Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 11

"No, none of King Swemmel's men in these parts," Istvan said. "No chance of that at all."

"Goat s.h.i.t," Kun said. They both laughed, though it wasn't really funny. Snipers and holdouts took a constant toll on the Gyongyosians trying to force their way through the vast pine forests of western Unkerlant. Endless ferns and tree trunks to hide behind; endless branches on which to perch; endless foliage with which to conceal. . . no, rooting out the enemy was next to impossible. Kun looked now this way, now that. He knew, as the guides had not, that where there was one sniper, there were likely to be more.

Somewhere up ahead, eggs were bursting. Istvan wondered who was tossing them at whom. With the breeze blowing from out of the east, bringing the sound toward his ears, he had trouble being sure. He hoped those eggs were landing on the Unkerlanters' heads.

"Come on! Come on!" That was Captain Tivadar's voice. Istvan relaxed a little; if he'd found his company commander, he'd brought the squad somewhere close to where it was supposed to be. Tivadar caught sight of him and waved. "The party's up ahead."

"Aye." Istvan turned to his men. "Come on, you lugs. Back into the line we go."

"Not enough time pulled back, and we didn't pull back far enough, either," Szonyi said. Istvan remembered when he'd been new to the game. He wasn't any more. He picked the same thing to complain about as Istvan would have, or, for that matter, as a fellow who'd been in the army since before Istvan was born would have.

"They can't very well give us a proper leave, not when it's a week's march back to the nearest ley line that could take us anywhere worth going," Istvan told him. Istvan had been a sergeant long enough by now to know how to squelch grumblers, too.

"Then they cursed well ought to bring some wh.o.r.es forward," Szonyi said. Since Istvan thought that was a good idea, too, he didn't argue any more.

Captain Tivadar fell into step beside him. "Swemmel's boys are up to something," he said. "n.o.body knows what yet, but they haven't been standing and fighting the past couple of days the way they would before."

"Maybe they finally know they've been licked." Istvan threw up a hand. Tivadar sputtered raucous laughter all the same. Istvan went on, "No, I didn't mean it. They're tough, no doubt about it."

"And they've got more lines in these woods than a thief has on his back after he takes his forty lashes," Tivadar added. "No, if they don't fight now, it's because they're plotting something nasty for later."

"Aye, you're likely right, sir," Istvan agreed with a sigh.

More eggs burst, closer now. Istvan looked around for the nearest hole in which he could hide, something he did as automatically as he breathed, and because he wanted to keep breathing. That also made him take more notice of the forest through which he was marching. Tivadar noticed him noticing; the captain didn't miss much. "You see what I mean?"

"Aye," Istvan said again, nodding. "If they'd fought the way they usually do, the woods here would be beaten flat. Instead, most of the trees are still standing."

"That's what I'm talking about," the company commander agreed. "When they've always done one thing and they all of a sudden change to another, anybody with any sense starts wondering why."

An egg burst close enough to send branches crashing down only a few strides away. "They haven't quite given up yet," Istvan remarked dryly.

Tivadar chuckled. "No, it doesn't seem that way, does it? But it's not the same kind of fight as it has been, and I don't trust it."

The breeze from out of the east blew smoke into Istvan's face. He coughed a couple of times. A moment later, he smelled something else: the sickly-sweet reek of corruption. Sure enough, a few paces farther on he strode past a bloated corpse in a rock-gray tunic. He jerked a thumb toward it. "Good to see we got one of those sons of goats, anyhow."

"Oh, we've hurt them," Tivadar said. "But what they've done to us .. ."

"The whole cursed country is too big and too far from everything to make it easy to fight over," Istvan said. "We can't get at it, and the Unkerlanters can't get very many men into it, either. But as long as they can keep us from getting into country that really is worth something, they're ahead of the game."

"That's about the size of it," Captain Tivadar agreed. The breeze out of the east picked up, and tried to lift his service cap off his head. He tugged it down over his curly hair. "Sooner or later, we will break out. Then, by the stars, we'll make them pay. Till then ..." He grimaced. "Till then, the debt just keeps getting bigger."

Cries echoed through the forest as Istvan's squad neared the front. He had trouble sorting out Gyongyosians and Unkerlanters. No matter which kingdom wounded men came from, their moans and screams sounded very much alike. Telling how far away the racket came from wasn't easy, either. Istvan kept expecting attackers to burst out of the bushes at any moment, only to realize a heartbeat later that the noises he'd heard came from a long way off.

"They've stopped tossing eggs," Tivadar said. He frowned and plucked a hair from his beard. "I wonder why. They've got more egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs than we do: they don't have to manhandle them over the mountains to get them here."

"Only the stars know why Unkerlanters do things." But Istvan frowned, too. "When they don't do what they usually do, you wonder what they're up to, like you said."

"You'd better, too, if you want to keep the stars shining on you," the company commander answered. He started to say something else, but coughed a couple of times instead. "Smoke's getting thick."

"Aye, it is." Istvan's eyes stung and watered. He pointed east. "It's coming from that way, too. Maybe Swemmel's men are burning themselves up, and that's why they aren't using their egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs." He laughed, then coughed himself. "Too much to hope for."

"No doubt it is," Tivadar said, "but we have to--"

Before he could tell Istvan what the Gyongyosians had to do, a couple of his countrymen burst out of the woods ahead. Istvan almost blazed them for Unkerlanters. But Swemmel's men didn't wear leggings or bushy yellow beards, and they didn't yell, "Fire!" at the top of their lungs in his language, either.

While Istvan was gaping, Captain Tivadar rapped out, "Where? How bad?"

"Bad," the men said in the same breath. One of them added, "The accursed goat-eaters have fired the whole forest against us." And then, without waiting for any more questions, they both dashed off toward the west.

Istvan and Tivadar stared at each other. While they were staring, the breeze--no, more than a breeze now, a freshening wind--blew thick smoke into their faces. They both coughed, and both looked as if they wished they hadn't. Istvan heard other shouts of, "Fire!" He also heard more Gyongyosian soldiers plunging through the woods, fleeing the flames.

And then he heard the fire itself, crackling with insane glee. A moment later, he saw it through the branches and brambles ahead: a wall of flames, licking up tree after tree and advancing on him as fast as a man could walk. He turned to Tivadar. "What do we do, sir?"

"We--" The company commander bit back whatever he'd been about to say and answered, "We fall back. What else can we do? It'll cook us if we stay." He shook his fist at the fire, and at the Unkerlanters behind it. "May the stars never shine on them! Who would have thought to use fire as a weapon of war?"

Whoever had thought of it had had a good idea. Istvan didn't need to order his squad away from the flames; he had to work to keep them from fleeing like so many panicked horses. He had to work to keep panic from sinking its teeth into him, too. The fire was frightening in a way war wasn't. It wasn't trying to kill him; it was just doing what it did, and the only thing he could do about it was run.

Run he did, hoping he could go faster than the flames. Behind him--ever closer behind him, it seemed--trees turned into torches. Smoke got thicker and thicker, till he could hardly breathe, could hardly tell in which direction he should run. Away from the flames--that was all he knew.

At last, when he was beginning to wonder how much farther he could run, he plunged into the bog from which he'd emerged earlier that day. He slogged into the mud, rejoicing at what he'd cursed then. Now the fire had trouble following. He shook his fist at it, as Tivadar had shaken his fist at the Unkerlanters who'd started it. When the flames died down, he and his comrades would go forward again. And what would King Swemmel's men have waiting for them then?

For the first time in a very long while, the Marchioness Krasta made the acquaintance of someone who not only could outshout her but paid no attention to her desires whatever. Her maidservant Bauska's b.a.s.t.a.r.d by the Algarvian Captain Mosco, a girl the mother had named Malya, howled as loud as she wanted whenever she wanted.

"Powers above," Krasta complained to Colonel Lurcanio. "You'd think the mansion would be big enough to shield me from the racket of a squalling brat, but it isn't. Doesn't she ever shut up?"

"She is in training to become a woman," Krasta's lover replied in Valmieran with only a slight trilling accent. She glared, which only made the Algarvian n.o.bleman laugh. He said, "Perhaps we will go out to supper tonight. Then you will not have to listen to this noise that so distresses you."

"Good," Krasta said. "Anything to get away. And Bauska is just useless-- useless, I tell you. If this is what having a baby does to a woman, I'm glad I haven't had any."

"Even so." Lurcanio scratched at the new pink scar on his forehead, one of the souvenirs of the concealed egg that had burst at a Valmieran n.o.ble's mansion. The redheads still hadn't arrested anyone for that. Krasta wished they would. For one thing, the egg might have harmed her, too. For another, Lurcanio grew quite tediously dull when he tried to track the culprit, whoever he was.

"Where shall we go?" Krasta asked, trying to decide what she felt like eating.

"I had in mind the Imperial," Lurcanio answered. "I've seen talk about that place in romances two hundred years old. It would be a shame not to get to know it while I am in Priekule."

"All right," Krasta said. "I've heard the service is slow there, though." Normally, she hated anything that smacked of delay, but now she brightened. "So much the better. The longer I'm away from the baby, the better I'll like it."

"Babies are enjoyable--in moderation," Lurcanio said.

Krasta thought babies were enjoyable, too--at a distance, preferably a distance of several miles. With the prospect of supper before her, her mind turned to more important things. "What shall I wear?" she murmured. She couldn't make up her mind down here in Lurcanio's office; she needed to see what was in her closet. Making her excuses to the Algarvian, she hurried back to her own wing of the mansion and upstairs to her bedchamber.

For a wonder, Malya wasn't screeching her head off. That let Krasta go through her wardrobe in peace. But it didn't make her any more decisive than she would have been otherwise. She had so many clothes, she needed help narrowing down her choices.

"Bauska!" she shouted. If the brat was taking a nap, Krasta's serving woman could start earning her keep again. When Bauska didn't come right away, Krasta called for her again, even louder.

Malya started to cry. Krasta cursed. Bauska came into her bedchamber a moment later, carrying her daughter and wearing a resentful expression. Reproach in her voice, she said, "She was asleep, milady."

"If she was asleep, you should have come in here faster," Krasta answered, a retort that made perfect sense to her. She glowered at Bauska. The serving woman was still doughy and fat, with a pale face marred by purple circles under her eyes. Malya woke her up all the time. Malya sometimes woke Krasta, too, which infuriated the marchioness.

"How may I serve you?" Bauska asked through clenched teeth. She rocked the baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms.

"Help me pick an outfit," Krasta said. She'd given that order any number of times before. Bauska was efficient about obeying it. Once she'd got Krasta to choose a pair of dark green trousers, picking three tunics that went with them let her mistress decide which one she wanted: a coppery shade brighter than that of Lurcanio's hair, which was going gray. As Bauska withdrew, Krasta pursued her with words: "There. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

It was, in fact, easy enough that she could have done it herself. But what point to having servants if you didn't use them?

When she came downstairs, Colonel Lurcanio beamed and kissed her hand. "Do you see?" he said. "You can, if you put your mind to it, look lovely even without making me wait."

"I don't want you to take me for granted," Krasta answered. And that was true in ways she hoped Lurcanio didn't fully grasp. If she began to bore him, all he had to do was crook a finger to get himself another mistress. That was how things were in occupied Valmiera these days. Of course, he might also crook his finger so if she angered him, a point that didn't cross her mind.

He laughed now. "I may do many things," he said, "but I would never be so rash as to do that. Let's go."

As always, Krasta missed the bright lights Priekule had shown before the war. Lurcanio's driver, an Algarvian like his master, got lost a couple of times, and finally had to ask a patrolling Valmieran constable for directions to the Imperial. Even when he got there, Krasta wasn't sure he had; the restaurant, like every other building in the capital, remained dark on the outside to make things difficult for Lagoan dragons.

The entry hall was dark, too. Only after a servitor closed the door did he open the black curtains at the other end of the hall. The sudden brilliance he revealed made Krasta's eyes water, almost as if she'd looked up at the noonday sun.

Lurcanio blinked a couple of times, too. As a fawning waiter escorted Krasta and him to the table, he said, "Eateries with indifferent food keep things dark, so you don't know exactly what you're getting. The Imperial, now, the Imperial has confidence."

"Yes, sir, we do," the waiter said, drawing out Krasta's chair so she could sit down. "I hope, sir, when your meal is done, you will be able to tell me our establishment deserves to have such confidence."

"I hope so, too," Lurcanio answered. "As a matter of fact, I had better be able to." His smile had sharp edges, reminding the waiter who was occupier and who occupied. The fellow gulped, nodded, and fled.

When he returned, he brought menus and a list of potables. Krasta chose a dark ale, Lurcanio wine from the Marquisate of Rivaroli. "An excellent selection, sir," the waiter said.

"I think so," Lurcanio said. "Now that Algarve has taken Rivaroli back from Valmiera, the least I can do is take a bottle of her wine." That sent the waiter away in a hurry again. Krasta stared across the table in some annoyance; she'd been ready to order supper, too, and now she couldn't.

She looked around the Imperial. More than half of the men eating supper were Algarvians. The blond men with them had the sleek look of those who'd done well for themselves since Valmiera fell to King Mezentio's men. Their yellow-haired lady friends were almost as elegant, almost as lovely, as those who accompanied the redheads.

Idly, Lurcanio asked, "Does the name Pavilosta mean anything to you?"

"Pavilosta?" Krasta shook her head. "It sounds like it ought to be a town. Is it? Out in the provinces somewhere, I suppose. Who cares where?" As far as she was concerned, the civilized world ended a few miles outside of Priekule. Oh, it had extensions in fashionable resorts, but she was certain Pavilosta wasn't among them. She would have known more about it if it were.

"Aye, out in the provinces," Lurcanio said. "You would not by any chance have got a letter from there lately?"

"Powers above, no!" Krasta exclaimed. She wasn't clever in most senses of the word, but she did have a certain shrewdness to her. Pointing at her companion, she went on, "And if I had, you'd know about it before I did."

Lurcanio chuckled. "Well, I hope I would, but you never can tell."

He might have said more, but the waiter came back with his wine and Krasta's ale. This time, Krasta got to order. She chose the pork chop stuffed with crayfish meat. "Ah, you'll enjoy that, milady," the waiter said. He turned to Lurcanio and dipped his head. "And for you, sir?"

"Roast chicken--dark meat, not white," Lurcanio answered. "Very simple--just brush it with olive oil, garlic, and pepper. All the rich things you Valmierans eat, I marvel that you're not round as footb.a.l.l.s."

"We'll need a little time to prepare it that way, sir," the waiter warned. Lurcanio nodded in acquiescence. The waiter departed once more.

"If you come to a place like this, you shouldn't be simple," Krasta said. Simplicity, to her mind, was anything but a virtue.

Lurcanio had different ideas. "Done well, simplicity makes for the highest art," he said. Krasta shook her head again. No, that wasn't how she looked at the world. With a whimsical shrug, Lurcanio changed the subject: "Shall we return to the uninteresting village of Pavilosta?"

"Why, if it's so uninteresting?" Krasta asked, sipping her ale. "Let's talk about interesting things instead. How many drops of poppy juice do you suppose I'd have to give Bauska's little b.a.s.t.a.r.d to make her stop yowling so much?"

"I am a good many things, but an apothecary I am not," Lurcanio replied. "You might silence the baby for good if you gave it too much. I do not think this a good idea."

"That's because you don't have to listen to it--except when you're up in my bedchamber, that is," Krasta said. "When you're over in the west wing, you probably don't even know when it's pitching a fit."

Instead of answering that, Lurcanio made a steeple of his fingertips. "If you brother the marquis were still alive, do you think he would have done his best to reach you and let you know his situation?"

"Skarnu?" Krasta raised an eyebrow. She didn't think of her brother much these days--what point, when he hadn't come home from Valmiera's debacle? "Aye, I think so. I'm sure of it, in fact."

Lurcanio eyed her, not as a man eyes a woman but more like a cat eyeing a mouse. She glared at him; she didn't care for that. More often than not, he ignored her glares. This time, he looked away. "It could be," he said at last. "The investigators in those parts do not know everything there is to know. They've proved that often enough--too often, in fact."

"What are you talking about?" Krasta asked crossly.

"Nothing," Lurcanio answered with another fine Algarvian shrug. "It might have been something, but it turns out to be nothing." He sipped the golden wine he'd ordered, then nodded solemn approval.

"I'll tell you what," Krasta said. "If I ever get a letter from my brother--or from anyone else in this Pavilosta-in-the-wilderness place--you'll be the first to know about it."

"Oh, I expect I will, my dear--you said so yourself," the Algarvian colonel answered with a laugh. Krasta took offense at its tone. They might have squabbled some more, but the waiter chose that moment to bring their suppers on a tray. Not even Krasta felt like quarreling when faced with that lovely food. And Lurcanio, having tasted his chicken, said, "Aye, simplicity is best." He beamed at Krasta. "You prove that every day, my dear." She smiled back, taking it for a compliment.

Pekka sat in her Kajaani City College office staring up at the ceiling, staring up through the ceiling. After a long stretch where the theoretical sorcerer scarcely moved, she bent to the paper in front of her and scribbled two quick lines and then, after a moment, another. A smile chased the abstracted expression she had worn from her broad, high-cheekboned face.

This is real sorcery, she thought. The other part, the part that goes on in the laboratory, that hardly matters. Without this, laboratory experiments would be nothing but guesswork.

Plenty of mages would have disagreed with her. That bothered her not at all. Her husband was one of those mages. That bothered her only a little. Leino was good at what he did. And I, by the powers above, am good at what I do, too, Pekka thought.

Through her open window, she heard a mason's trowel sc.r.a.ping across mortar as he set bricks in place to repair a wall damaged in a laboratory accident. That was all most people knew about what had happened here a few weeks before. Pekka devoutly hoped it was all the Algarvians knew about what had happened here. She, though, she knew better.

After looking up at the ceiling a while longer, she wrote another line and slowly nodded. One step at a time, she and Siuntio and Ilmarinen were learning more about the energy that lay at the heart of the relationship between the laws of contagion and similarity. The hole in the wall the mason was repairing was one of the lessons the master mages hadn't learned quite so well as they thought they had.

"If we figure out how to release the energy where and when we need it, we can shake the world," Pekka murmured.

Sometimes, thinking about what they might do terrified her and made her wish they'd never started down this ley line. But whenever she thought about what Mezentio's wizards had done first against Unkerlant and then to Yliharma, the capital of her beloved Kuusamo, she hardened her heart. The Algarvians hadn't needed the new sorcery to shake the world. Old-fashioned sorcery on a large and bloodthirsty scale had been plenty for that.

We won't slaughter people to get what we want, Pekka thought. We won't, no matter what. I would sooner see Kuusamo plunge into the Bothnian Ocean. And with this new sorcery, we won't have to.

Kuusamo wouldn't have to, if Pekka and her colleagues could gain the understanding they needed. If they didn't, the land of the Seven Princes was liable to plunge into the sea. Pekka stared down at her latest sheet of calculations. If she couldn't come up with answers fast enough ... She'd never imagined that sort of pressure.

When someone knocked on the office door, she jumped in surprise. It was still light outside, but it would stay light outside the whole day through, or almost. Kajaani lay so far south, it made the most of summer.

Pekka opened the door. There stood Leino. "Another day done," her husband said. He worked in neat chunks of time, not as mood and inspiration struck him.

"Let me pack up my things," Pekka said. She didn't leave calculations lying around the office, as she had in safer, happier, more innocent times.

"How's it going?" Leino asked as they walked across the campus toward the caravan stop where they'd board the car that would take them close to their home.

"Pretty well," Pekka answered. She gave her husband a wry grin. "I always seem to do my best thinking just before you come and get me." The breeze, smelling of the sea, blew a lock of her coa.r.s.e black hair across her face. She flipped it back with a toss of the head.

"Aye, that's the way of it," Leino agreed. "I hope I didn't knock right in the middle of an inspiration, the way I have a few times."

"No, it wasn't too bad," she said. "I'd just written something down, so I have a fair notion of where I ought to be going when I pick up in the morning." She sighed. "Now I have to hope the ley line I'm traveling actually leads somewhere."