Into The Darkness

"Commanders who don't dread casualties don't stay in command, either," Raunu said. "After a while, the troops won't stand any more. Jelgava had mutinies during the Six Years' War. The Unkerlanter armies that were fighting Algarve mutinied so they could go off and fight each other - Unkerlanters are fools, you ask me. And finally the Algarvians mutinied, too. That's what won the war for us, more than anything else."

It was history to Skarmi; Raunu had lived it. Skarmi said, "May they mutiny again, then. If they didn't want a war, they shouldn't have gone tramping into Bari."

"I suppose that's so, sir." Raunu sighed, then chuckled. "I'm an old soldier at heart, and I make no bones about it. I'd sooner be back in the barracks drinking beer than here in the middle of this powersforsaken Country."

"Can't blame you for that, but when the king and his rministers order, we obey," Skarmi said, and the sergeant nodded. Skarmi withdrew deeper into the woods, then scribbled a note describing his company's position and called for a runner. When a man came up, Skarmi gave him the note and said, "Take this back to headquarters. If they plan on bringing reinforcements forward, hurry back to let me know. That will ten me whether to prepare another attack or to settle in and defend what we've gained here."

"Aye, sir -just as you say." The runner hurried off.

"The Algarvians will have something to say about whether we attack or defend, too, sir," Raunu observed, pointing west.

"Min, that's true," Skarmi said, not altogether happily. "That's one reason I wish we'd pressed this opening attack harder: the better to impose our will on the enemy."

Raunu grunted. "The Algarvians have plenty of will of their own. I'm surprised they haven't tried imposing theirs on us."

"They're beset from four sides at once," Skarmi said. "Before long, they'll break somewhere." Raunu grunted again. A few minutes later, the runner came back with orders for Skarmi's men to consolidate their position. He obeyed, as he was obliged to obey. If he muttered under his breath, that was his business, and no one else's.

High above Vanal's head, a dragon screamed. She craned her neck, trying to find the tiny dot in the sky. At last, she did. The dragon was flying from west to east, which meant it belonged to Forthweg, not Algarve.

Vanai waved, though the man aboard the dragon could not possibly have seen her.

Brivibas walked on for several steps before realizing she was no longer beside him. He looked back over his shoulder. "The work won't wait," he snapped, exasperated enough to speak Forthwegian instead of Kaunian without even knowing he'd done it. am sorry, my grandfather." Vanai spoke Kaunian. Her grandfather would have given her much more of the rough side of his tongue if she'd made his slip. He was so confident of his inalterable Kaunianity, he could slip its bounds now and then. If anyone younger slipped, though, he would fret for days about dilution [...] Vanai hurlied to catch up with him. Her short, tight tunic and close fitting trousers rubbed at her as she ran. She envied the Forthwegian girls her age their comfortable, loose-fitting long tunics. Such clothes suited

Forthweg's warm, dry climate far better than what she wore. But the folk of the Kaunian Empire had worn short, tight tunics and trousers, and so their descendants perforce did likewise.

"My grandfather, are you certain you know where this old power point lay?" she asked after a long, sweaty while. "We've walked more than halfway to Gromheort, or so it seems."

"Say not Gromheort," Brivibas replied. "Say rather Jekabpils, the name the city knew in more glorious times." On he went, tireless for an old man: he had to be nearly sixty. To Vanai, at sixteen, that certainly seemed ancient.

Her grandfather took from the pack he wore on his back an instrument of his own design: two wings of gold leaf suspended inside a glass sphere by gold wire. He murmured words of command in a Kaunian dialect archaic even when the Empire was at its height.

One of the wings twitched, "Ali, good. This way," Brivibas said, and set off across a meadow, through an almond grove, and then into a nasty stretch of bushes and shrubs, most of which proved well equipped with spines and thorns. At last, after what seemed to Vanai far too long, he stopped. Both gold wings were fluttering, neither higher than the other.

Brivibas beamed. "Here we are."

"Here we are," Vanai agreed in a hollow voice. She had her doubts anyone else had ever been here before. In lieu of stating them more openly, she asked, "Did the ancient Kaunians truly know of this place?"

"I believe they did," Brivibas answered. "The evidence from inscriptions at the King's University in Eoforwic strongly suggests they did. But, so far as I know, no one has yet performed the sorcery which alone can transform supposition into knowledge. That is why we are here."