Jaws of Darkness (59 page)

K
rasta stood naked by the side of the bed, staring down at herself. “I still don’t look like I’m pregnant,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself.

Colonel Lurcanio, lying naked in the bed, lazy and cheerful after making love, nodded. “Not, not very much,” he answered agreeably.

“What do you mean, not very much?” Krasta demanded, her indignation quick to kindle even toward her dangerous Algarvian lover. “My belly doesn’t bulge at all.”

“Well, so it doesn’t.” Lurcanio reached out and set the palm of his hand on that still-flat belly. Krasta expected it to slide lower, down between her legs. Instead, Lurcanio went on, “But your breasts are larger than they were— not that I mind, you understand.” Rather than reaching down from her belly, he reached up to caress her.

She hissed. “Be careful. They’re more tender than they used to be, too.” She couldn’t help admitting that. It was both blessing and curse. When his hands weren’t gentle, or sometimes simply when she moved too fast, they would hurt. But they also gave her more pleasure when he did a proper job of caressing them than they ever had before she quickened.

“Sorry, my dear.” Lurcanio continued in almost clinical tones: “And your nipples are larger and darker than they were.”

“Are they?” Krasta looked down at herself again. “I hadn’t noticed that.”

“I’m not surprised, or not very,” Lurcanio said. “Men are liable to pay more attention to that sort of thing than women do.”

“I should hope so.” Krasta sat down beside him—carefully, so her tender breasts wouldn’t bounce. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re just… there.” A sudden thought took her by surprise. “But I suppose they’ll matter to me if I decide to nurse the baby myself.”

“Aye, I’m sure they would.” Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. “And would you do such a thing, or would you hire a wet nurse?”

“
I
don’t know,” Krasta said with an impatient toss of the head. She promptly regretted it, for it jerked the upper part of her body, too. She hissed again, and brought a protective hand up to her breasts. “They’re just… there,” she repeated.

“Like Algarvians in Valmiera,” Lurcanio said.

She nodded. “Aye, like Algarvians in Valmiera.” Only after she’d repeated that, too, did she pause to wonder about it. “What an odd way to put things.”

“Not so odd. We have been here four years, /have been
here
four years,” Lurcanio said. “Considering some of the places I might have gone instead, I have no complaints. You may rest assured that that is the truth. But I do not know how much longer I can stay here.”

“What do you mean?” Krasta had always hated change. These days, Lurcanio in her bed and Algarvians on the streets of Priekule were what she was used to.

He stroked her again. That was all he was likely to do. He wasn’t a young man any more, and wouldn’t want her more than once of a night. Voice detached and ironic as usual, he answered, “Unlike some people I could name, I am usually in the habit of meaning what I say, and neither more nor less than that.”

“But …” Krasta frowned, trying hard to think despite finding the exercise unfamiliar. “Where would you go? What would you do?”

“Unkerlant or Jelgava, most likely,” he replied. “I would fight for my king and my kingdom. That is one of the things a soldier may be called upon to do from time to time, you know.”

“But what would
I
do?” Krasta exclaimed. When she did think, she usually thought about herself first.

Colonel Lurcanio laughed. “I presume that, were I to depart this mansion tomorrow, the very next day you would start trying as hard to convince Viscount Valnu that your baby is his as you’ve spent the last few weeks trying to convince me it is mine.”

“It
is
yours,” Krasta insisted with much more certainty than she felt. All along, though, she’d done her best to make herself believe the baby was Lurcanio’s. And if the Algarvian officer should disappear, would she have to start believing the child was Valnu’s? She glared at Lurcanio. “You’re a horrid man, too, you know.”

“Thank you,” Lurcanio said, which only annoyed her more. He laughed, but the amusement wouldn’t stay on his face. When it faded, he looked a long way indeed from young. “I have not got my orders yet, you understand, but I fear they may not be far away.”

Krasta didn’t feel so happy, either. Seeing her lover look not so young reminded her she wasn’t quite so young, either. So did the weariness that came with carrying a child. Fighting back a yawn, she said, “If you Algarvians need all your officers and soldiers in those other kingdoms far away, how will you hold on to Valmiera?”

She thought about the soldiers she’d seen marching up the Boulevard of Horsemen, the blond soldiers in Valmieran uniform with Algarvian flags on their sleeves. Did the redheads think they could use men like that to hold down the kingdom? If they were right, what did that say about Valmiera? What did lying naked here beside an Algarvian say about her? It was all very confusing.

Lurcanio patted her. He liked to touch her even when he didn’t feel like doing—or couldn’t do—anything more. “That is a good question, my sweet,” he said. “When King Mezentio figures out a good answer for it, I hope he will let me know. Until then …” He got out of bed and started getting into his clothes. When he was dressed, he bowed to her. “I shall see you in the morning.” He seldom spent nights in her bedchamber.

Krasta turned out the lamp without bothering to put on pyjamas. A month into summer, the night was fine and warm—nothing like the long, frigid, miserable hours of darkness the winter before. And she’d had it easier than most, because of the Algarvians in the mansion with her. She didn’t dwell on that for long; she just slid under the linen sheets and fell asleep.

A couple of hours later, distant rumblings woke her—those and flashes of light on the horizon.
Thunder?
she wondered muzzily.
But the day was bright and clear.
Then her wits began to work, and she remembered the sorry world in which she lived. “Oh,” she said out loud, around a yawn. “The islanders are dropping eggs on us again.”

She took it for granted. Why not? It had happened before, a good many times. It would doubtless happen again, too. She sighed and went back to sleep.

When she came down to breakfast the next morning, she found Colonel Lurcanio in a foul temper. “How are we supposed to go about fighting a proper war if they keep dropping eggs on our heads?” he demanded.

“They have dragons,” Krasta said, spreading butter and Jelgavan marmalade on toast. “Don’t you have dragons, too?”

“Of course we have dragons, too,” Lurcanio answered irritably. He was going to be difficult. Krasta could feel it. And she was right. More irritably still, Lurcanio went on, “We have dragons fighting to keep the Lagoans and Kuusamans on Sibiu from dropping eggs on Algarve herself. We have dragons, some dragons, fighting the islanders down in Jelgava. And we have dragons in the west, in Unkerlant and Forthweg, fighting Swemmel’s men.”

“Unkerlant
and
Forthweg?” Krasta asked. “I hadn’t heard that before.”

“And you have not heard it now, either. Forget I said it,” Lurcanio told her. He passed a hand across his face. It was still early morning, but he looked weary. After a moment, he looked up at Krasta again. “Where was I? Ah, aye. With all those dragons flying over the rest of Derlavai, how many do you think Algarve has left to put in the air above Priekule?”

“Not enough—that’s plain,” Krasta said. “And so eggs land on Valmierans. You people should have thought this out better before you got into such a big war, if you want to know what I think.”

Lurcanio stared at her out of red-rimmed eyes. He started to laugh. Krasta started to get angry. Then her Algarvian lover said, “Out of the mouths of babes.” He got up, walked around the table, and kissed her. “You are right, my sweet. We probably should have thought this out better. But it is rather too late to worry about that now, would you not agree?”

“Lurcanio …” she said as he went back to his seat.

He looked her way in some surprise. She hardly ever called him by name. “What is it?” he asked, his voice more serious than usual, the mocking note so often in it now entirely gone.

“You’re going to lose the war, aren’t you?” The words came forth in a rush, blurted out before Krasta had the chance to think about whether she really wanted to ask that question.

“Eat your breakfast,” Colonel Lurcanio told her, as if she were a child asking something whose answer had to be too hard for it to understand. But then he shook his head, a gesture aimed more at himself than at Krasta. “Things are not easy these days,” he said slowly. “I do not know when they will be easy again. I do not know if they will ever be easy again. But I tell you this: if Algarve goes down, we shall go down fighting. Do you doubt it, even for a moment?”

“No.” Krasta shivered, though the day already promised considerable heat.

“We shall go down fighting,” Lurcanio repeated, as if she hadn’t spoken. “We shall put sticks in the hands of the veterans left alive from the Six Years’ War, and in the hands of fourteen-year-old boys still sore from their circumcisions. For if we lose this war as we lost the last one, what shall be left for Algarve?”

For once in all the time they’d spent together, Krasta wanted to go around the table and comfort him. But she didn’t. She just sat where she was. She wished the baby inside her would let her drink brandy, even so early in the day. But the mere thought made her belly clench.

Lurcanio shrugged and smiled, as if deliberately pushing worry to one side. “Well,” he said, “the evil time has not yet come for us. And, while it may come, it also may not. I intend to do what I can to enjoy myself in the meanwhile.”

No, the evil time hasn’t come for the Algarvians yet,
Krasta thought.
What about for the Kaunians of Forthweg? What about for Kaunians all over Derlavai?

She couldn’t ask Lurcanio that question. That she couldn’t ask it of him was probably the most important reason she hadn’t got up and gone around the breakfast table to him. She was, in an odd way and with certain gaps, truly fond of him. But he was an Algarvian, and she had yellow hair. Walls would always stand between them, whether he fully realized it or not.

He rose and bowed to her. “And now I needs must go do what needs doing, to hold the evil time at bay as best I can. If you will excuse me”—one of his eyebrows twitched—”or even if you will not…” He bowed again and left.

He sits at a desk, but he fights for Algarve, just as much as if he had a stick in his hand.
Krasta had known that for four years, but knowing it and having it hit home were two different things.
He’s worth even more than an ordinary soldier, because he can do things no ordinary soldier can do.

And you… may have his baby inside you.
No matter what Lurcanio would do to her if she bore a blond, Krasta hoped with all her heart the child was Valnu’s.

After the impressers hauled Garivald into King Swemmel’s army, he hadn’t got much in the way of training. He hadn’t got any training, as a matter of fact. They’d given him a uniform and a stick and told him to obey the officers and underofficers set over him if he knew what was good for him. Then they’d taken him to the front in northern Unkerlant, stuck him in a squad there, and thrown him at the Algarvians. He still had trouble recalling that his name was supposed to be Fariulf.

And now, less than a month after he’d followed a behemoth over and through the Algarvian trenches when the assault began, he found himself a corporal, and a corporal in a foreign kingdom at that, for his regiment had pushed into Forthweg a couple of days earlier. Forthwegian peasant villages didn’t look much different from their Unkerlanter equivalents, except that the locals painted their houses in brighter colors and that the men wore beards.

No, another difference: there
were
a lot of men in the villages. That took some getting used to. “When the redheads came through, these Forthwegians knuckled under,” one of Garivald’s squadmates said. “They didn’t fight back, not like we did.”

And so more of them are left alive,
Garivald thought. He kept that notion buried down deep; getting a name for the subversive kind of grousing might have proved fatally inefficient. What he did say was, “The redheads put up a tougher fight down in the south than they’re doing up here.”

“That’s ‘cause half the Grelzers are traitors,” another trooper said, which wasn’t quite true but came too close to truth for comfort. The fellow went on, “Besides, what do you know about it, Corporal? Even if you did get promoted, you’re a new fish.”

Garivald started to answer that. He’d seen plenty of fighting down in Grelz, even if not formally as one of King Swemmel’s soldiers. His irregulars—Munderic’s, till he took over the band—had harassed the Algar-vians and their Grelzer puppets … and even a few Forthwegians, the ruffians in the outfit called Plegmund’s Brigade.

But, in the end, Garivald kept his mouth shut and let the question go with just a shrug. He didn’t want people knowing Corporal Fariulf was really Garivald, the fellow who’d led irregulars and written songs and done other things to draw the unfriendly notice of people in Cottbus. King Swemmel and those who followed him trust no one who’d fought the redheads on his own. After all, such people might turn and fight him one day, too.

Dragons streaked by overhead, flying east. They were all painted the rock-gray of Garivald’s tunic. “Haven’t seen many Algarvian dragons lately,” he remarked. That seemed a safe enough way to change the subject.

“Don’t miss those bastards, either, not even slightly.” Two soldiers said it at the same time, in almost identical words. Garivald hadn’t had to worry about Algarvian dragons down in Grelz. Mezentio’s men hadn’t had so many that they bothered using them against irregulars. Almost every beast they put in the air flew against King Swemmel’s main army.

But now Garivald was part of that main army. If the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, they would be flying them at his comrades and him. But if the Algarvians put dragons in the air here in the north, swarms of Unkerlanter dragons would try to knock them down. Garivald had never seen so many dragons in his whole life. He’d never imagined that so many dragons could be gathered together and fed and flown over one stretch of the front.