Through the Darkness d-3 Read online

  “Well, maybe we will. Here’s hoping, anyhow.” Rathar yawned. “I’m going back to my own feather bed now.” Vatran laughed at that. Like everyone else in the gullyside headquarters, Rathar slept on a cot in a tiny chamber scraped from the dirt and shored up with boards to keep the earthen roof from falling in if an Algarvian egg burst right overhead. A curtain over the entrance was the only sign of his exalted rank; not even Vatran had one. As he headed off to the chamber, Rathar looked back over his shoulder and added, “Wake me the instant you need me. Don’t be shy.”

  He said that whenever he went to bed. As always, Vatran nodded. “Aye, lord Marshal.” About a third of the time, Rathar got to sleep as long as he wanted; he was lucky in not needing a lot of sleep. A marshal who had to have eight hours every night would have been useless in wartime.

  Sure enough, someone shook him in the middle of the night. He came awake at once, as he always did, and tried to gauge the hour by the noise outside the curtain. It was pretty quiet out there. “What’s toward?” he asked.

  Usually, that would get him a crisp explanation from Vatran or from one of the junior officers in the cave. Tonight, he was answered by-a giggle? Whoever was there sat down on the cot beside him. “You threw them back, lord Marshal,” a low, throaty voice said. “Now we celebrate.”

  “Ysolt?” Rathar asked. He got another giggle by way of reply. He reached out-and touched smooth, bare flesh. His ears heated. “Powers above, Ysolt, I’m a married man!”

  “If your wife was here, she’d take care of this,” the cook answered. “But she’s not, so I’ll do it for her.”

  Before he could say another word-and whatever he said couldn’t be very loud, for he didn’t want anyone outside to find out what was going on in here-Ysolt pushed him over onto his back. She hiked up his tunic, yanked down his drawers, and took hold of him. His ears weren’t what heated then.

  Ysolt chuckled. “You see, lord Marshal? You’re as ready as the army was tonight.” She straddled him and impaled herself. Almost of their own accord, his arms came up and folded around her back. In the darkness, her mouth found his.

  And then the only thing he wondered was whether the cot would collapse under the strain of two good-sized people energetically making love. But it proved sturdier than he’d expected, and held. Ysolt gasped and quivered. A moment later, Rathar groaned.

  She kissed him on the cheek, then slid off him. A brief rustle was her putting on the tunic she’d shed before waking him. “Conqueror,” she whispered, and slipped out of the tiny chamber. Feeling more conquered than anything else, Rathar set his clothes to rights. Had they not been disarranged, he might have thought he’d been dreaming. A moment later, he was asleep again.

  “Do you think we got rid of those cursed Forthwegians by ourselves?” Garivald asked Munderic. He didn’t think so himself, not for a minute. Those bearded demons had given Munderic’s band of irregulars everything they wanted and then some.

  Munderic said, “I can’t tell you one way or the other. All I can tell you is, nobody’s seen the buggers anywhere around for the past week or so. They’re like a squall, is what they are. They blew in, they tore things up, and now they’ve blown out again.” He spat. “I’m cursed if I’m going to tell you I miss ‘em, either.”

  “They were trouble,” Garivald agreed. “Now that they’re gone, what do we do?”

  “Have to remind folks we’re still around,” Munderic said, and Garivald nodded. The band had spent most of its time deep in the woods since the Forthwegians outdid them at the game of ambush.

  “We ought to hit a Grelzer patrol,” Garivald said. “If we can send Raniero’s pups home with a jug tied to their tails, we’ll have things to ourselves for a while here.”

  “That’s so,” Munderic agreed. “The other thing we have to do is, we have to keep hitting the ley lines that run south and west. The harder the time the Algarvians have moving men forward, the better our armies will do.”

  Ley lines hardly seemed real to Garivald. Zossen had been a long way away from any of them; for all practical purposes, his home village lived as it had two centuries before, when all traffic moved on wheels or on the backs of beasts or men in summer and what traffic there was in winter went by sled. Even so, he nodded and said, “Aye, makes sense to me.”

  Munderic’s face was rarely cheerful. Now it went savage indeed. “And I’ll find out who sold us to the Forthwegians. When I do, he’ll die, but he’ll spend a long time wishing he was dead first.”

  Garivald nodded again. “Have to get rid of traitors,” he said. He wasn’t surprised there were some, though. He knew the irregulars had spies among the Grelzers who followed King Raniero: only natural the backers of the puppet king should try to return the favor.

  “Maybe Sadoc’ll be able to sniff out the son of a whore,” Munderic said.

  “Sadoc couldn’t sniff out a week-dead horse if you put him ten feet downwind of it,” Garivald said. “He’s a good fighter, Munderic. I’ll never say anything about his nerve. But he’s no mage, and you’ll get hurt if you count on him to be one.”

  The leader of the irregulars glared at him. “He knew the Forthwegians were coming down out of the north, not just along the path through the woods.”

  “All right. Have it your way. You will anyhow.” Back in Zossen, Garivald wouldn’t have got into an argument with Waddo the firstman. He didn’t argue with Munderic here. Arguing with a man who had more power than you did you no good. Even when you were right, you were wrong. Sometimes you were especially wrong when you turned out to be especially right.

  There was a song in that somewhere. Garivald felt it. He wondered if he ought to go looking for it. Ordinary peasants would laugh themselves silly. Firstmen and nobles and inspectors and impressers wouldn’t think it was so funny. He had no trouble figuring out what they’d do to someone who sang a song mocking them: about the same as the Algarvians would have done to him for singing songs about them.

  Munderic and the irregulars had rescued him when he wrote songs about the redheads. They wanted him to go right on doing it. Suppose by some miracle the war were won tomorrow. Suppose he went right on singing songs about firstmen and inspectors, songs as biting as the ones he sang about the Algarvians. When King Swemmel’s men came after him then, who would rescue him? Nobody he could think of.

  That made him wonder for the first time whether he’d chosen the right side. It also made him understand for the first time the men and women who followed Raniero of Grelz and not Swemmel of Unkerlant. He shook his head. Raniero was an Algarvian, propped up by the might of the Algarvians. And the redheads were even harder on the peasants of Unkerlant than Swemmel’s men.

  He looked up through the branches overhead. A dragon was circling in the sky, so high that it looked like nothing so much as a worm gliding on little batwings. But Garivald knew what sort of worm it was. He also knew-though he couldn’t see-whose great worm it was: it would surely be painted in the green and red and white of Algarve.

  What could the man on it see down here? Not much, Garivald hoped. He glanced around. No campfires burning, no cookfires burning: nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. He hoped nothing to draw a dragonflier’s eye. Maybe, after a while, the redhead up there would get sick of staring at trees and fly off.

  If Garivald hadn’t been looking up at the sky, maybe Sadoc wouldn’t have looked up, either. But nothing makes one man want to crane his neck like seeing another man already doing it. Sadoc spied the dragon in short order. He shook his fist at it. “Cursed thing!” he growled.

  “It’s a nuisance, all right,” Garivald agreed. “I don’t think the fellow on it knows we’re down here, though.”

  Sadoc shook his fist again. “I ought to knock it right out of the sky, that’s what I ought to do.”

  Garivald eyed him. “Can you?”

  Almost as if he were an Algarvian, Sadoc struck a pose redolent of affronted dignity. “Do you doubt me, songster? Do you doubt my magecraft?”

/>   Aye. Garivald knew he should have said it, but he didn’t. He’d already been too frank with Munderic. All he did say was, “It wouldn’t be easy, I don’t think.”

  “In a pig’s arse, it wouldn’t,” Sadoc snarled, drawing himself up with even more offended pride. “I can do it. I will do it, by the powers above.” He stomped off.

  Garivald thought of running after him to stop him. But Sadoc was bigger than he was, meaner than he was, and already angry at him. He didn’t think he could either talk the other irregular out of trying his magecraft or beat him in a fight. Instead, he hurried back to Munderic and told him what Sadoc had in mind.

  To his dismay, Munderic said, “Good for him. The Algarvians have been putting us in fear with their wizardry. High time we paid ‘em back in their own coin.

  “But what if something goes wrong?” Garivald said. “Then he won’t knock the dragon down, and he likely will give away where we’re hiding.”

  “You worry too much,” Munderic told him. “Sadoc isn’t as bad a mage as you think.”

  “No, he’s worse,” Garivald retorted. Munderic jerked his thumb in a brusque gesture of dismissal. Having just argued twice with the leader of the irregulars, Garivald supposed he understood why Munderic responded as he did. That didn’t mean he thought Munderic was right. It didn’t mean he thought Sadoc could sorcerously bring down a dragon, either.

  But Munderic wouldn’t listen. And Sadoc gave every sign of going ahead with his wizardry. A crowd of irregulars gathered round him, watching his preparations. Garivald wanted nothing to do with them. He strode away from what he feared would be the scene of a disaster-and almost bowled over Obilot, who was coming up to see what Sadoc was up to.

  “Don’t you want him to knock down the beast?” Obilot asked.

  “If I thought he could, I would,” Garivald said. “Since I don’t..” He started to snarl something, then bit it back. “Do you think he can?”

  Obilot pondered, then shook her head. “No. He’s not much of a mage, is he?”

  “Oh, good!” Garivald exclaimed. “Here’s another question for you: If he tries to bring down the dragon and doesn’t manage it, do you want to be anywhere close by?”

  Obilot considered that, too, but then she shrugged. “Probably won’t matter much. If he botches the job, this whole stretch of forest will catch it.”

  That bit of common sense made Garivald stop and think. He had to nod. “All right. Shall we see what happens?”

  Sadoc had started a fire from the embers of one of the morning’s cook-fires. He was throwing powders of one sort or another onto it, and incanting furiously while he did. Each new powder made the flames flare a different color-yellow, green, red, blue-and send up a new, noxious cloud of smoke. If the Algarvian dragonflier hadn’t spotted the irregulars’ campsite, he would in short order.

  Sure enough, the circles the dragon was making in the sky suddenly stopped being lazy. They grew smaller, more purposeful. “How long before he starts talking to his pals with his crystal?” Garivald murmured to Obilot.

  “With a little luck, Sadoc will bring him down before he can do that.”

  Obilot checked herself. “With a lot of luck.” She also spoke quietly. They might-they did-both doubt Sadoc’s ability, but they didn’t want him to hear any words of ill omen while trying to work magic that would benefit them if he could bring it off.

  He was giving it everything he had; Garivald couldn’t deny that. He pointed toward the dragon and cried out what sounded like a curse in a voice so loud, Garivald thought the Algarvian on the beast could have heard it. At the word of command, the smoke from the fire started to form into a long, narrow column aimed up toward the dragon. Awe trickled through Garivald-maybe Sadoc really could do what he claimed after all.

  But then, instead of rising through the branches of the trees and enveloping the dragon, the column of smoke fell apart as if a mischievous small boy had blown on it. Sadoc cried out again, this time in fury. Garivald and Obilot and the other irregulars cried out, too, in disgust. The smoke stank of rotten eggs and latrines and long-dead corpses and puke and sour milk and rancid butter and every other dreadful smell Garivald had ever know. It filled the camp with its horrible stench.

  It filled Garivald’s nose, too. His stomach lurched. An instant later, he was down on his knees, heaving his guts out. Obilot crouched beside him, every bit as sick as he was. “You were right,” she wheezed between spasms. “We should have tried to get away.”

  “Who knows-if it-would have helped?” Garivald answered. Tears streamed down his face.

  They weren’t the only irregulars bent over and heaving. Hardly anyone stayed on his feet. Munderic kept trying to curse Sadoc, then interrupting himself to vomit again. And Sadoc kept puking in the middle of his explanations.

  “See if I ever trust you again!” Munderic shouted before doubling up once more. Garivald tried to say, I told you so, but he kept on puking, too.

  And, no more than a quarter of an hour after the sorcery went awry, just when most of the irregulars could stand on their own two feet again, eggs started falling from the sky. They were centered on the fire with which Sadoc had thought to assail the Algarvian dragon. Men and women stumbled into the woods, some of them still vomiting. Garivald found a hole in the ground by falling into it. He lay there, having no strength to look for better shelter. Screams rose from irregulars even less lucky than he.

  At last, the Algarvians stopped pounding the encampment. Maybe they ran out of eggs, Garivald thought. He couldn’t think of anything else that would have made them stop. He got to his feet. Obilot was rising from another hole a few feet away. They gave each other shaky smiles, glad to be alive.

  “No more magecraft!” Munderic was screaming at Sadoc. “No more, do you hear me?” Garivald couldn’t make out what Sadoc answered. He just wished Munderic had done his screaming sooner.

  Vanai’s heart thudded. She hadn’t known such a blend of fear and hope and excitement since that time in the oak woods when she first decided to give herself to Ealstan. She glanced over to him. “You know what to do in case this goes wrong?”

  “Aye.” He held up the leaf of paper she’d given him. “I recite this and, if the powers above are in a kindly mood, it cancels the whole spell, including whatever’s gone awry.” He looked anything but sure the counterspell would perform as advertised.

  Since Vanai wasn’t sure it would, either, she said, “I hope you won’t have to worry about it.” She took a deep breath. “I begin.”

  This time, the spell was in Kaunian. Logically, she knew that didn’t matter; mages who worked in Forthwegian-or Algarvian-could perform as well as any others. But, as soon as the first words fell from her lips, she felt far more confident than she had when reciting the muddy, muddled Forthwegian spell in You Too Can Be a Mage. Here, in this version she’d shaped, was what that spell should have said. Rightness seemed to drip from every word.

  She hadn’t changed the passes much, nor the contact between the lengtlis of golden and dark brown yarn. The trouble had lain in the words. She’d known as much when she tried the Forthwegian version. Now she’d fixed those words, or thought she had.

  I’ll know soon. She wanted to look at Ealstan, to judge by his expression how things were going. But she didn’t. She made herself concentrate on what she was doing. She was no great mage. She would never make a great mage, and knew as much. But that was all the more reason to concentrate. A great mage might get away with a lackluster bit of sorcery. She never would. She knew that, too.

  “Transform!” she said, first in the imperative-a command to the spell-and then in the first person indicative-a statement about herself. And then she did let her eyes go to Ealstan. Either the spell had worked, or it hadn’t.

  To her intense relief, Ealstan still looked like his Forthwegian self. She hadn’t given him the seeming of a Kaunian, as she had in her last foray into magecraft. But what, if anything, had she done to herself? She looked down at her hands.
They hadn’t changed, not to her eyes. But then, they wouldn’t have. She couldn’t see the effects of a transformation spell on herself, not even in a mirror.

  Ealstan’s eyes widened. Something had happened to her, but what? When he didn’t say anything, Vanai asked, “Well? Am I still me, or do I look like a golden grasshopper?”

  He shook his head. “No, not a golden grasshopper,” he answered. “As a matter of fact, you look just like Conberge.”

  “Your sister? A Forthwegian? Really?” Vanai sprang out of her chair and threw herself into his lap. After she kissed him, she leaped up again. She wanted to bounce off all the walls at once, because the flat would imprison her no more. “A Forthwegian! I’m free!”

  “Hang on.” Ealstan did his best to sound resolutely sensible. “You’re not going out into Eoforwic just yet.”

  Vanai put her hands on her hips. “And why not?” She did her best to sound dangerous. “I’ve been cooped up here the past year and a half. If you think I’m going to wait one instant longer than I have to, you’d better think again.” She glared at him as fiercely as she could.

  Instead of intimidating him, the glare made him laugh. “Now you look the way Conberge does when she’s mad at me. But I don’t care whether you’re mad at me or not. I’m not going to let you go out that door till we find out how long the spell lasts. Wouldn’t do for you to get your own face back in front of a couple of redheaded constables, would it?”

  As much as she wanted to stay angry at him, Vanai discovered she couldn’t. He was sensible, and he’d just proved it. “All right,” she said. “I don’t suppose I can quarrel with that. And I don’t suppose”-she sighed- “another little while in here will matter too much. But oh! — I want to get out so much.”

  “I believe it,” Ealstan said. “How long do you think the spell will last?”