Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 39

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 a.r.s.e, 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 aem 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 b.u.t.ter 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 a.s.sail 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 pa.s.ses 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 lackl.u.s.ter 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 gra.s.shopper?"

He shook his head. "No, not a golden gra.s.shopper," 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?"

She could only shrug. "I have no idea. I've never done this before--except when I turned you into a Kaunian that one time, I mean. It might be half an hour. It might be three days, or even a week."

"All right." Ealstan nodded. "We'll find out. I'd bet practiced mages can tell right from the beginning how strong a spell they're making."

"Probably, but I'm not a practiced mage. I'm just me." Vanai was still astonished and delighted the spell had worked at all. And delight of one sort made her think of delight of another. She gave Ealstan a saucy smile. "Remember how you were saying it would be like having a different girl if we made love while I looked like a Forthwegian? Well, now you can."

He usually leaped at any chance to take her to the bedchamber. To her surprise, he hesitated now. "I hadn't expected you'd look quite so much like my sister," he said, his face reddening beneath his swarthy skin.

Vanai blushed, too, and wondered if it showed. She said, "What I look like doesn't matter." Her whole life and most of Forthweg's history gave that the lie, but she went on, "I'm not your sister. I'm just me, like I said before." She stepped forward, into his arms. "Do I feel like a Forthwegian, too?"

He hugged her. His face was the picture of confusion. He said, "When I see you, you feel the way you would if you were a Forthwegian--we're made a little wider than Kaunians, after all. But when I close my eyes"--he did--"you feel the way you used to. That's funny, isn't it?"

"If I were a better mage, I bet I'd feel right all the time." Vanai tugged at him. "Come on. Let's see how I feel in bed." She could hardly believe she'd said anything so brazen. Major Spinello would have laughed and cheered to hear her. She hoped the Unkerlanters had long since made Spinello incapable of laughing, cheering, or hearing ever again.

"This is very strange," Ealstan muttered when she took off her clothes. He ran his hand through the tuft of hair at the joining of her legs. Then, before she could stop him, he plucked out a hair.

She yelped. "Ow! That hurt!"

"It looks blond now," Ealstan said, holding it up. "It didn't before. You can't go to a hairdresser, or you'll give yourself away."

"Pay attention to what you're supposed to be doing, if you please," Vanai said tartly. Ealstan did, with results satisfying to both of them.

When they went to bed that evening, Vanai still looked like a Forthwegian. When they woke in the morning, Ealstan said, "You're a blonde again. I like you fine either way."

"Do you?" Vanai seldom felt interested early in the morning, but this proved an exception. "How do you propose to prove that?" He found the way she'd hoped he would.

Afterwards, he went off to cast accounts. Vanai used the spell again. It looked to be good for several hours, anyhow. She started to put on trousers and short tunic, then stopped, feeling like a fool. That wasn't what Forthwegian women wore. Ealstan had bought her one long, baggy, Forthwegian-style garment. She drew it down over her head, thinking, I'll have to ask him to buy me some more clothes.

Then she stopped again, feeling even more foolish. If she could go out and about in Eoforwic, she could buy clothes for herself. Why hadn't that occurred to her sooner? Because I've been locked away from everything for so long, that's why. The answer formed itself as fast as the question had. Because I'm not used to doing things for myself any more. High time I start again.

She was so nervous, she almost tripped going down the stairs. What if she'd done something wrong this time? She'd betray herself the instant she walked out the door of her block of flats. I should have had Ealstan tell me everything was all right.

But she couldn't stand going back up to the flat. Defiantly, she threw open the door and walked down the stone steps to the sidewalk. No cries of "Cursed Kaunian!" rose from any of the people walking up and down the street. No one paid any attention to her at all. Hers had to be the most unnoticed defiance in the history of Forthweg.

Vanai walked along, staring in wonder at buildings and pigeons and wagons and all the other things she'd had little chance to see close up lately. Seeing people who weren't Ealstan up close felt strange, too. And seeing Forthwegians who didn't react to her Kaunianity at all felt stranger than anything. As far as they could tell, she wasn't a Kaunian.

Two Algarvian constables came round a corner and headed straight toward her. She wanted to flee. She couldn't. That would give the game away. She knew it, and made herself keep walking toward them. "h.e.l.lo, sweetheart!" one of the redheads chirped in accented Forthwegian. Vanai stuck her nose in the air. Both constables laughed. Vanai kept walking. They didn't bother her any more, as they surely would have bothered a Kaunian woman even before Kaunians were forced into their own tiny districts. And they'd told her she was at least pa.s.sably pretty as a Forthwegian. She liked that.

She didn't stay out long, not on her first foray into Eoforwic. She still wasn't sure how long she could rely on the spell--and leaving the flat and going through the city threatened to overwhelm her. At first, she felt a pang of regret at returning to confinement, but it didn't last long. I can go out again, she thought, looking at the words of the spell she'd adapted from the useless version in You Too Can Be a Mage.

Then she looked at the paper again, this time in a different way. Her eyes went big and round. She'd adapted the spell thinking of herself, no one else. That was selfish, but selfishness had its place, too; without it, she wouldn't have started trying to fix the spell at all. Since she had . . .

She found another leaf of paper, and copied the spell onto it. She also wrote out instructions for the pa.s.ses to make, for using the lengths of yarn, and on what she knew about how long the spell could disguise a Kaunian. When Ealstan got home that evening, she told him what she'd done and what she had in mind doing. He thought it over, then said, "That would be wonderful--if you can find a safe way to do it."

"I have one," Vanai said. I hope I have one. But she wouldn't let Ealstan hear anything but confidence in her voice.

He raised an eyebrow even so. Vanai nodded emphatically. "Are you sure?" he asked. She nodded again. He studied her, then nodded himself. "All right. May it do some good, by the powers above."

Vanai cast the spell again the next morning and, cloaked in her sorcerous disguise, went to the apothecary's shop where she'd bought medicines when Ealstan was so sick. The Forthwegian behind the counter had given her what she needed even though she was a Kaunian. Now she handed him the spell and the commentary she'd written and asked, "Can you get this into the Kaunian quarter?"

"Depends on what it is," the apothecary answered, and began to read. Halfway through, his head came up sharply and he stared at her. She looked back. He couldn't have known her face. Did he recognize her voice? He'd heard it only once. He finished reading, then folded the paper in half. "I'll take care of it," he promised, in perfect cla.s.sical Kaunian.

"Good," Vanai said, and left. Another pair of Algarvian constables leered at her as she headed back to the flat. Because she looked like a Forthwegian, they did nothing but leer. If a lot of Kaunians suddenly started looking like Forthwegians... Vanai walked on, a wide, joyous smile on her face. She didn't think she could have hurt the redheads more if she'd grabbed a stick and started blazing at them.

Fourteen.

Leudast crouched in the ruins of the great ironworks near Sulingen's port on the Wolter. He and his countrymen held only the eastern part of the ironworks now; the Algarvians had finally managed to gain a lodgment inside the building. One forge, one anvil at a time, they were clearing the Unkerlanters from it.

"What do we do, Sergeant?" one of his troopers called to him.

"Hang on as long as we can," Leudast answered. "Make the redheads pay as high a price as we can for getting rid of us."

He coughed. The air was full of smoke. It was also full of the twin stenches of burnt and rotting flesh. When he looked up, he could see the sky almost unhindered by roof beams. Eggs dropped by dragons and lobbed from t.o.s.s.e.rs had left only a few bits of ceiling intact. He wondered why they hadn't fallen in, too.

He sprawled behind a forge. Chunks of chain mail still lay on the anvil nearby. The Unkerlanter smith had kept working as long as he could. Dark stains on the floor argued that he'd kept working too long for his own good.

Ever so cautiously, Leudast peered westward over the top of the forge. He didn't see anything moving in the eyeblink of time before he ducked back down again. The Algarvians were every bit as careful hereabouts as were his own countrymen. Fighting in a place like this, even the most wary soldiers died in droves. The ones who weren't wary died even faster.

"Leudast!" someone called from behind him.

"Aye, Captain Hawart?" Leudast didn't turn his head. Watching what was in front and to either side of him mattered. If he looked to the rear, bad things were liable to happen before he could look back.

"I'm coming up," Hawart said. Leudast blazed a couple of times, almost at random, to let the officer scramble up beside him in back of the solid brickwork of the forge.

"What now, sir?" Leudast asked. Once again, the regiment Hawart was commanding had shrunk to a company's worth of men, while Leudast's nominal company was only a little bigger than the usual squad. They'd been brought up to strength since falling back into Sulingen--been brought up to strength and then seen that strength melt away like snowdrifts when the warm north winds started to blow.

"We're going to let them have this building, Sergeant," Hawart answered. "Holding on to even a piece of it is just costing us too dear."

"But what about the piers, sir?" Leudast asked in no small alarm. "How are we going to get more men up into Sulingen? If we lose the ironworks here, we can't hold the piers, and if we can't hold the piers. . .." He shuddered. "If we hadn't been able to bring in those three brigades a few nights ago, we would have lost the city by now."

Hawart nodded. "I know all that, believe me I do. By now, we've lost most of the men in those brigades instead. A lot of them went in here, and you know what's happened to this place. And the rest, or most of the rest, went into the granary, and the Algarvians hold it, or what's left of it. Those brigades probably saved Sulingen, but they wrecked themselves doing it."

"Wrecked plenty of Algarvians, too, by the powers above," Leudast said savagely. Captain Hawart nodded again. Leudast repeated the question the officer hadn't answered before: "If we give up the ironworks, if we've lost the granary, if we lose the piers, too--how do we bring in reinforcements?"

"They've run up more piers farther east, in the districts we do control," Hawart said. "We'll have to hang on to those. But we can't hold these any more. Some prices are too high to pay."

As if to underscore that, the Algarvians started tossing eggs into the ironworks from the west. Leudast and Hawart huddled side by side. Fragments of the eggs sh.e.l.ls hissed through the air with malignant whines. So did bricks and boards and chunks of iron hurled by the blasts of sorcerous energy. Here and there, wounded Unkerlanters shrieked. Here and there, wounded Algarvians shrieked, too. The fighting was at quarters too close for either side to toss eggs without hurting some of its own soldiers. That didn't stop the redheads, and it didn't stop the Unkerlanters, either.

Even while the eggs were still falling, Leudast and Hawart looked around opposite ends of the forge. Sure enough, the Algarvians were moving forward, taking their chances on being hurt by their own side while the Unkerlanters had to keep their heads down. The redheads were brave. Leudast had seen as much, many times. They were also clever. He'd seen that, too. This time, they were too clever for their own good. He blazed down three of them, one after another.

"Got you, you son of a wh.o.r.e!" Hawart exclaimed, which argued his luck was also good. Leudast blazed again. An Algarvian screamed. Leudast nodded, well pleased with himself.

But his pleasure evaporated when Hawart started shouting orders for the withdrawal from the ironworks. The Unkerlanters knew how to conduct retreats. We'd better, Leudast thought bitterly. We've had enough practice. They did it by odd and even numbers, the same way they conducted advances. Half stayed behind and blazed while the rest slipped away to new positions. Then the first group fell back past the second while the second covered their withdrawal. The redheads could move forward only slowly and cautiously.

"We're clear," Leudast said when he left the ruins of the iron manufactory and came out into the ruins of the rest of Sulingen. He stayed in the open not an instant longer than he had to, but dove into the first hole in the ground he saw.

Most of his countrymen did the same thing. One trooper, though, crumpled and fell to the ground, stick slipping from hands that could hold it no more. There was a neat hole in the side of his head, just above and in front of his left ear.

"Cursed sniper!" cried one of the Unkerlanters hiding in the wreckage of what had been a block of ironworkers' cottages. "That wh.o.r.eson hides like a viper, and he's got eyes like an eagle. He's picked off a couple of dozen of us, maybe more, the past few weeks."

"b.u.g.g.e.r him," Leudast said. "b.u.g.g.e.r him with a straight razor." No matter how fiercely he spoke, though, he made sure he didn't expose any part of his person to the Algarvian sniper.

"We ought to bring in a sniper of our own and get rid of him," Captain Hawart said.

"I hate snipers, theirs and ours, too," Leudast said. "They aren't going to change the way the battle goes. All they're good for is blazing some poor fool who's squatting somewhere taking a dump. Powers below eat the lot of them."