Out of the Darkness

He couldn’t read the legends picked out in gold leaf beside some of the figures on the walls. He couldn’t even sound them out. Yanina used a script different from every other way of writing in Derlavai. Rathar reckoned that typical of the Yaninans, the most contrary, fractious, faction-ridden folk in the world.

“Here we are,” Tsavellas said, leading him into a room with more Yaninans painted on the walls and with maps on the tables. A Yaninan officer in a uniform much fancier than Rathar’s--his short tunic over kilt and leggings glittered with gold leaf, and even his pompoms were gilded--sprang to his feat and bowed. Tsavellas went on, “I present to you General Mantzaros, the commander of all my forces. He speaks Algarvian.”

“He would,” Rathar rumbled. He was hardly fifty himself--burly, vigorous, and dour. Any man who’d spent so much time dealing with King Swemmel had earned the right to be dour. When he held out his hand, Mantzaros clasped his wrist instead, in the Algarvian style. Rathar raised an eyebrow. “Have you forgotten whose side you’re on these days, General?”

“By no means, Marshal.” Mantzaros drew himself up to his full height, which was a couple of inches less than Rathar’s. “Do you seek to insult me?” Yaninans were some of the touchiest people on earth, too, without the style Algarvians brought to their feuds.

“No. I seek to get some use out of the rabble you call an army,” Rathar said brutally.

That made both Mantzaros and King Tsavellas splutter. The general found his voice first: “Our brave soldiers are doing everything they can to aid our allies of Unkerlant.”

“You have not got more than a handful of brave soldiers. We saw that when you were fighting against us,” Rathar said. Ignoring the Yaninans’ cries of protest, he went on, “Now that you are on our side, you had better get your men moving against the cursed redheads. That was the bargain you struck when you became our allies”--our puppets, he thought--”and you are going to live up to it. Your men will spearhead several attacks we have planned.”

“You will use them to weaken the Algarvians so you can win on the cheap,” Tsavellas said shrilly. “This is not war. This is murder.”

“If you try to go back on your agreement, your Majesty”--Rathar used the title with savage glee--”you will find out what murder is. I promise you that. Do you understand me?”

Tsavellas and Mantzaros both shivered and turned pale beneath their swarthy skins. The Algarvians killed Kaunians for the life energy that powered their strongest, deadliest sorceries. To fight back, Swemmel ordered the deaths of criminals, and of the old and useless of Unkerlant. But, now that his soldiers held Yanina in a grip of iron, what was to stop him from killing Tsavellas’ folk instead? Nothing at all, as anyone who knew him had to realize.

“We are ... loyal,” Tsavellas said.

“To yourselves, perhaps,” Rathar answered. The king looked indignant-- indeed, almost shocked. No Yaninan would have dared speak to him so. But Marshal Rathar was no Yaninan--for which he thanked the powers above--and had to deal with a king ever so much more fearsome than Tsavellas. He went on, “King Swemmel still recalls how you would not turn over King Penda of Forthweg to him when Penda fled here early in the war.”

General Mantzaros said something in Yaninan. If it wasn’t, I told you so, Rathar would have been mightily surprised. Tsavellas snapped something pungent in his own language, then returned to Algarvian: “King Penda escaped my palace. I still do not know how he came to Lagoas.”

On the whole, Rathar believed him. But that had nothing to do with anything. In a voice like sounding brass, he said, “But you had Penda here in Patras, here in your palace, and you would not give him to Swemmel when my sovereign demanded his person.”

“He was a king,” Tsavellas protested. “He is a king. One does not surrender a king as one does a burglar.”

“Is a king who has no kingdom still a king?” Rathar asked.

“I did not give him to Mezentio of Algarve, either, and he wanted him, too.”

Rathar’s shrug held a world of indifference. “You did not surrender him to King Swemmel. Swemmel reckons that a slight. I speak no secrets when I tell you King Swemmel’s memory for slights is very long indeed.”

Tsavellas shivered again. “It is easy for your king to have a long memory. He is strong. For a man who rules a small kingdom, a weak kingdom, trapped between two strong ones, things are not so easy.”

“Unkerlant was--is--trapped between Gyongyos and Algarve--and Yanina,” Rathar said. “You may redeem yourself, but you will pay whatever price King Swemmel demands. If you balk, you shall not redeem yourself, and you will pay much more. Do you understand that, your Majesty?” Once more, he enjoyed using the king’s formal title as he dictated to him.