Darkness Descending (67 page)

Cornelu dragged his body off the walk, so it wouldn’t be found at once. He picked up the stick and dropped it into the water in one of the leviathan pens. It made only a tiny splash.

But that splash, as he’d hoped, was enough to draw the leviathan to the surface to find out what had made it. Leviathans were even more curious than their squat cousins, the whales. Because of the fog, Cornelu couldn’t see this one, but it was plain in his mind’s eye: lean and long, about six times a man’s length, with a beaky mouth full of sharp teeth. Wild leviathans were wolves of the sea. Tamed and trained, they turned into hunting dogs.

Moving quickly, Cornelu got out of his jacket and tunic, his kilt and his shoes. Naked, he jumped into the water of the leviathan pen. It was cold, but the chill did not pierce him to the core. He let out a long exhalation of relief: his sorcerous protection against the ice waters of the southern seas still held good. Had that not been so, he would have frozen to death before long.

He swam toward the leviathan. By everything Sibian spies knew, Mezentio’s men guided their leviathans with pokes and prods almost identical to those Sibian riders used. He was betting his life the spies had it right. A man made a good mouthful for a leviathan, no more.

The great beast let him climb onto its back. His hand found the harness secured by its fins. The leviathan quivered expectantly, as if waiting for him to show what he was. He tapped it with the signal that, in the Sibian navy, would have ordered it to leap out of the pen. If the spies were wrong, he wouldn’t last long and would pass his final moments most unpleasantly.

The leviathan gathered itself. After a dizzying rush, it hurled itself through the air, then splashed down again. Cornelu let out a whoop of joy drowned in that titanic splash. He could go to Lagoas, which, while not home—he had no home, not anymore—was not Mezentio’s to do with as he would.

And, if he decided to drown himself halfway there, Costache would never know.

“We are a warrior race,” Sergeant Istvan declared, and all the Gyongyosians in his squad solemnly nodded.

“Aye, indeed we are a warrior race,” said Kun, who was less inclined to argue with his sergeant now that he had reached the exalted rank of corporal.

Istvan kept his face straight, though it wasn’t easy. Kun looked about as little like a warrior as anything under the stars. He was skinny—weedy, when you got down to it—bespectacled, and had been a mage’s apprentice before finding himself joined to the host of Ekrekek Arpad, the sovereign of Gyongyos. Even his tawny beard came in by clumps and patches, as if he needed some nostrum for mange.

Being thick-shouldered and furry himself, Istvan tended to look down his beaky nose at anyone who wasn’t. But Kun, even if he did complain and split hairs whenever he got the chance, had fought well on Obuda out in the Bothnian Ocean, and he’d fought well here in the frozen, mountainous wasteland of western Unkerlant, too. And the little bits of magic he’d learned from his master had served his squad mates well.

“There is a village up ahead,” Istvan said. “It is supposed to have Unkerlanter soldiers in it. Captain Tivadar says there aren’t supposed to be too many of the goat-eating buggers in there. Stars grant he’s right. However many there are, though, the company is going to clean them out.”

“Unless we don’t,” Szonyi said. Istvan remembered when the hulking private had been as raw a recruit as Kun. It hadn’t been so long before. Now Szonyi might have been an old veteran. He wasn’t old, but he certainly was a veteran.

“We are a warrior race,” Istvan repeated. “If the captain orders us to take this village, take it we shall, and he will lead us while we do it.” Szonyi’s big head bobbed up and down in agreement. Tivadar was an officer fit to command warriors, for he never asked his men to do anything he would not do and did not do himself.

“Onward!” Kun said. As a private, he would have been better pleased to hang back. Rank made hanging back embarrassing for him. It worked the same magic on Istvan. He wondered if it worked the same magic on Tivadar, too.

That didn’t matter, and he had no time to worry about it, anyhow. Other sergeants were haranguing their squads. Back when Istvan had been a simple soldier, he’d listened to sergeants as little as he could get away with. His own men listened to him that way, except when they listened closely so they could argue afterwards. But he heard his fellow sergeants, and even officers, with new ears these days. He had to get the troopers in his squad to do as he said. Any tricks he could pick up, he would.

Here came Captain Tivadar, who was only a few years older than Istvan. “Is your squad ready?” the company commander asked, glaring as if he intended to tear Istvan limb from limb if the answer was no.

But Istvan nodded and said, “Aye, sir.”

“The Unkerlanters aren’t supposed to have more than a section holding this miserable little place,” Tivadar said. “They can’t afford to fight out here in the middle of nowhere any better than we can—worse, in fact, because they’re fighting the Algarvians, too, a quarter of the way around the world east of here.”

“Aye, sir,” Istvan repeated, and then added, “A quarter of the way around the world is too far for me to think about. All I know is, I’m too cursed far from my home valley.”

Tivadar nodded. “A man can’t be farther away than too far from home. But I’m glad we’ve got you with us, Sergeant. Even if the Unkerlanters have a regiment in there, you’ll make ‘em think we’ve got a brigade, and out they’ll come with their hands up high.”

Despite the flaps on his fur cap, Istvan’s ears had been chilly. Now they heated in embarrassment; he wasn’t used to praise from officers. “Sir,” he said, “if my bluff—and Kun’s little magic—hadn’t worked back there, we’d have had to yield ourselves to the Unkerlanters instead of the other way round. The stars shone kindly on me that day.”

“They shine on those who deserve it.” Tivadar slapped him on the back with a mittened hand. “Kun got promoted. Can’t very well promote you—you haven’t the blood for it, of course—but the bravery bonus
will
be added to your pay once all the clerks are done playing with their counting boards.”

“Unless I die of old age first,” Istvan said with a wry chuckle he quickly choked off. He could die of a lot of other things besides old age. The Unkerlanters were going to get the chance to find some of them, too.

Reading his thoughts, Captain Tivadar said, “If the stars wink, your clan still gets the bonus; it won’t be lost. And remember, your squad is on the left flank. If you can, lead them around behind the village while the main attack goes in from the front. Then, when the cursed Unkerlanters are all hot and bothered, you can hit ‘em from the rear—easy as buggering a goat.”

Istvan’s lip curled. “Sir, that’s disgusting.” After a moment, though, he laughed. “It’s pretty funny, too, isn’t it?”

“Of all my sergeants, you’re the one I want in back of the Unkerlanters.” Tivadar slapped him again, a good, solid blow. “Let’s get going.”

“Did you hear that, boys?” Istvan said to his squad. He felt about to burst with pride. “We’re the best, and the captain knows it. We’ll wreck the Unkerlanters good and proper, won’t we?”

“Aye,” the soldiers chorused. They took their places on the left of Captain Tivadar’s little line of battle and started east with the rest of the company. The wind blew snow from the ground and lashed their backs. It blew snow through the bare branches of stunted birch trees that clung to the sides of the valley in which the village lay. Istvan and his squad scurried through the trees. They were the only cover the freezing landscape offered.

Eggs began bursting farther south. “May the stars go dark for the Unkerlanters!” Istvan said angrily. “They weren’t supposed to have a tosser in there.” What that meant was, Captain Tivadar hadn’t warned him to expect one.

Kun said, “Their officers are probably saying we aren’t supposed to be coming after them. We need to be more like mages and deal with what is, not with what’s supposed to be.” He went into a snow-covered hole in the ground that was where it wasn’t supposed to be, and rose coated with white. Istvan was unkind enough to laugh.

Not three minutes later, he spied movement ahead, the distinctive movement only a human body can make. All the Gyongyosians in this part of the world were with him. That made the stooped figure ahead an enemy. Istvan threw his stick up to his shoulder and blazed.

The Unkerlanter shrieked and fell. “It’s a woman!” Szonyi exclaimed as she kept on shrieking. “What’s a woman doing out here?”

“We’ll never know,” Istvan said as he ran toward her through the snow. He pulled a knife from its sheath. “Wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all. Have to shut her up.” Nervously, he glanced south, hoping the noise of combat there would keep anyone in the village from hearing her cries.

She found a rock in the snow and threw it at him as he drew near. It missed. She was groping for another one when he cut her throat. Her blood splashed red across the winter white.

“That was a waste, Sergeant,” one of his troopers said from behind him.

“We haven’t got time for fun,” Istvan answered with another shrug. “Too cursed cold to go whipping it out, anyhow. Come on. Keep moving.”

He tried to gauge how the fighting was going by where the Unkerlanters’ eggs were bursting. The rest of the company wasn’t moving as fast as Captain Tivadar had hoped. Istvan scowled. Instead of just following orders, he’d have to start thinking for himself. He didn’t care for that. It was, properly, an officer’s job.

As if to reassure him, Szonyi pointed down in the direction of the village and said, “We’ve set it afire.”

“Aye.” Istvan considered that, then slowly nodded. “That’ll help. The Unkerlanters will have a harder time aiming their tosser.” He thought a little more. His mind didn’t move very fast but had a way of getting where it was going. “And with the wind blowing at our backs, the smoke’ll help hide us when we get into place to come at ‘em from behind. We’d better do that. The rest of the company is going to need us even more than the captain thought they would.”

But for that luckless woman (what had she been doing?—gathering firewood, most likely), no one in the village had any notion his squad was moving around it toward the rear. Once in position, Istvan peered toward the place from behind a rock. Through blowing smoke, he saw Unkerlanter soldiers running here and there. The wind carried their guttural shouts to his ears.

One of them set an egg on the tosser’s hurling arm. Another launched the egg toward Istvan’s countrymen. Catching sight of the egg-tosser told him what he had to do next. He pointed toward it. “We’re going to take that miserable thing. The rest of the boys will have an easier time then. Forward—and don’t shout till you’re sure they’ve spied us.”

He was the first one to break cover and run toward the village. His men followed. If he went, they would go. The crunch of their boots on crusted snow seemed dreadfully loud in his ears. So did his own coughing after he sucked in too thick a lungful of smoky air.

But the tunic-clad Unkerlanters, intent on serving their egg-tosser and beating back the threat from the west, paid no attention to their rear till too late. Because of the smoke in the air, Istvan had to get closer than usual to them before he started blazing. First one of the enemy soldiers fell, then the other. The second Unkerlanter was grabbing for his own stick to blaze back when another Gyongyosian’s beam finished him.

“Gyongyos!” Istvan did shout then, as loud as he could. “Ekrekek Arpad! Gyongyos!” The rest of the squad echoed the cry. To the Unkerlanters’ frightened ears, they must have sounded like a regiment. They fought almost like a regiment, too, for the Unkerlanters, well concealed against Tivadar’s attackers, were hardly hidden at all from men coming the other way.

King Swemmel’s soldiers howled in dismay. Some tried to turn and face Istvan’s squad, but they couldn’t do that and hold off the rest of the attackers, too—they lacked the numbers. Some of them died in place. Others began throwing down their sticks, throwing up their hands, and surrendering.

Before long, the only Unkerlanters left in the ruined village were captives and a handful of the trappers and hunters and their womenfolk and children who’d lived there and hadn’t fled east. Captain Tivadar sent them all back toward land Gyongyos held more securely. Then, in front of the whole company, he spoke loudly to Istvan: “Well done, Sergeant.”

“Thank you, sir,” Istvan said. Another few years of tiny victories like this, and the armies of Gyongyos might be in position for something larger. Istvan wondered if he’d live to see it.

As the sun sank below the western horizon, the Algarvian strawboss shouted, “Going home!” Along with the rest of his labor gang, Leofsig laid down his sledgehammer with a weary sigh of relief. The Algarvian strode through the gang handing out the day’s pay: a small silver bit for Forthwegian laborers, half that much in copper for the handful of Kaunians.

A wagon came rattling up to take the gang back to Gromheort over the road they’d been paving; they were too far from the city to walk without adding unduly to their exhaustion. The blonds got the job of rounding up all the tools before the gang boss let them climb into the wagon, too. Like the Forthwegians, they sprawled limply over the wagon bed.

“Here, get off me,” a Forthwegian growled at one of them. “Ought to send the whole lot of you whoresons west. Then we’d be rid of you.”

“Oh, don’t go unbuttoning your tunic, Oslac,” Leofsig said. “We’re all too tired to see straight.”

Oslac glared at him, eyes glittering in the twilight. But Leofsig was bigger, stronger, and younger than the other laborer, whose dark beard was streaked with gray. Leofsig had been conscripted into King Penda’s levy not long before Forthweg began her disastrous war against Algarve and still thought of a man of thirty as one bearing respectable years. Knowing himself outmatched, Oslac did no more than mutter, “Stinking Kaunians.”

“We all stink, too,” Leofsig said, and Oslac could hardly argue with him there. He went on, “Let it alone, why don’t you?”