Out of the Darkness

King Tsavellas wilted. Rathar had expected nothing less. The King of Yan-ina found himself in an impossible situation. He’d saved his throne by switching sides at just the right moment, but he’d left himself a hostage to Unkerlant in doing so. If he didn’t obey, Swemmel could easily find some pliant Yaninan noble--or an Unkerlanter governor--who would. “Aye,” Tsavellas said sullenly. “Tell us what you require, and we shall do it. Is it not so, General?”

“It is so,” General Mantzaros agreed. “It will bleed our kingdom white, but it is so.”

“Do you think Unkerlant has not been bled white?” Rathar said. “Do you think Yanina did not help bleed Unkerlant white? This is what you bought, and this is the price you will pay for it. You know the Algarvians are holding along the line of the Skamandros River?”

“Aye,” the king and his general said together.

Rathar wasn’t so sure how much they knew, but accepted their word for the time being. He said, “I intend to throw Yaninan armies across the river here and here”--he pointed to the spots he had in mind--”in three days’ time. You will have them ready, or it will go hard for you and your kingdom.”

“In three days?” Mantzaros croaked. “That is not possible.”

“This is your last chance to keep Yaninan armies under Yaninan officers, General,” Rathar said coldly. “If you do not move the men as we require, we shall do it for you. That will be the end of your army as an army. We will use it as part of ours--as a small part of ours. Have you any questions?”

“No,” Mantzaros whispered. He spoke in Yaninan to King Tsavellas, who replied in the same tongue. Mantzaros dipped his head, as Yaninans usually did in place of nodding. Returning to Algarvian, he said, “We obey.”

“Good. That is what is required of you, no more--and no less.” He turned his back on the general and the king and strode out of the map room. The painted Yaninans on the hallway walls stared reproachfully from their big, round, liquid eyes. He ignored them, as he had ignored the king and the general once they gave him what he wanted. He also ignored the anxious Yaninan courtiers who tried to get him to tell them what was going on. After fawning, they cringed.

Rathar’s carriage waited outside the palace. “Take me to our headquarters,” he told the driver. The soldier, a stolid Unkerlanter, nodded and obeyed without a word. That suited Rathar fine.

The headquarters was an appropriated house, quite fine, in a district full of fancy shops--certainly fancier than any in Cottbus. The Yaninans couldn’t fight worth a lick, but they lived well. When Rathar walked in, he smelled a pungent, smoky odor he’d never met before and heard General Vatran coughing. “Powers above, what’s that stink?” he demanded.

“I’m breathing the smoke of these leaves I got from the grocer across the street,” Vatran answered between wheezes. He was stocky and white-haired, almost twenty years older than Rathar: one of the few truly senior officers to have survived a generation of Swemmel’s rages, but a solid soldier nonetheless. “Varvakis says they come from some island in the Great Northern Sea, and the natives there all swear by them.”

“For what?” Rathar asked. “Fumigation?”

“No, no, no. Health,” Vatran said. “None of these natives ever dies before he’s a hundred and fifty years old, if you believe Varvakis. And even if you cut what he says in half, that doesn’t sound too bad to me.” He coughed again.

So did Rathar. “Nasty stench,” he said. “If you have to breathe this cursed smoke all the time, I think I’d sooner die. It’ll probably rot your lungs. And if these natives are so bloody wonderful, why do they belong to some Derlavaian kingdom nowadays? All those islands do, you know.”

“You haven’t got the right attitude,” Vatran said reproachfully.

“I don’t care,” Rathar answered “I’ll tell you this, though: Tsavellas and Mantzaros would agree with you.”

“I’ll bet they would,” Vatran said. “You got what you wanted from them, I expect?”

“Of course I did,” Rathar told him. “It was that or pull this kingdom down around their ears. We’ll throw Yaninans over the Skamandros till they bridge it with their bodies if we have to. Then we’ll clean out the stinking redheads ourselves.” He paused. “They don’t stink any worse than those leaves.”

“Sorry, sir.” Vatran didn’t sound sorry. He was grinning. So was Rathar. Why not, when they were pushing the Algarvians back?

Rain blew out of the west, into Colonel Spinello’s face. It could be worse, the Algarvian officer thought as he peered from his riverfront hole in the ground in Eoforwic across the Twegen toward the Unkerlanter positions on the west bank. When he said that aloud, one of the men in his brigade gave him an odd look. “How could it be worse, sir?” the trooper asked, real curiosity in his voice.