Darkness Descending

“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.