaunians, for some reason, didn’t seem to find the joke so funny.

  And Ealstan had to walk on by without even cursing his loutish countryman. He didn’t dare do anything that would draw the occupiers’ notice. His own fate was of no great concern to him. Without him, though, how would Vanai manage? He didn’t want her to have to find out.

  At the doorway to the flat, he gave the coded knock he always used. Vanai opened the door to let him in. After they kissed, they both said the same thing at the same time: “I’ve got news.” Laughing, they pointed to each other and said the same thing at the same time again: “You first.”

  “All right,” Ealstan said, and told Vanai of Ethelhelm’s disappearance. He finished, “I don’t know where he’s gone, I don’t know what he’s doing, and I don’t much care, not anymore. Maybe he even listened to me—maybe he’s gone off to find some quiet little place in the country where nobody will care where he came from or what he used to do as long as he pulls his weight.”

  “Maybe,” Vanai said. “That would be easier for him if he didn’t look as if he had Kaunian blood, of course. Maybe someone got my spell to him.”

  “Maybe somebody did,” Ealstan said. “For his sake, I hope somebody did. It would make things easier.” He paused, then remembered he wasn’t the only one with something on his mind. He pointed at Vanai and asked, “What’s your news?”

  “I’m going to have a baby,” she answered.

  Ealstan gaped. He didn’t know what he’d expected her to say. Whatever it was, that wasn’t it. For a couple of seconds, he couldn’t think of anything to say. What did come out was a foolish question: “Are you sure?”

  Vanai laughed in his face. “Of course I am,” she answered. “I have a perfectly good way to tell, you know. I was pretty sure a month ago. There’s no room for doubt now, not anymore.”

  “All right,” he mumbled. His cheeks and ears heated. Talk of such intimate details embarrassed him. “You surprised me.”

  “Did I?” Vanai raised an eyebrow. “I’m not surprised, not really. Or rather, the only thing I am surprised about is that it took so long to happen. We’ve been busy.”

  He heard her, but he wasn’t really paying much attention to what she said. “A baby. I don’t know anything about taking care of babies. Do you?”

  “Not really,” she said. “We can learn, though. People do. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any more people.”

  “We’ll have to think of a name,” Ealstan said, and then added, “Two names,” remembering it might be either boy or girl. “We’ll have to do … all sorts of things.” He had no idea what most of them were, but Vanai was right—he could learn. He’d have to learn. “A baby.”

  He walked past his wife into the kitchen, opened a jar of red wine, and poured two cups full. Then he went out to Vanai, handed her one, and raised the other in salute. They both drank. Vanai yawned. “I’m sleepy all the time. That’s another thing that’s supposed to be a sign.”

  “Is it?” Ealstan shrugged a shrug meant to show ignorance. “I’d noticed you were, but I didn’t think it meant anything.”

  “Well, it does,” she said. “You sleep as much as you can beforehand, because you won’t sleep once the baby’s born.”

  “That makes sense,” Ealstan agreed. “A baby.” He kept saying the words. He believed them, but in a different sense he had trouble believing them. “My mother and father will be grandparents. My sister will be an aunt.” He started to mention his brother also, started and then stopped. Leofsig was dead. He still had trouble believing that, too.

  Vanai’s mind was going down the same ley line. “My grandfather would be a great-grandfather,” she said, and sighed. “And he would grumble about miscegenation and halfbreeds as long as he lived.”

  Ealstan hadn’t cared about that. He didn’t think his family would, either. Oh, there was Uncle Hengist, Sidroc’s father, but Ealstan wasn’t going to waste any worry on him. “The baby will be fine,” he said, “as long as—”

  He didn’t break off quite soon enough. Vanai thought along with him again. “As long as Algarve loses the war,” she said, and Ealstan had to nod. She went on, “But what if Algarve doesn’t lose? What if the baby’s looks show it has Kaunian blood? Will we have to make magic over it two or three times a day till it can make magic for itself? Will it have to make magic for itself for the rest of its life?”

  “Algarve can’t win,” Ealstan declared, though he knew no certain reason why not. The redheads seemed convinced they could.

  But Vanai didn’t contradict him. She wanted to believe that as much as he did—more than he did. “Let me get supper ready,” she said. “It won’t be anything fancy—just bread and cheese and olives.”

  “That will be fine,” Ealstan said. “The way the redheads are stealing from us, we’re lucky to have that. We’re lucky we can afford it.”

  “That’s not luck,” Vanai answered. “That’s because you do good work.”

  “You’re sweet.” Ealstan hurried over to her and gave her another kiss.

  “I love you,” she said. They’d both been speaking Forthwegian; they almost always did these days. Suddenly, though, she switched to Kaunian: “I want the child to learn this language, too, to know both sides of its family.”

  “All right.” Ealstan replied, also in Kaunian. “I think that would be very good.” He was pleased he could bring the words out quickly. He pulled out a chair for Vanai. “If it is cheese and olives and bread, you sit down. I can fix that for us.”

  More often than not, she didn’t want him messing about in the kitchen. Now, with a yawn, she said, “Thank you.” After a moment, she added, “You speak Kaunian well. I’m glad.”

  Ealstan, of course, hadn’t learned it as his birthspeech. He’d acquired it from schoolmasters who’d stimulated his memory with a switch. Even so, he told the truth when he answered, “I am glad, too.”

  Comelu’s leviathan heartily approved of swimming south and west toward the outlet of the Narrow Sea, to the waters just off the coast of the land of the Ice People. He’d expected nothing different; Eforiel, the leviathan he’d ridden for King Burebistu of Sibiu, had also liked to make this journey. The tiny plants and animals that fed bigger ones flourished in the cold water off the austral continent.

  The leviathan cared nothing for tiny plants and animals. Whales fed on those, sieving them up with baleen. But the squid and mackerel and tunny that swarmed where food was so thick delighted the leviathan, delighted it so much that Cornelu sometimes had trouble persuading it to go where he wanted.

  “Come on, you stubborn thing!” he exclaimed in exasperation more affectionate than otherwise. “Plenty of nice fish for you to eat over here, too.” Despite taps and prods, the beast didn’t want to obey him. If it decided to go off on its own and eat itself fat, what could he do? Every so often, a leviathan-rider went out on a mission that looked easy and was never seen again … .

  Eventually—and, in fact, well before he could go from exasperated to alarmed—the leviathan decided there might be good eating in the direction he chose, too. That didn’t mean Cornelu could take it easy and not worry on the ride. Algarvian warships prowled the ley lines that ran south from occupied Sibiu. Algarvian leviathans swam in these seas, too. And Algarvian dragons flew overhead.

  Every day was longer than the one that had gone before. And, the farther south the leviathan swam, the longer the sun stayed in the heavens. At high s
ummer, daylight never ceased on the austral continent. The season hadn’t come to that yet, but it wasn’t far away.

  Ice floating in the sea foretold the presence of the austral continent: first relatively small, relatively scattered chunks, then bergs that loomed up out of the water like sculpted mountains of blue and green and white and bulked ever so much larger below the surface of the ocean. Somehow, leviathans could sense those great masses of underwater ice without seeing them, and never collided with them. Cornelu wished he knew how his beast managed that, but the finest veterinary mages were as baffled as he.

  In winter, the sea itself froze solid for miles out from the shore of the land of the Ice People. The icebergs Cornelu passed broke off from the main mass as sea and air warmed when the sun swung south in the sky once more.

  He and his leviathan had to thread their way through channels in the ice to the little settlement Kuusaman and Lagoan sorcerers had established east of Mizpah, on the long headland that jutted out toward the island the two kingdoms shared. A Kuusaman mage in a rowboat came out to bring Cornelu the last couple of hundred yards to shore.

  “Very good to see you,” the Kuusaman said in classical Kaunian, the only language they proved to have in common. He introduced himself as Leino. “Very good to see anyone who is not a familiar face, as a matter of fact. All the familiar faces have become much too familiar, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do,” Cornelu answered. “I suspect you would be even happier to see me if I were a good-looking woman.”

  “Especially if you were my wife,” the Kuusaman said. “But Pekka has her own sorcerous work, and I know as little about what she is doing as she knows about what goes on here.”

  “What does go on here?” Cornelu looked at the miserable collection of huts and camel-hide tents on the mainland. “Why would anyone in his right mind want to come here?”

  Leino grinned at him. “You make assumptions that may not be justified, you know.” The mage might smile and joke, but didn’t answer the question.