Darkness Descending (7 page)

A
fter so long on the island of Obuda, the Ilszang Mountains, the borderland between Gyongyos on the one hand and Unkerlant on the other, seemed almost like home to Istvan. As a matter of fact, the valley where he’d been born and raised lay only a couple of hundred miles northwest of the hillside path along which he marched now. He scratched at his long, thick, tawny beard. Stars above! He could even think about going home on leave, something unimaginable out in the middle of the vast Bothnian Ocean.

“Come on, you mangy sons of goats,” he called to the men in his squad. “The stars have never once looked down on such a pack of lazy wastrels as you.”

“Have a heart, Sergeant,” Szonyi said. “Back on Obuda, you were a common soldier yourself, you know.”

Istvan raised a hand to brush its back against the single white hashmark embroidered on his collar tab. Sure enough, on Obuda he’d hated Sergeant Jokai’s petty tyranny. He still wasn’t so harsh as Jokai had been, but now, with rank of his own bestowed on him for good service, he better understood why Jokai had acted as he did. “The boot was on the wrong foot then,” he answered. “It’s on the right one these days—so step lively.”

“I don’t know why you’re worrying, Sergeant.” That was scrawny, bespectacled Kun, still as argumentative, as fussily precise, as he had been back on the island. His wide wave almost knocked Istvan off the path and down the hillside. “I don’t think there are any Unkerlanters for miles around.”

“I’m worrying because worrying is my job,” Istvan told him. “And that’s why we’re moving forward so easy, too: because the lousy goat-eaters have their hands full way off in the east, I mean. Pick up your clumsy feet, like I told Szonyi. Let’s grab with both hands while we can.”

Not even the former mage’s apprentice had a good comeback for that. On he tramped, with Istvan, with the rest of the squad, with the rest of the company, with the rest of the regiment, with the baggage train of horses and mules. Istvan wished there were a ley line anywhere close by. But ley lines were few and far between in this stars-forsaken country, country so little traveled that wizards surely hadn’t yet mapped all the ones there were.

Szonyi grinned at Kun, and at the other troopers in the squad from the coastal lowlands or from the Balaton Islands off the coast. “Even if there aren’t any Unkerlanters around here, you’ve got to look sharp. Otherwise, a mountain ape’ll sneak down, tuck you under his arm, and walk off with you.”

Kun stared at him over the tops of his spectacles. “The only mountain ape I see in these parts is you.”

“Oh, you won’t see them, Kun,” Istvan said, nodding toward Szonyi. “No, you won’t see them. But sure as sure, they’ll see you.”

“Bah!” Kun kicked a pebble. “If they didn’t keep the cursed things in menageries, I wouldn’t even believe in them. And I’ll bet you anything you care to name that nine stories out of every ten the old grannies tell about ‘em are lies. I’m no superstitious fool, not me.” He puffed out his weedy chest and looked wise, or at least supercilious.

“Have it your way,” Istvan answered with a shrug. “One thing the grannies say is that whoever calls someone else a fool names himself, too.”

With an angry grunt, Kun kicked another pebble down the steep hillside. Istvan ignored the little show of pique. His eyes were on the slopes above the path.

Somewhere up there, mountain apes
were
liable to be staring hungrily down at his companions and him. Years—centuries—had driven them up into the desolate heights and taught them wariness when it came to man. That did not mean they would not sneak down and raid, only that they picked their spots with care.

One of the lowlanders newly attached to the squad, a broad-shouldered fellow named Kanizsai, said, “I heard a savant claim once that mountain apes weren’t really apes at all, not like the apes in the jungles of Siaulia. What this chap said was, we ought to think of them as really stupid people instead.”

That notion kept the next couple of miles light and full of laughter. Everybody had his own candidate for who should be reckoned a mountain ape, starting with childhood rivals and ending up with King Swemmel and most of the population of Unkerlant.

“And what about us?” Szonyi added. “If we had any wits, would we be tramping through these miserable mountains just because somebody told us to?”

“Oh, now wait a bit,” Kanizsai said. “We’re warriors, by the stars. This is what we’re supposed to be doing.” The argument took off from there, like a dragon taking wing. Istvan and Kun sided with Szonyi. Most of the new men, men who hadn’t yet seen action, ranged themselves behind Kanizsai.

“You’ll find out,” Istvan said. “Aye, we’re warriors. That means we know how to fight and we’re not afraid to do it. Ask anybody who’s seen real war if he likes it, though, and you’ll hear some different stories.” Now Kun and Szonyi supported him.

“But there’s glory in crushing the foes of Gyongyos,” Kanizsai declared. “The stars shine brighter when we show ourselves to be true men.”

“Where’s the glory in huddling in a hole in the rain while the enemy tosses eggs at you?” Istvan returned. “Where’s the glory in sneaking up behind a Kuusaman who’s squatting in the bushes with his trousers around his ankles and cutting his throat so you can steal whatever food he’s carrying?”

Kanizsai looked revolted. Having been through the course that hardened recruits into warriors, Istvan knew it stressed ferocity. That was all very well—to a point. He wanted men at his side who would not give way in battle. But he did not want men at his side who would endanger themselves and him by rushing ahead when they ought to hold back.

Today, all that hardly mattered. The Unkerlanters offered no resistance to the advance. Maybe the war in the east did preoccupy them. Maybe they just didn’t care about losing this stretch of mountains. Had it belonged to Istvan, he wouldn’t have cared about losing it either.

When evening came, the squadron encamped on the flattest stretch of ground Istvan could find. It wasn’t a very flat stretch of ground, or very large, either. “We’ll keep two men on watch,” he ordered. “Three shifts through the night.” He named the sentries for each shift. One of the best things about being promoted to sergeant was that he didn’t have to take a turn on sentry-go himself. As he rolled himself in his blanket, he smiled at the thought of sleeping till morning.

Someone shook him. He came awake at once, as he’d learned to do on Obuda. Men who couldn’t rouse quickly and completely there often never roused at all. The dying embers of the campfire gave the only light. “What is it?” he asked, his voice a thin thread of whisper.

“Sergeant, someone’s coming,” Kun whispered back. “I can’t see anybody, but I know.”

“Your little piece of magecraft?” Istvan asked. Kun nodded, the motion next to invisible in the gloom. He’d used that trick he’d learned from his master before, back on Obuda. Istvan seized his stick and got to his feet in one smooth motion. “All right. You’d better show me.” The squad was
his.
This was the price he paid for not having to stand guard or do some of the other things common soldiers did.

“Follow me,” Kun said. Istvan did, as quietly as he could, up the side of the hill above the encampment to a boulder from behind which Kun could keep an eye on the slope than ran up higher still. When they got there, Kun mumbled to himself. He played what looked like a child’s finger game. After a moment, he raised his head and looked at Istvan. “He’s still out there, whoever he is. Coming closer, too, or the sorcery wouldn’t spot him.”

“Aye,” Istvan said. “An Unkerlanter spy, I’ll lay, maybe with a crystal, so he can let his friends know what he sees.”
A brave man,
he thought. No one but a brave man would dare come spying on his enemies when they were here in numbers and he alone, so very alone.

Istvan peered up the slope. He wished for a moon; the stars, however beautiful and potent they were, did not yield enough light to suit him. The pale stones seemed dark, the inky shadows impenetrable. King Swemmel’s men could have concealed not just a single spy but a battalion up there. But for Kun’s little sorcery, no one would have known till they attacked.

“Sergeant—” Kun began.

“Wait.” Istvan’s answer was an almost voiceless whisper, but it slapped the mage’s apprentice into silence. Istvan leaned forward, ever so slightly. One of those inky shadows had . . . moved? As if Istvan’s stick had a life of its own, it took aim at that shadow, which was now so still, he doubted whether he’d seen what he’d thought he saw.

He waited. Patience hard won on Obuda came in handy now. He tried not to hear his own soft breathing, or Kun’s. All of him was pointing toward that shadow, waiting for it to do something, to do anything. If he’d imagined the motion, the Unkerlanter could be sneaking up on him from another direction.

The shadow moved again. Istvan blazed. His finger found the blazing hole before he was consciously sure he’d seen the motion. The bright beam tore at his dark-adapted eyes.

From up the slope, a harsh cry rang out. Istvan dashed toward the place from which it had come. Kun pounded at his heels. Now the silent waiting game was over. He heard scrabbling among the rocks, and blazed again. Another cry rewarded him, this one, he was sure, of mortal agony.

“Have a care, Sergeant,” Kun panted. “He might be shamming.”

“If he is, you’ll avenge me,” Istvan answered. The cries had roused the other soldiers in the squad. He heard them coming up the hillside behind him.
After glory,
he thought. All he wanted was a dead Unkerlanter, or perhaps a live one from whom answers could be ripped by someone who spoke the easterners’ ugly language.

Kun pointed. “There!”

Istvan was already hurrying toward the form from which the stink of burnt meat rose. And then, all at once, he stopped short. “I’ll be a son of a goat,” he said softly. “You may not have much believed in mountain apes, Kun, but your mage-craft did, and took it for a man.”

“Is it dead?” Kun asked in an unwontedly small voice.

“Not yet, I don’t think,” Istvan answered. As if on cue, the mountain ape writhed. He blazed it once more, this time in the head. It groaned, as a man might have done, and lay still. Istvan turned to the oncoming soldiers in his squad, calling, “Somebody start a torch and fetch it up here. I want a good look at this beast.”

Unlovely in life, the mountain ape seemed even more unlovely sprawled in death under the flickering torchlight. It was bigger than a man, and its long, coarse, shaggy reddish hair made it look bigger still. Its low brow, broad nose, and mouth full of enormous (though not very sharp) teeth turned it into an embarrassing caricature of mankind. Was that a club fallen from its huge hand, or just a branch that happened to lie close by? Istvan couldn’t be sure.

Kun turned away in fastidious disgust. “Abominable creature,” he muttered. “Simply abominable.”

“I suppose so,” Istvan said. “It’s dead, and it didn’t hurt any of us. That’s what counts.” He looked east into the night. “When we do finally run into the Unker-lanters, they’ll have more with them than clubs, worse luck.”

In the dark quiet of the second-story farmhouse bedchamber, Merkela moved slowly, delicately, above Skarnu. “Oh,” he said in a soft voice, still astonished at the joy she could wring from him.

He peered up at her. Her face, inches above his own, was half intent, half slack with pleasure. The tips of her breasts brushed the bare skin of his chest as she sat bent above him. Somehow, that excited him almost as much as anything else she was doing. He ran a hand down the smooth curve of her back till he clenched one meaty buttock. The fingers of his other hand tangled in her golden hair as he pulled her mouth down to his. He found her lips sweeter than honey, sweeter and more intoxicating than the finest fortified Jelgavan wine.

All at once, she moaned and strained and bucked against him, delicacy forgotten. She clenched him inside her, as if with a hand. He cried out; he could no more have held back than he could have stopped himself from breathing. Merkela cried out, too, a curious, mewing wail, almost like a cat’s. Then, spent, she slumped down onto him.

And then, as she did after every time they joined, she began to weep as if her heart would break. No—as if it were already broken. “Gedominu!” she wailed. “Oh, my poor Gedominu!”

Skarnu held her and stroked her and waited for the worst of the sorrow to pass, as he knew it soon would. There were jokes, there were sayings, about the chances a man took when he consoled a new widow in her bedchamber. Discovering she still loved her dead husband was not the least of them. Her tears felt hot as molten lead against the side of his neck and the hollow of his shoulder.

“I can’t bring him back,” Skarnu said once the sobs had ebbed to sniffles. The Algarvians had blazed Gedominu, as they’d blazed a good many other Valmieran hostages, to punish resistance against their occupying army. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

That was true, even if it meant Merkela would not be giving herself to him now. It might not have meant anything of the sort; what had smoldered between them might have caught fire even with Gedominu still limping around his farm. “He was a brave man.” That was also true. Skarnu would have said it even were it not, to honor the dead.

“Aye, he was.” Merkela’s head came up. From grief, she swung quickly to rage. Tears still streaked her cheeks, but her eyes glittered with fury. “He was brave, and the redheads blazed him down like a dog. Powers above spurn them. Powers below eat them through all eternity.” Her voice held an incantatory quality, as if she truly had the power to make her curses bite deep. “They will pay. How they will pay.”

“Aye.” Skarnu kept stroking her, gentling her, as if she were an unbroken unicorn. “They will pay. They are paying. You’re helping to make them pay.”

Merkela nodded. The thought might have come from her own mind, not Skarnu’s. While Gedominu lived, she’d been content to wait at home and let him carry on the clandestine war against the redheads. After they executed him, she’d gone out on every raid Skarnu and his sergeant, Raunu, and the handful of stubborn local farmers and villagers had put on. Skarnu’s greatest fear was not that she would be unable to hold her own but that she would get herself killed from foolish eagerness to throw herself at the foe. It hadn’t happened yet. In time, he hoped, she would get her common sense back.