Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 30

Then she smiled. Ilmarinen would know. Siuntio would, too, no doubt, but she still fought shy of bothering him. She didn't so much with Ilmarinen; he lived both to bother and to be bothered.

When she attuned her crystal to his, she found his image looking out of the gla.s.s at her a moment later. "Well, what now?" he asked. "An a.s.signation, because your husband's not at home? I can be there in a few hours, if you like."

"You are a filthy old man," Pekka said, to which the senior theoretical sorcerer responded with an enormous grin and a big nod of agreement. Telling herself she should have expected as much, she asked, "How do I go about getting a courier to deliver a letter for me?"

Ilmarinen might have made more suggestive banter. Pekka watched him think about it and, to her relief, decide against it. He said, "You'd do best to talk to Prince Jauhainen's men, I think. He's not half the man his uncle was, but he can manage that for you--he'd cursed well better be able to, anyhow."

"Expecting anyone to match up to Prince Joroinen is asking a lot," Pekka replied. "But that's still a good notion---his folk will know enough of what I'm doing that I won't have to do any more explaining. Thank you. I'll try it."

"Who's the letter to?" Ilmarinen asked.

"The Lagoan named Fernao," Pekka said; she wouldn't mention Fernao's trade by crystal, not when emanations might be stolen. She did add, "You know him, don't you?"

"Oh, aye--a most inquisitive fellow, Fernao is." Ilmarinen set a finger by the side of his nose. "I see: you're arranging an a.s.signation with him, not with me. I must be too old and ugly for you."

"And too crackbrained, to boot," Pekka snapped. Ilmarinen crowed laughter, delighted at getting a rise out of her. She glared. "I'll have you know he was wounded down in the land of the Ice People."

"What a painful place to be hurt," Ilmarinen exclaimed. Pekka refused to acknowledge that in any way, which wasn't easy. Ilmarinen shrugged. "Anything else?" he asked. Pekka shook her head. "So long, then," he told her, and vanished from the crystal. It glowed for a moment, then went back to being nothing but a gla.s.sy sphere.

Pekka activated her crystal again. Sure enough, Prince Jauhainen's aide-- who'd served Prince Joroinen before he died in the Algarvians' sorcerous a.s.sault on Yliharma--promised to send a man, and the fellow arrived not much later. Pekka gave him the letter and went back to work.

It went better than she'd thought it would. Maybe that was because she, like Fernao, had written in cla.s.sical Kaunian: composing in a language not her own, especially one so different from Kuusaman, forced her to think clearly. Or maybe, though she hadn't thought so, she'd just needed a break from what she was doing.

Pretty soon, I'll be ready to go back into the laboratory again, she thought. If Siuntio or Ilmarinen comes up with something interesting, it'll be sooner yet. Those were notions she'd had several times since she'd started probing the relationship at the heart of the laws of similarity and contagion. Now, though, she had a new one: I wonder what Fernao is making of this as he catches up to us. She hoped the Lagoan was well and truly impressed. If he wasn't, he should have been.

Without Leino to come knock on her door, she had to pay more attention to leaving for home at the right time. She'd been very late one day when Uto had been even more inventive than usual, and her sister Elimaki, usually the best-natured woman around, had screamed at her when she finally came to get her son. She didn't want that to happen again.

As she chanted the spells that would secure her calculations in her desk till she came for them in the morning, she wondered if they were as strong as they might be. Oh, she was sure they would foil a burglar looking for whatever he could sell for a little cash, but who was more likely to want to break into her office: that kind of burglar or an Algarvian spy?

Ilmarinen will know if the spells are good enough, she thought. Ilmarinen had a raffish distrust of his fellow man Siuntio couldn't come close to matching. Siuntio was more brilliant, but Ilmarinen lived in--reveled in--the real world.

The real world hit her in the face when she walked across the Kajaani City College campus to the ley-line caravan stop to wait for a car to take her home. The news-sheet vendor at the stop was shouting word of the Algarvian breakthrough into the outskirts of Sulingen. "Trapani says it's so, and Cot-tbus doesn't deny it!" he added, as if that proved everything. Maybe it did; she'd got used to evaluating war claims out of the west by splitting the difference between what the Algarvians and the Unkerlanters said. If the Unkerlanters weren't saying anything. . . Pekka shook her head. That wasn't a good sign.

And the grim look on Elimaki's face when Pekka came to pick up Uto wasn't a good sign, either. Pekka wanted to throw up her hands. "What now?" she asked, and scowled at her son. "What did you do today?"

"Nothing," Uto replied, as sweetly as he always did when he'd committed some new enormity.

"He learned a little spell," Elimaki said. "Powers above only know where children pick these things up, but they do. And he's your son and Leino's, so he has talent, too--talent for trouble, that's what."

"What did you do? Pekka asked Uto, and then, realizing she wouldn't get an answer from him, she turned to Elimaki. "What did he do?"

"He animated the dog's dish, that's what, so it chased poor Thumper all over the house and spilled table sc.r.a.ps everywhere, that's what he did," Elimaki said. Uto looked up at the sky, as if he'd had nothing to do with that dish.

"Oh, no," Pekka said, doing her best to sound severe and not burst into giggles. Uto found such creative ways to land in trouble. Not many children his age could have made that spell--Pekka was pretty sure she knew which one it was--work so well. Even so ... Even so, he would have to be punished. "Uto, you can't do that kind of thing at Aunt Elimaki's house--or at home, either," Pekka added hastily; leaving loopholes around Uto wasn't safe. "Your tiny stuffed leviathan is going to spend the night up on the mantel."

That brought the usual storm of tears from her son. It also brought a new threat: "I'll make him come back to me so I can sleep! I can! I will!"

"No, you won't," Pekka told him. "You will not use magic without permission. Never. You will not. Do you understand me? It can be very dangerous."

"All right," Uto said sulkily.

Pekka could see he wasn't convinced. She didn't care. She would do whatever she had to do to convince him. Children playing with sorcery were at least as dangerous as children playing with fire. If taking Uto's toy leviathan away didn't work, if she had to switch his backside instead, she would. Were Leino here, he surely would have. Pekka took her son's hand. "Come on," she said. "Let's go home."

Ahead of Trasone, Sulingen burned. It was a great burning, the smoke rising in tall, choking, brown-black clouds. Sulingen was a bigger city than the Algarvian veteran had thought it would be. It sprawled for miles along the northern bank of the Wolter, its districts cut here and there by steep gullies. Day after day, dragons painted in red, green, and white pounded it from the air. Egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs hurled more destruction at it. But, because it was a big city, it was hard to wreck. And the Unkerlanters fought back as if they would fall off the edge of the world if they were forced into the Wolter.

Crouched behind a heap of bricks that had once been somebody's chimney, Trasone called out to Sergeant Panfilo: "I thought, what with all the behemoths and such we've got, we were supposed to go around the cursed Unkerlanters, not through "em." He didn't lift up his head when he spoke. Plenty of King Swemmel's soldiers would have been delighted to put a beam between his eyes if he were so foolish.

Panfilo stayed low, too, in a little hole in the ground for which he'd made a breastwork from the dirt dug out of it. "We did all that. How do you think we got here? Now there's no more room to go around, so we go forward instead."

An egg burst not far from them. Rocks and clods of earth and chunks of wood pattered down on Trasone. He ignored them with the resignation of a man who'd known worse. "We ought to find some kind of way to get across the Wolter," he said.

Over in his foxhole, Panfilo laughed. "Only way I know is straight south," he answered. "This is the only place where we've even come close to the b.l.o.o.d.y, stinking river--and we've already got Yaninans guarding our flanks."

Trasone grunted. He knew that as well as Panfilo did. "They aren't quite as hopeless as I thought they'd be," he said--not much praise, but the best he could do.

Panfilo laughed again. "They don't like the notion of getting killed any better than you do, pal. If they don't fight some, they know cursed well they'll die. But wouldn't you sooner see our lads doing the job instead?"

"Of course I would. You think I'm daft, or something?" Trasone shook his head, which made a couple of pebbles fall from the brim of his hat into the dirt beside him. "And I'd sooner the Yaninans were full strength with behemoths and egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs and dragons. I'd sooner we were, too." Now he laughed, a laugh full of vitriol. "And while I'm at it, I'll wish for the moon."

It wasn't funny. Replacements kept filtering in to the battalion, but it was still far under strength. All the battalions and regiments at the thin end of the wedge were far under strength. That was how it got to be the thin end of the wedge: by grinding against the Unkerlanters. They had to be getting thin on the ground, too, but they always seemed to have plenty of soldiers when the battalion tried to go forward.

And sometimes they tried coming forward themselves. More eggs fell around Trasone. He wanted to hide, to dig down deep in the dirt so no danger could find him. But he knew what was liable to happen when the Unkerlanters started tossing lots of eggs. They wanted the Algatvians to put their heads down, whereupon a wave of infantry in rock-gray tunics would wash over them.

Sure enough, from off to the left Major Spinello shouted, "Here they come, the bare-faced, bald-a.r.s.ed b.u.g.g.e.rs!"

He didn't need to have cried out. The rhythmic roars of "Urra! Urra!" that rose from the Unkerlanters would have told the Algarvians fighting in the outskirts of Sulingen everything they needed to know. Now Trasone had to peer out from behind his heap of bricks.

As he'd seen them do outside Aspang, the Unkerlanters were advancing in thick lines, one a few feet behind another. They blazed as they came. Some of diem had linked arms, which helped steady them as they scrambled over the wreckage that had once been houses and shops.

They hadn't knocked out all the Algarvian egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs. Eggs caught the footsoldiers out in the open, knocking some of them down, flinging others high into the air, leaving nothing whatever of still others. The eggs tore great holes in the Unkerlanters' ranks. But Trasone, like his countrymen, had long since learned King Swemmel's men had very little give in them. The ones who weren't felled came on. "Urra! Swemmel! Urra!"

Along with his comrades, Trasone started blazing. Their beams made more Unkerlanters stumble and fall, but other men in rock-gray always rushed up to take the places of those who couldn't go forward any more.

Trasone's mouth went dry. The Unkerlanters were going to break in among the Algarvian troopers. It would be every man for himself then, with numbers counting as much as or more than skill: a melee of blazing and sticks swinging like clubs and knives and fists and teeth. Sometimes the Unkerlanters took prisoners. More often, they slaughtered them. The Algarvians fought the war the same way.

Trasone had just blazed down another Unkerlanter when several shadows swiftly swept over him. With coughing roars, half a dozen Algarvian dragons flamed Swemmel's onrushing soldiers. The Unkerlanters could endure eggs. They could endure beams. Watching their friends crisp and blacken, smelling the stink of burnt flesh, was more than they could bear. They broke and fled, or went to earth well outside the Algarvian lines.

"Forward!" Spinello ordered, and blew a long blast on his officer's whistle to emphasize the order.

Wishing the battalion commander would have been content to beat back the Unkerlanter attack, Trasone scrambled out from behind the shelter that had served him so well. Somebody saw him: a beam charred in hole in a sun-bleached board by his head. It could have gone through him instead, and he knew it.

He threw himself flat behind an overturned wagon. It offered concealment, but not much protection. He looked ahead for a better place. Spying one, he dashed toward it. An Unkerlanter broke cover and started running for the same hole. They saw each other at the same instant. The Unkerlanter started to bring his stick up to his shoulder. Trasone blazed from the hip. The Unkerlanter went down, stick falling from nerveless fingers. Trasone dove into the hole.

But the dead enemy's countrymen attacked again; they truly were saying, Thus far and no farther. Again, Algarvian dragons swooped down on the Unkerlanters. Swemmel's men could not stand in the face of flame. Those who could fell back.

Those who couldn't. . . Trasone ran past a shrunken, twisted black doll that had, up till a few minutes before, been a man who wanted to kill him. Now the horrid thing, still smoking, sent up a stink that reminded him of a pork roast forgotten on a hot, hot stove. He spat--and spat black, from all the soot he was breathing in. With a broad-shouldered shrug, he jumped down into a new hole.

A moment later, Sergeant Panfilo jumped down with him. "You see the dead one back there?" Panfilo asked. Trasone nodded. Panfilo shuddered. "That could have been us, as easy as it was him."

"Not quite as easy," Trasone said. "The Unkerlanters haven't got a whole lot of dragons down here."

"What difference does that make?" Panfilo demanded. "You think our own beasts wouldn't flame us? They're too stupid to care who they're killing, as long as they're killing somebody."

"That's why they've got dragonfliers on their backs," Trasone pointed out.

"Aye, so they do--and half the time they're as stupid as the beasts they ride," Panfilo said. Trasone chuckled and nodded; he was always ready to listen to slander about anyone who wasn't a footsoldier.

Before Panfilo could add to the slander, Spinello's whistle blew an urgent blast. "Be ready, boys!" he called.

"Ready for what?" Trasone asked.

"More counterattacks," the major answered. "Crystal says they're sending lots of men up over the Wolter from the south bank. They don't want us in Sulingen. They don't want us anywhere near Sulingen. If we can get them out of this place and cross the Wolter ourselves, there's nothing between us and the Mamming Hills and most of the cinnabar that isn't in the land of the Ice People."

"Nothing but a few million Unkerlanters who hate everything about us and want to have fun with us before they finally let us die," Trasone said.

"We can lick the Unkerlanters," Spinello said. Trasone envied him his blithe confidence, but couldn't imagine where he got it. Spinello went on, "If we couldn't lick the b.u.g.g.e.rs, what would we be doing here? We've done nothing but lick aem for the last seven hundred miles or so, and we can keep right on doing it a few miles more."

The Algarvians hadn't done nothing but lick the Unkerlanters; they'd taken some lickings of their own, as Trasone knew and Spinello should have remembered. But the battalion commander had a point: without a lot of victories, the Algarvian banner wouldn't be flying here so far from home.

"And one thing more," Spinello added: "Be ready to counterattack, boys. You'll know when."

Before Trasone could ask any questions about that, the Unkerlanters started tossing eggs at his position again. "Urra! Urra! Urra!" The fierce shouts they used to nerve themselves for battle rang out. Sometimes they nerved themselves with raw spirits, too. "Here they come!" someone yelled in Algarvian.

Again, Algarvian egg-t.o.s.s.e.rs caught the Unkerlanters in the open. Again, they worked a gruesome slaughter on Swemmel's men. Again, the Unkerlanters, or those of them who lived, rolled forward in spite of that and in spite of the sharp, accurate blazing of the Algarvians awaiting them.

Then the ground shuddered under Trasone. It shuddered more under the Unkerlanters. Fissures opened in what had been solid ground; what had been holes closed up, often trapping men inside them. Flames spurted up from the surface of the ground, violet flames like nothing Trasone had seen till the autumn before. Burned Unkerlanters shrieked. As the dragons had been, the magic was more than King Swemmel's men could bear. They turned and fled.

Spinello's whistle shrilled once more. "Come on, boys!" he yelled. "They're on the run now. You don't want to make our mages spend all those Kaunians for nothing, do you? Come on!" Sc.r.a.ppy as a terrier, he was, as usual, the first to leap from cover and rush after the retreating foe.

Trasone followed. He didn't care whether Kaunians were being ma.s.sacred to some good purpose or for no reason at all. He had no use for diem, and wouldn't have been sorry to see them all dead. But seeing the Unkerlanters in front of him dead struck him as a lot more important at the moment.

He and his comrades were nearing the Unkerlanters' trenches when the ground shook beneath them again. This time, Spinello cried out in fury-- Algarvian mages weren't the ones working magic here. Trasone cried out, too--in fear. He didn't run, not because he didn't want to but because he didn't think it would do any good. He lay down behind a riven wall and hoped no creva.s.se would gape wide beneath him.

When the shaking finally ended, the battalion didn't return to the attack with the same jauntiness. Trasone wondered how many of their own--they didn't use Kaunians--the Unkerlanters had spent to gain a respite. However many it was, it had worked.

Sidroc had seen war before, when the Algarvian army pummeled Gromheort from the air and then took it. He'd lost his mother when the redheads dropped an egg on his house. He knew he was lucky to be breathing himself.

But then, after the Algarvians occupied eastern Forthweg, a routine of sorts had returned to life. And the Algarvians, as he'd seen, were strong, where his own people were weak and the cursed Kaunians even weaker. Fighting in Plegmund's Brigade, Sidroc gathered strength for himself.

When the Algarvians, including their alarming physical trainer, decided his regiment was ready to fight, the Forthwegians left the encampment in the southwest of their kingdom and went south and south again, sometimes by ley-line caravan, sometimes by shank's mare, till they reached the Duchy of Grelz.

Until he joined Plegmund's Brigade, Sidroc had never been far from Gromheort. What he saw of southern Unkerlant didn't impress him. Even the houses that hadn't been wrecked in the fighting struck him as shabby. So did the Unkerlanters, especially the men. Their custom was to stay clean-shaven, but most of them wore a few days' worth of stubble, giving them the look of derelicts. When they spoke, he could sometimes understand a word or two of their tongue, which was related to his own, but never a full sentence. That made them seem suspicious to him, too.

His squad leader was a scarred veteran sergeant named Werferth, who'd fought in the Algarvian army during the Six Years' War and for Forthweg in the early days of the Derlavaian War. Werferth seemed happy as long as he was fighting for someone, or perhaps against someone. For or against whom? As best Sidroc could tell, the sergeant didn't care. He said, "You'd fornicating well better be suspicious of these cursed Unkerlanters. Turn your back and they'll cut your b.a.l.l.s off."

"They'll be sorry if they try." At eighteen, after weeks of hard training, Sidroc felt ready to take on the world.

Werferth laughed in his face. Sidroc bristled--inside, where it didn't show. He didn't think he was afraid of any Unkerlanters, but he knew he feared the sergeant. Werferth said, "You're liable to be sorry if they try, on account of they're sneaky wh.o.r.esons and you're still wet behind the ears. Like I said, the trick of it is not to give the b.u.g.g.e.rs the chance."

Sidroc nodded and did his best to look wise. Werferth laughed at him again, which made him grind his teeth. But that was all he did. After one more chuckle, Werferth went off to terrorize some other common soldier.

For the first time, all of Plegmund's Brigade a.s.sembled together just outside Herborn, the capital of Grelz. The regiments already down there were as full of cutthroats and men down on their luck as the one of which Sidroc was a part. But that didn't matter when the Brigade drew itself up for King Raniero's review.

Algarvian officers and Forthwegian underofficers scurried among the men, making sure not a speck of dust lay on a tunic sleeve or a boot top, not a hair was out of place. To his dismay, Sidroc had discovered sergeants insisted on even more in the way of cleanliness and tidiness than mothers or aunts. He could give them what they wanted, but he resented the need.

Drawn up to one side of Plegmund's Brigade stood a regiment of Grelzer infantry in dark green tunics that looked to have been recently dyed. Like Sidroc and his comrades, they had Algarvian officers. They looked very serious and solemn about what they were doing. The couple of companies of Algar-vians on the other side of Plegmund's Brigade looked anything but. They stood at attention and their faces were quiet, but mischief still gleamed in their eyes and blazed forth from every line of their bodies.

A band marched out from Herborn blaring a tune that might have been the Grelzer national hymn--Sidroc presumed it was. Guarded by a squad of hors.e.m.e.n in dark green tunics, King Raniero rode a fine white unicorn. Three or four high-ranking Algarvian officers accompanied him. He was an Algarvian himself, of course, but wore a long tunic of the same color as his soldiers', but of finer fabric and cut.

He swung down from the unicorn with surprising grace and began the inspection. The Grelzer soldiers gave him a curious little half bow by way of a salute. He was half a head taller than most of them. Sidroc wondered what they thought of having a foreign sovereign. If they had any doubts, they would be wise to keep quiet about them.

When Raniero came to Plegmund's Brigade, he startled Sidroc by speaking good Forthwegian: "I thank you all for joining my Algarvian allies in helping to a.s.sure my kingdom's safety."

"Huzzah!" the Brigade's Algarvian officers shouted. "Huzzah!" the Forthwegian troopers echoed a moment later. The redheads swept off their hats and gave Raniero extravagant bows. Sidroc was cursed if he'd do any such thing. Like the rest of the ordinary soldiers, he stayed at stiff attention.

"I know how brave you men are," Raniero went on. "During the Six Years' War, I commanded a regiment of Forthwegians, and they fought like lions." Sidroc hadn't done well in school, but he knew Algarve and Unkerlant had divided Forthweg between them like a couple of hungry men cutting up a slab of roast beef. Any Forthwegians Raniero commanded would have been fighting for Algarve--as Werferth had done--not for their own kingdom.

And now that was so again. Sidroc shrugged. Nothing he could do about it. And he didn't like Unkerlanters, not even a little. If fighting for Algarve was how he got to fight against King Swemmel, then it was, that was all.

Raniero said, "Bandits and brigands still trouble my land. I know you will help put them down. For that, you will have not only my thanks but also the thanks of all the great and ancient Kingdom of Grelz."

Beside Sidroc, Sergeant Werferth snickered, just loud enough to let him hear. He understood what that snicker meant, more from dining-room talk between his father and Uncle Hestan than from anything he'd learned in school. Grelz hadn't been a kingdom for three hundred years. The Algarvians had revived it not for the sake of the Grelzers but to complicate life for Swemmel of Unkerlant.

How many Grelzers really thought of Raniero as their king? If the Algarvians had named one of their own King of Forthweg after King Penda fled, Sidroc wouldn't have thought of him as his king. He'd always said pretty much what he thought, but saying that struck him as a bad idea.

Raniero strolled through the ranks of Plegmund's Brigade. He smelled of sandalwood, which almost made Sidroc crack a smile. But he'd learned that wasn't a good idea, either. Then Raniero went over to the Algarvian companies. He had no compunction about joking with the redheads, nor they with him. Guffaws floated up to the sky. Sidroc tried to remember his Algarvian so he could find out what was funny, but couldn't make out enough to tell.

And then the ceremony was done. Raniero got back onto his unicorn and rode away. So did his Algarvian commanders and his Grelzer bodyguards. The regiment of Grelzers marched back toward Herborn, as did the Algarvian companies. That left Plegmund's Brigade alone on the vast plain of southern Unkerlant.

They set up camp as if in the middle of hostile company--which in fact they were, or why else would Raniero have wanted them? Sentry posts surrounded the encampment on all sides. Seeing them, Sidroc said, "Well, at least we'll be able to rest easy tonight."

Sergeant Werferth snickered again, this time at him. "Oh, aye, if you want to wake up with your throat cut. You got to figure the Unkerlanters for sneaky wh.o.r.esons. What happens if they slide past the sentries? They're liable to, you know. How well can you see in the dark?"

"I don't know," Sidroc answered. "I guess I'll just have to be ready to get up and fight in a hurry if I have to."

That made Werferth nod and thump him on the back. "Aye, so you will. There--you see? You're not as dumb as you look."

Worries about sleep turned out to be largely academic. As soon as the sun went down, mosquitoes came out by armies, swarms, hordes. The tents the Brigade had brought from Forthweg lacked the netting they needed to hold the mosquitoes at bay; Forthweg was a drier, hotter land, with fewer bugs.

When Sidroc got up the next morning, he was yawning and irascible and covered with bites. So was Werferth, who looked no happier than he did. "And we aren't the worst of it," the sergeant added. "Cursed mosquitoes flew off with two men from another company. They raise aem the size of dragons around here." Sleepy and grouchy, Sidroc believed him for a moment. Then he snorted and went off to stand in line for breakfast.

The Brigade broke up into regiments and then into companies, and began prowling across the countryside looking for Unkerlanter irregulars. What they found were farmers doing their best to get a crop out of their land. Few of the farmers seemed very friendly, but few seemed actively hostile, either.

Werferth hated all of them, for no better reason Sidroc could see than that they were there. "Some of aem are irregulars, sure as I stand here farting," the veteran sergeant said. "And a lot of the ones who haven't got the ballocks for that will tell the irregulars where we've been and where we're going. b.u.g.g.e.r the bunch of'em, is what I've got to say."

After a couple of days of marching, Sidroc's company went into a forest that astonished him. Forthweg didn't have woods like these, dark and brooding and wild, with the air chill and damp even in summertime under pines and beeches and firs and birches and larches and spruce. Sidroc kept looking around not for Unkerlanter irregulars but for bears or possibly trolls. He knew there were no such things as trolls, but that didn't keep him from worrying about them, not in a place like this.

Without warning, the trooper tramping along three men in front of him went down as if all his bones had turned to jelly. Sidroc hurried up to him. He had a neat hole in his left temple; the beam that killed him had blown off much of the right side of his skull. Blood soaked into the pine needles on the path.