Darkness Descending (31 page)

But the Unkerlanters wasted no time counterattacking. They had been gathering men and beasts and dragons against the day of need, and threw them into the fight without seeming to worry about how many came out again, if only they stopped their foes. They didn’t quite stop the Algarvians, but slowed their advance from gallop to crawl.

Sabrino and his wing spent as much time over the front as their dragons could stand to stay in the air. They attacked Unkerlanter soldiers and behemoths on the ground and fought hard to keep the Unkerlanter dragons from savaging their own countrymen.

One fine, bright, almost springlike morning, the dragonfliers were over the Unkerlanter lines when the world changed below them. The earth shook, a roar Sabrino could hear even high in the air. Trenches and holes closed on the Unkerlanter soldiers in them. Flames burst from the ground, consuming men and behemoths, unicorns and horses. Not all perished, but the greater part did, up and down the front as far as Sabrino could see. He shouted into his crystal: “Now we slaughter the ones who are left!”

As the dragons stooped on their horrified, bewildered foes, Algarvian foot-soldiers and behemoths and cavalry erupted from their lines and joined in the assault. Their exultant shouts reached high into the sky; the disaster that smote the Unkerlanters had not hurt them in the least. They tore through the gutted enemy positions and swarmed westward.

When Sabrino flew over the victory camp, bringing the dragons back to their farm in triumph at the end of the day, he saw what he knew he would see: a camp full of corpses.

Seven

C
ornelu pulled his socks up above his knees. He wished they were thicker wool, so they might keep his legs warmer. The wind that blew into the hills above Tirgoviste came from the southwest, off the Narrow Sea and die land of the Ice People, and carried the chill of the austral continent with it. Snow wouldn’t have surprised him.

He stared down from the hills toward the harbor town. With three Algarvian officers quartered in her house—
my house, too, curse them,
Cornelu thought—Costache would assuredly be snug and warm, and so would Brindza. The Sibian naval officer consigned the Algarvians to the powers below all the same.

“Come on, you lazy bugger,” shouted the boss of the woodcutting gang for which he’d been working the past few weeks. “Swing your axe or I’ll throw you out on your cursed arse.”

“Aye,” Cornelu said, and then again, wearily, “Aye.” The weariness was more of the spirit than of the body, though the work made a man sleep every night like one of the logs made from trees he cut down. But Cornelu had lived his whole life in polite company, and was used to politely phrased orders. He found few of those here.

He returned his attention to the pine he’d been attacking. When he swung the axe, he imagined it bit into the Algarvian’s neck rather than the dark, scaly bark of the tree, and that blood spurted in place of dribbles of fragrant, resinous sap. The gang boss, a wide-shouldered bruiser named Giurgiu, grunted in something approaching satisfaction and went off to shout at another woodsman who wasn’t working so hard as he might have.

To give Giurgiu his due, he did almost as much work as any two of the men in the gang. He handled an axe as if it were light as a schoolmaster’s switch and did far more than his share on a two-man saw. His hands bore calluses half an inch thick, and looked and felt hard as rocks.

Cornelu’s hands had bled the first several days after he’d joined the woodcutters. He’d never used them so roughly before. Rubbing them with turpentine made him want to shriek, but it had also helped him gain calluses that gave him some protection. By now, swinging the axe was just work, not torment.

Chips flew as he struck the tree again and again. “Come on, you whore!” he panted. Having been reviled, he in turn reviled something that could not argue back. He let out a snort. Maybe this work wasn’t so much different from the Sibian navy after all.

He heard a crackling deep inside the tree, a crackling and a groan. He struck harder than ever, looking up toward the crown of the pine as he did so. The tree stood straight for another couple of strokes. Then it began to lean.

“She falls!” he shouted. Woodcutters near him scattered. He hadn’t known to let out a warning cry when he first joined the gang. The second tree he felled had almost driven Giurgiu into the ground like a sledge hitting a spike. He’d had trouble blaming the boss for cursing him then.

With a louder crackling, the pine went over. Cornelu stood on the balls of his feet, ready to leap out of the way if it looked like falling on him. He’d almost driven himself into the ground two or three times. Here, though, he put the trunk right where he wanted, a skill he’d acquired without quite knowing how. The pine thudded down into yellowing grass near the edge of the wood.

Giurgiu came over and examined it. He nodded. “I’ve seen worse jobs,” he rumbled at last—from him, high praise. “Now we turn it into stovewood. They’re going to get chilly down in the city before too long, and they have to cook even when they aren’t chilly. As long as the hills still have woods on them, the likes of us won’t go hungry.”

“Aye,” Cornelu said. He wondered how much longer the hills
would
have woods on them. In earlier times, forests had covered far more land than they did now. Before the days of iron ships that coursed the ley lines, great trees were essential for the timbers and masts of the merchantmen that had made Sibiu rich and the galleons that had made her strong. Great stretches of forest had been royal preserves then. Things were different nowadays. Cornelu doubted they were better—with the Algarvians occupying the kingdom, they couldn’t very well be.

Giurgiu brought over a big two-man saw. “Come on,” he said. “Act lively. We’ll cut the trunk into wheels, and then you can split the wheels into wedges. Don’t stand there gawping, curse it—it’s not like you’ve got a lot of time to waste.”

“Aye,” Cornelu repeated. But for his foul mouth, Giurgiu did think like a naval officer. Cornelu grasped the handle of the saw and lowered it to the tree trunk.

Round after round of wood leaped off the trunk. Manning a saw with Giurgiu was like manning it with a demon—he never seemed to tire. Cornelu tried his best to keep the boss woodcutter from doing too much more than his share of the work. Giurgiu noticed, too. “You’re not the handiest fellow I’ve ever seen,” he remarked when even he had to pause for a blow, “but you can pull your weight when you set your mind to it.” That left Cornelu absurdly pleased.

A boy of about fourteen scooped up sawdust—and a little dry grass and dirt with it—and stuffed it into a leather sack. It got sold for kindling. So did pine needles, after they were dry.

“There!” Giurgiu said after a surprisingly short time. “You can deal with the wheels yourself, like I said before. And lop the branches into short lengths, mind. Don’t leave ‘em as long as you did that one time.” He didn’t wait for Cornelu’s agreement, but strode off to see how some of the other woodcutters were doing.

That one time
had been weeks before. Giurgiu hadn’t forgotten, and made sure Cornelu didn’t forget, either. He was indeed very much like an officer in some ways.

By the time Cornelu finished turning the tree into wood, darkness was falling. This far south, days quickly got short as autumn wore on. Here in the woods, that made itself more obvious to Cornelu than it had back in Tirgoviste. There, light to hold night at bay had been easy to come by; Tirgoviste sat on a power point. Simple firelight couldn’t come close to matching it.

Cooking over a simple fire didn’t measure up, either, not to Cornelu. Meat came out burnt on the outside and raw in the middle when held over the flames on a stick. The porridge of beans and barley and peas would have been boring no matter how it was cooked. But appetite made a wonderful sauce.

And exhaustion made a wonderful sleeping draught. Cornelu had discovered that in the navy, and now was reminded of it again. Though the night was long, Giurgiu had to shake him awake at dawn. He was not the only one to be treated so, which spared him embarrassment. He gulped down more of the bland porridge.

Giurgiu said, “I’m going to send Barbu and Levaditi into town with the wagons today.” He eyed Cornelu as he spoke.

Sure enough, Cornelu jerked as if stung by a wasp. “What?” he yelped. “You told me I’d get to drive one of those wagons.”

“And now I’m telling you something different,” the boss woodcutter answered. “Barbu’s got a sister who’s sick down in Tirgoviste town, and Levaditi’s our best haggler unless I go myself. I didn’t much care for the price you brought back on that last load you took in.”

“But...” Cornelu said helplessly. He ached to see his wife. More than that, he ached to touch her. He didn’t know whether he could have managed either of those things, especially the latter, but he wanted the chance to try. Thinking of Costache under siege from three lecherous Algarvian officers—and what other sort was there?—ate at him. Next to that, haggling seemed of small import. So did anyone else’s troubles.

Giurgiu folded massive arms across his massive chest. “That’s what I’m telling you now, and that’s how it’s going to be.” He looked Cornelu up and down. “If you don’t like it, you can leave, or else you can make me change my mind.”

The rest of the woodcutters chuckled. Giurgiu wasn’t the gang boss only because he knew the business inside and out. He was also stronger and tougher than any of the men he led. From what Cornelu heard, no one had challenged him for a long time. But Cornelu knew skill counted for as much as strength. He set down the bowl from which he’d been eating and got to his feet. “All right, I’ll have a go at that,” he said.

Giurgiu stared. So did the other woodsmen. Giurgiu walked out onto the meadow. “Come on, then,” he said over his shoulder. “You’ve got stones in your bag, anyhow, but I don’t think it’ll do you much good. And you’ll go out and work after they throw water in your face, too.”

“No, I won’t,” Cornelu said. “I’ll drive the wagon instead of Levaditi.” He wondered how foolish he’d just been. Giurgiu moved more like a cat than a bear, and he was a lot bigger than Cornelu. The woodcutters gathered in a circle around the two men.

“Come on,” Giurgiu said. “You want me, come and get me. Either that or pick up your axe and get back to work.”

With a silent sigh, Cornelu approached. No, it wouldn’t be easy. But he couldn’t back down now, not unless he wanted to lose all his pride. He rushed at the boss woodcutter, deliberately making his attack look clumsy. Fooling Giurgiu into overconfidence seemed his best hope.

And it worked. Giurgiu let fly with a haymaker that would have knocked Cornelu through a boulder had it landed. But Cornelu seized the woodcutter’s beefy arm, bent his own back, and threw Giurgiu over it and down to the dying grass. He started to leap on the bigger man. But Giurgiu didn’t land like a falling tree, as he’d hoped. The boss woodcutter rolled away and bounced to his feet while the rest of the gang exclaimed in astonishment.

Giurgiu eyed Cornelu. “So you know what you’re doing, eh? All right. We’ll see who’s left standing at the end.” Now he advanced with grim concentration.

In the unpleasant minutes that followed, Cornelu hurt his opponent several times. He blacked one of Giurgiu’s eyes and landed a couple of solid kicks in the ribs. But the head woodsman gave more than he got. Blood poured from Cornelu’s nose, though he didn’t think it was broken. His own ribs gave eloquent testimony of how Giurgiu’s had to feel. Somewhere in the middle of the brawl, he spat out a small chunk of tooth, and counted himself lucky not to lose most of a mouthful.

At the last, Giurgiu got round behind him, seized his arm, and bent it back. “You won’t be able to work if I break something in there,” he remarked. “Had enough, or shall I go ahead and do it?” He bent the arm a little farther. Cornelu’s shoulder screamed.

“Enough,” Cornelu mumbled through swollen lips and even more swollen self-disgust.

Giurgiu let go of him, got up, and hauled him to the feet. Then he slapped him on the back and almost knocked him down. “Well, you do have stones,” he said, and the other woodcutters nodded. “You made me sweat for it.” The men nodded again. Giurgiu went on, “Now wash your face and get to it. You’re not taking a wagon down to the city today and that’s flat.”

“Aye,” Cornelu said. Someone brought him a bucket. Before splashing away the blood, he looked at his reflection. He was not a pretty sight. Maybe it was just as well Costache wouldn’t get the chance to look at him.

“Your Majesty . . .” Marshal Rathar licked his lips, then said what he had to say: “They have broken through in the north. They have broken through in the south, too, though not so badly. The weather hampers them worse there.”

King Swemmel’s dark eyes burned in a face as pale as that of a Kaunian kept out of the sun his whole life long. “And how did this happen?” he asked in a deadly voice.

“It was magecraft, your Majesty,” Rathar answered. “I am only a soldier; I can tell you no more than that. If you would have the details, you must have them from Archmage Addanz here.”