Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 26

"I think so, but then I've got you to tell me whether I'm right," Ethelhelm answered. "Everywhere we went, we played to sold-out houses. I've got a great big leather sack full of receipts that'll let you figure out whether we made any money while we were doing it."

"If you didn't make enough to pay me, I'm going to be upset with you," Ealstan said.

Both young men laughed. They knew it wasn't a question of whether Ethelhelm's band had made money, but of how much. The bandleader and drummer said, "I expect you'll find enough in the books for that, and who'll know whether it's really there or not?"

To any honest bookkeeper, that was an insult. Hestan would have been coldly furious to hear it, regardless of whether he showed his anger. Ealstan forgave Ethelhelm, reasoning the band leader knew no better. He said, "It's a wonder the Algarvians let you travel so widely."

"They think we help keep things quiet," Ethelhelm answered. "And I'll be cursed if I haven't had a good many Algarvian soldiers and functionaries listening to me this tour. They like what we're doing, too."

"Do they?" Ealstan said tonelessly.

"Aye." Ethelhelm didn't notice how Ealstan sounded. He was full of himself, full of what he and the band had done. "Everybody likes us, everybody in the whole kingdom. And do you know what? I think it's b.l.o.o.d.y wonderful."

More slowly than he should have, Ealstan realized Ethelhelm had already had a good deal of wine. That didn't keep his own anger from sparking, and he wasn't so good at hiding it as his father would have been. "Everybody, eh?"

"Aye--no doubt about it," Ethelhelm declared. "Laborers, n.o.blemen's sons--and daughters--recruits for the Brigade, even the redheads, like I said. Everybody loves us."

"Even Kaunians?" Ealstan asked.

"Kaunians." Ethelhelm spoke the word as if he'd never heard it before. "Well, no." He shrugged. "But that's not our fault. If the Algarvians would have let them listen to us, they would have loved us, too. Or I think so, anyhow. A lot of them aren't that keen on Forthwegian music, you know."

"So I do," Ealstan said, remembering Vanai's reaction when he'd smuggled her to a performance of the band.

"But I'll bet they would have liked us on this tour." Ethelhelm rolled on as if Ealstan had sat quiet. "These new songs we've been doing--it doesn't matter who you are these days. You'll like aem."

Now Ealstan did sit quiet. He didn't care for Ethelhelm's latest songs nearly so well as he'd liked the earlier ones. They still had the pounding rhythms that had made the band popular in the first place, but the words were just. . . words. They lacked the bite that had made some of Ethelhelm's earlier tunes grab Ealstan by the ears and refuse to let him go.

Sadly, he said, "Let me have that sack of receipts you were talking about, and I'll see how much sense I can make of it."

"Of course." Even drunk---both on wine and on his own popularity-- Ethelhelm remained charming. "Let me get them for you." He heaved himself up off the sofa and went back into the bedchamber, wobbling a little as he walked. He returned with the promised leather sack, which he thumped down at Ealstan's feet. "There you go. Let me know where we stand as soon as you have the chance, if you'd be so kind."

"I'll take care of it," Ealstan promised.

"I'll see you soon, then," Ethelhelm said--a dismissal if ever there was one. He didn't ask about Vanai, not a single, solitary word. He couldn't have forgotten her; he had an excellent memory. He just--couldn't be bothered? That was how it seemed to Ealstan.

He picked up the sack of receipts and headed for the door. The sack felt unduly heavy, as if it were more than leather and papers. Ealstan wondered if he were carrying Ethelhelm's spirit in there, too. He didn't say anything about that. After a while--as soon as he got outside Ethelhelm's block of flats--he decided he was imagining things: the sack weighed no more than it should.

Every trash bin, every gutter on the way home offered fresh temptation. Somehow, Ealstan managed not to fling the sack away or to drop it and then keep walking. He was sure no beautiful woman, no matter how wanton, could arouse his desires like the sight of an empty, inviting bin. But he resisted, though he doubted Vanai would have been proud of him for it.

When he gave the coded knock at the door to his flat, Vanai opened it and let him slip inside. "What have you got there?" she asked, pointing to the leather sack.

"Rubbish," he answered. "Nothing but rubbish. And I can't even throw it away, worse luck."

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "Those are Ethelhelm's things, aren't they?"

"Of course they are. What else would they be?"

"Why are you calling them rubbish, then?"

"Why? I'll tell you why." Ealstan took a deep breath and did exactly that. The more he talked, the more the outrage and sense of betrayal he'd had to hide while he was at Ethelhelm's bubbled to the surface. By the time he finished, he was practically in tears. "He's making all the money in the world--or all the money that's left in Forthweg, anyhow--and he's stopped caring about the things that got him rich in the first place."

"That's . . . too bad," Vanai said. "It's even worse because he probably does have some of my blood in him. Forgetting his own kind--" She grimaced. "Probably plenty of Kaunians who'd like to forget their own kind, if only the Forthwegians and Algarvians would let them." She set a hand on Ealstan's shoulder for a moment, then turned back toward the kitchen. "Supper's almost ready."

Ealstan ate in gloomy silence, even though Vanai had made a fine chicken stew. After sucking the last of the meat off a drumstick, he burst out, "I've been afraid this would happen since the first time the redheads asked his band to play for Plegmund's Brigade when those wh.o.r.esons were training outside of Eoforwic."

Vanai said, "It's not even treason, not really. He's looking out for himself, that's all. A lot of people have done a lot worse."

"I know," Ealstan said. "That's all Sidroc was doing, too: looking out for himself, I mean. That's how it starts. The trouble is, that's not how it ends." He thought of what had happened to Leofsig. Then he thought about what might happen to Vanai. He had been angry. Now, all at once, he was afraid.

Nine.

As happened so often when Pekka was intent on her work, a knock on the door made her jump. She came back to herself in some surprise; it was time to head for home, which meant that was likely her husband out there. Sure enough, Leino stood in the hallway. Only after she gave him a hug did she realize how grim he looked. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Sorceries making squibs instead of fires today?"

"No, the magic went about as well as it could," he answered. "But they're closing down my group, or most of it, even so."

The sentence made perfect grammatical sense. It still didn't mean anything to Pekka. "Why would they do that?" she asked. "It's crazy."

"Maybe so, but maybe not, too," Leino said. "They don't think so. They're calling just about every practical mage who's a man and under fifty into the military service of the Seven Princes--into the army or navy, in other words."

"Oh." Pekka deflated with the word, as a blown-up pig's bladder might have done after a pinp.r.i.c.k. "But how will they make better weapons if they send the sorcerers off to fight?"

"It's a good question," Leino agreed. "The other side of the silverpiece is, how can the soldiers fight without mages at the front to ward them and to use spells against the enemy?"

"But we haven't got that big an army," Pekka said.

"We haven't now, no. But we're going to," Leino said. "Come on; let's walk to the caravan stop. No use getting home late because of this, is there? I'm not going in tonight, or tomorrow, either. It won't be long, though." He started down the hall toward the door.

Numbly, Pekka followed. Having Olavin go into the army was one thing. Her brother-in-law would keep right on being a banker. He'd just be a banker for Kuusamo rather than for himself and his partners. If Leino went to war, he would go to war in truth.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, "You know, sweetheart, we're only just getting started in this war. We're going to need a lot of soldiers to fight the Gongs and the Algarvians both, and they're going to need a lot of mages. When the Algarvians smote Yliharma, that was a warning about how hard this fight would be. If we don't take it seriously, we'll go under."

"But where will the new things come from?" Pekka repeated as her husband held the door open so she could go outside.

He closed the door, then trotted a couple of steps to catch up with her as they walked across the campus of Kajaani City College. "From the mages who aren't men under fifty," he answered. "From the old men like your colleagues, and from women, too. We aren't Algarvians, after all, to think women worthless outside the bedroom."

"Will it be enough?" Pekka asked.

"How can I know that?" Leino said, all too reasonably. "It had better be enough--that's all I can tell you."

Two students, both young men, strode across their path. One of them looked back at Pekka. It meant nothing; it was no more than the way almost any man would eye an attractive woman. All of a sudden, though, Pekka hated him. Why wasn't he going into the army instead of Leino?

Because he doesn't know anything much. The thought echoed inside her head. She glanced over toward her husband. How unfair to have to go off and leave his family behind because he'd spent years learning to master a complex, difficult art. Knowledge was supposed to bring rewards, not penalties. Pekka reached out and squeezed Leino's hand as hard as she could. He squeezed back, nodding as if she'd said something he understood perfectly well.

A good-sized crowd had gathered at the caravan stop in the center of the campus, waiting to go back to their homes in town. A news-sheet vendor cried out headlines: "Algarvians send dragons by the score over Sulingen again! Town in flames! Thousands said to be dead!"

"If it weren't for the Strait of Valmiera, that could be us," Pekka said.

Leino shrugged. "We have trouble fighting Gyongyos and Algarve at the same time. Mezentio won't have an easy time warring on us and Lagoas and Unkerlant. He'd better not, anyhow, or we're all ruined."

"That's so." But then Pekka remembered how she'd thought the whole world was falling apart when the Algarvians made their sorcerous attack on Yliharma. "But we have scruples Mezentio's thrown over the side, too." And she clung to Leino, afraid of what would happen if he went to war against a kingdom whose mages didn't blink at slaughtering hundreds, thousands--for all she knew, tens of thousands--to get what they wanted.

"It'll be all right," Leino said, though he had no more certain way of knowing that than Pekka did.

She was about to tell him as much when the ley-line caravan came gliding up. Only a couple of people got off, one of them a grizzled night watchman who'd been patrolling the City College campus longer than Pekka had been alive. But even the Kuusamans, most of the time an orderly folk, jostled and elbowed one another as they swarmed onto the cars.

Pekka found herself with a seat. Leino stood by her, hanging on to the overhead railing. The caravan slid away toward the center of town and then toward the residential districts farther east. The fellow sitting beside Pekka got up and got off. She moved over by the window. Leino sat down beside her till the caravan got to the stop closest to their home.

They held hands all the way up the little hill that led up to their house, and to Elimaki and Olavin's beside it. Pekka smiled at Uto's excited squeal when Leino knocked on the front door. Elimaki was smiling when she opened the door, too--smiling in relief, unless Pekka missed her guess. Since Uto often made her feel that way, she could hardly blame her sister for being glad to hand back her son.

Uto came hurtling out. Leino grabbed him and tossed him in the air. "What did you do today?" his father asked.

"Nothing," Uto replied, which, if it meant anything, meant nothing Aunt Elimaki caught me at, anyhow.

"You look tired," Elimaki told Pekka.

"No, that's not it." Pekka shook her head. "But Leino"--she touched her husband on the arm--"has been called into the service of the Seven Princes."

"Oh!" Elimaki's hand leaped up to her mouth. She knew what that meant, or might mean. Aye, Olavin had gone into the service, too, but he probably wouldn't get anywhere near real fighting, not when he was as skilled at casting accounts as he was. The same didn't hold for Leino. Pekka's sister stepped forward and hugged him. "Powers above keep you safe."

"From your mouth to their ears," Leino said. Like everyone else, he surely knew the abstract powers had no ears. That didn't keep him--or a lot of other people--from talking as if they did.

Uto came out onto the front porch in time to hear what was going on. He had a gift for that. One day, he might make a fine spy. "Papa's going to go off and kill a bunch of stinking Gongs?" he exclaimed. "Hurray!"

He capered about. Above his head, his mother and father and aunt exchanged wry looks. "If only it were so simple," Pekka said sadly. "If only anything were so simple."

Leino ruffled Uto's coa.r.s.e black hair. "Come on, you bloodthirsty little savage," he said, his tone belying the harsh words. "Let's go home and have some supper."

"What's supper going to be?" Uto's tone implied that, if he didn't care for what was offered, he might not feel like going home.

But when Pekka said, "I've got some nice crabs in the rest crate," her son started capering again. He liked the soft, sweet flesh that lurked inside crabs' sh.e.l.ls. He liked cracking the sh.e.l.ls to get at the meat even better.

As usual with crabs, he made a hideous mess of himself during supper. Odds were he liked that best of all. Afterwards, Pekka heated water on the stove to add to the cold she ran into a basin. Uto didn't particularly like getting a bath, not least because Pekka spanked his bare wet bottom if he splashed too outrageously.

He played for a while after the bath. Then Leino read him a hunting story. After that, with only a token protest, he tucked his stuffed leviathan under his chin and went to sleep.

Pekka walked into the kitchen and came back with an old bottle of Jelga-van brandy and a couple of gla.s.ses. She poured drinks for herself and Leino. "What I'd really like to do is get so drunk I won't be worth anything for the next two days," she said. "Ilmarinen would do it--and then on the third day he'd come up with something n.o.body else would think of in the next hundred years."

"He's something, all right," Leino agreed. "But I don't want to talk about him, not tonight."

Pekka c.o.c.ked her head to one side and looked at him from the corner of her eye. "Oh?" she said, her voice arch. "What do you want to do tonight?"

"This," he said, and took her in his arms. After they'd kissed and caressed each other for a while, Pekka thought he would lead her back to the bedchamber. Instead, he pulled her tunic off over her head and lowered his lips to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Oh," she said softly, and pressed his head against her. But caution rea.s.serted itself. "What if Uto walks in and catches us?"

"Then he does, that's all," Leino answered. "We'll send him back to bed again with a warm backside, and then we'll get back to what we were doing."

Most nights, Pekka would have kept on arguing a good deal longer. Not tonight. She usually had a good healthy yen for her husband. Tonight, the way she stroked him, the way she took him in her mouth, the way she lay down in front of the fireplace and arched her hips so he could go into her felt as much like desperation as like pa.s.sion. The mewling noises she made deep in her throat as her own pleasure overflowed came far louder and wilder than usual.

Sweat slicked Leino's hair. It had very little to do with the fire only a few feet away. He grinned down at her. "I ought to get called into the service of the Seven Princes more often."

She poked him in the ribs, which made him grunt and twist away and pull out of her. She felt him go with a stab of regret. How many more chances would they have before the war swept them apart? Would they ever have more chances after the war swept them apart?

To her dismay, tears dripped from the corners of her eyes and spilled down onto the rug. Leino brushed them away. "It'll be all right," he said. "Everything will be all right."

"It had better be," Pekka said fiercely. She clutched him to her. Presently, she felt him stir against her flank. That was what she'd been waiting for. She rolled him onto his back and rode astride him--she knew that was easier for his second round, and knew how much she wanted one. It wouldn't solve anything--she knew as much, even while she threw back her head and gasped as if she'd run a long way. For now, though, she didn't have to think about all the things that might happen later. And that wasn't so bad.

The distant mutter ahead was the surf rolling up onto the rocky beaches of southern Valmiera. Cornelu glanced at the Lagoans his leviathan had borne across the Strait of Valmiera from Setubal. He spoke two words in their tongue: "Good luck."

One of them said, "Thanks." The other just nodded. They both let go of the leviathan's harness and struck out for the sh.o.r.e a few hundred yards away. Cornelu wondered if he'd ever see either one again. He doubted it. The Lagoans were brave, but they weren't showing much in the way of sense, not here.

Or maybe he had it wrong. He recognized the possibility. A lot was going on here, in the ocean, on the sh.o.r.e, and in the air above the little Valmieran village called Dukstas. Lagoan dragons flew overhead, dropping eggs all over the surrounding countryside and, with luck, keeping Algarvian footsoldiers from coming forward. Along with the saboteurs and spies who rode leviathans, Lagoan ships had brought along several regiments of soldiers. They were going up onto the beach even as Cornelu watched. For the first time, Lagoas was bringing the war home to the occupiers of Valmiera.

"But what do they expect?" Cornelu asked his leviathan, as if it knew and could answer. "Will a few regiments throw all the Algarvians out of this kingdom? Will the Valmierans rise up and fight the occupiers? Will it be a great victory? Or are they only throwing their men away to no purpose?"

Columns of smoke rose into the sky from Dukstas. King Vitor's thrust here had caught whatever Algarvian garrison the seaside hamlet held by surprise. For the moment, it belonged to the Lagoans. But now that they had it, what would they do with it?

"They do not think these things through," Cornelu said. Now that the leviathan had served him well for a while, he talked to it almost as he would have to Eforiel. "Will they storm on to Priekule, chasing Mezentio's men before them as they go? I have my doubts."

Maybe the Lagoans didn't have any doubts, because more and more men paddled ash.o.r.e in small boats. Cornelu supposed the Lagoans had chosen to attack Dukstas because a ley line ran close by the beach. Even if naval vessels couldn't come right up to the sh.o.r.e, they could let soldiers off close by. And they certainly had taken the Algarvians by surprise.

Even so, Mezentio's men were fighting back. Eggs splashed into the water around the Lagoan warships. One of them burst alarmingly close to Cornelu. The shock wave buffeted him and the leviathan. The beast, which felt it far more acutely than a man would, quivered in pain. A burst too near a leviathan could kill, as Cornelu knew too well.

But Mezentio's men didn't even know he and his leviathan were there. They were after the ships, which they could see. The naval vessels fought back with eggs of their own, and with heavy sticks. Those set more fires on the sh.o.r.e. Despite everything the navy could do, despite the dragons, an Algarvian egg struck home. A ship staggered in the water, staggered and fell off the ley line. Whether any more eggs. .h.i.t it or not, it wouldn't be going home to Setubal.

Cornelu looked up into the sky. Dragons wheeled and twisted there now. The Lagoans weren't having it all their own way, as they had when the attack on Dukstas began. The Algarvians were flying in beasts of their own from the interior of Valmiera. If they flew in enough of them--if they had enough of them to fly in--the ships here would be in a lot of trouble. One of the lessons of this war was that ships needed dragons to ward them from other dragons.

An older lesson, one dating from the Six Years' War, was that ships needed leviathans to ward them from other ships and leviathans. How long would the Algarvians take to start moving patrol craft from ports along the Strait of Valmiera to attack the Lagoan interlopers? Not long--Cornelu was sure of that.

He urged his leviathan away from the little Lagoan fleet. If--no, when-- Mezentio's sailors moved to the attack, he wanted to be ready to give them an unpleasant surprise. He knew the ley line along which the ships would be coming. As for leviathans. . . He grinned. With the beast he rode, he was willing and more than willing to take on any Algarvian leviathan around. He hadn't thought he would feel that way about any beast save Eforiel, but he'd turned out to be wrong.

An Algarvian dragon dove on one of the Lagoan ships. Cornelu could see the eggs slung under the dragon's belly. Beams from heavy sticks reached up for it. One of them found it before the dragonflier let the eggs drop. Burning and tumbling, the dragon fell into the sea. The ship kept gliding along the ley line.

"Up, my friend," Cornelu told his leviathan, and it rose in the water. He, of course, rose with it. Taking advantage of that, he peered inland. He couldn't see so much as he would have liked; smoke from the fires already burning in the seaside village obscured his view. But he could see that the Lagoan soldiers seemed to be making for some specific place in back of Dukstas, not fanning out all over the countryside. Maybe that meant they really did know what they were doing. He hoped so, for their sake.

n.o.body'd bothered to tell him what they were doing, though. He sighed. That was no tiling out of the ordinary.

And, sure enough, here came an Algarvian ship from the east, the first, no doubt, of many to a.s.sail the Lagoan fleet. Cornelu's lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage smile. The Algarvians had come too fast. They were intrepid, sometimes intrepid to a fault. Having got the order to attack the Lagoans, they'd piled into their patrol craft and charged out of whatever harbor housed it, eager to be first on the scene and make King Vitor's men pay.

"And here they are, out ahead of everyone," Cornelu murmured, "and the next thought of leviathans they have will be their first."